Erin Geiger Smith, THANK YOU FOR VOTING

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[1:09]needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Hi, today's day two of my July book

[1:16]blast, which I started yesterday with memoir Mondays. Today is debut Tuesdays, and I'm going to be

[1:22]featuring a number of incredible debut authors whose books have come out during the quarantine,

[1:27]or around this time, or our great beach reads and things you should definitely start reading now.

[1:33]I will be doing this for 10 days in July with lots and lots of episodes so that you all can

[1:37]enjoy it while it's still the summer. I hope you enjoyed today's debut Tuesday. Listen to all of

[1:43]them or some of them and spread the word. I had such a nice time interviewing Aaron Giger Smith

[1:48]about thank you for voting, the maddening and lightning inspiring truths about voting in America.

[1:54]She also has a middle grade version of this that she was so sweet and dropped off copies from my

[1:58]13-year-old twin so that was just super nice of her and that tells you what she's like as a person.

[2:03]Aaron is a freelance reporter who writes lifestyle stories for publications including the

[2:07]Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She's covered everything from corporate sponsorships

[2:11]at children's museums to the cult following of Mexican coke to the cult for certain card makers,

[2:19]Taipei planners conquering Disney World, which P.S. I could have written myself,

[2:23]and why pattern leggings were everywhere. She worked at Reuters and business insider covering

[2:29]legal news and graduated from Columbia's Graduate School Journalism, the University of Texas

[2:34]School of Law, and the University of Texas at Austin. She grew up in Liberty, Texas and now lives

[2:39]in Manhattan with her husband and son. Welcome, Aaron. Thanks so much for coming on mom's

[2:44]don't have time to read books. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and talk to you about

[2:48]about the book and everything else. You too. So thank you for voting. This is the best

[2:53]subtitle, the maddening and lightning inspiring truth about voting in America. And you have both

[2:59]this one and a younger readers edition. Tell me about these books and what inspired you to write

[3:05]both and how this all happened. Sure. Yeah, I guess I should start with saying the goal of the

[3:10]book is to increase voter turnout. So I wanted to just include all the information that would

[3:16]empower and inspire people to vote and bring all their friends with them hopefully. And the

[3:22]way the book came about is sort of two, two strings. One couldn't have happened without the other,

[3:30]I guess. And in 2016, after the election, there were just, there were so many questions that I

[3:36]personally had as a reporter and as a voter and just as a citizen. And, you know, the world seemed

[3:44]in disagreement. And I'm from a tiny town in Texas. And I live in New York City. And those felt like

[3:50]different universes. And I've spent my whole life being able to see the commonalities. And I feel

[3:55]like I'm very much of both places and all of a sudden it was just different worlds. And so I

[4:01]just was playing with all of those things in my head. And usually I write features about business

[4:06]trends and legal trends. And I don't write about politics. So I was trying to figure out where I

[4:12]fits in that world. And in the meantime, just started writing stories about female entrepreneurs

[4:18]and just things that I sort of felt like got me closer to what the bigger conversation was. And

[4:24]that included writing a lot about books because when times are trying books always center you

[4:30]I find. And I especially, this is a nonfiction book, but fiction is the only thing in the world

[4:36]that truly relaxes me and takes me out of where I am. So I started writing about mostly stories

[4:42]for the Wall Street Journal books that, you know, classic books people had never read. And then

[4:47]the story that really kind of made me focus was talking about books that spoke the truth to young

[4:53]boys because we were seeing so much, especially leading up to 2016 all these books that empower

[4:59]girls, which is wonderful. And I wanted to find the same for my now six-year-old son.

[5:05]So point being, I was in the book world more than I had been as far as reporting on it.

[5:11]And I was watching a Instagram video with Reese Witherspoon and Ann Patchett, Reese was

[5:17]interviewing Ann, and Ann said that she, I say Ann, I did not know her at all the time, but you know

[5:24]that's okay. Reese and Ann, we'll just see them. It's fun. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I don't know

[5:28]Reese Witherspoon either. I should point out, but she spills more of a first name base with all

[5:33]the time. So Reese was interviewing Ann Patchett and Ann was saying that she was writing a book

[5:37]about women and voting. And for whatever reason, I thought, that's it. That's something that I can do

[5:43]as almost a side project. I was a lawyer before, a reporter now, and I just thought,

[5:50]I want to try to be a part of that. And so truly out of nowhere I emailed Ann Patchett's

[5:55]publicist and offered my services. If Ann needs a researcher, I would like to do it. And I was

[6:01]able to hopefully not sound like a crazy person by pointing out all of these books. I had recently

[6:05]written for the Wall Street Journal and the legal story said that and kind of the work that I did.

[6:10]And just said, this is a massive project. And if Ann needs help researching or conducting

[6:16]a sort of background interviews, I'm happy to do it. And honestly, assumed I'd never hear anything

[6:22]of it. But I was inspired by the project. And then in a very short amount of time, I got an email

[6:29]from Ann who said, let's talk. What do you think you can do for me? And so I've

[6:34]developed a completely developed plan of how I would research this. And within a couple weeks,

[6:39]Ann and I had met, she lives in Nashville, but had come to New York for something. And we just

[6:45]sort of worked out what this would be. And the idea was I would research a topic a month and

[6:51]sent her a packet, which she would kind of sit on because she was writing a novel. And that's

[6:56]the novel that turned out to be the Dutch House. And the goal was for her to write that novel in 2018,

[7:01]me do all this research and then hand it over to Ann to write the book. And then in August of 2018,

[7:10]Ann, and she tells the story on her book, or I'm not telling stories out of school and says that

[7:16]she realized she had made a massive mistake in the Dutch House. And she, or what, what,

[7:21]the massive mistake in the novel that she had written and she trashed it. She threw it away.

[7:25]Her entire novel, no one read it, but her. And she said I messed up. And I have to start over.

[7:33]And it was going to make the time crunch for the timing for this book, a real crunch. And

[7:40]she just, she said, Aaron, you've been doing all the research for this book.

[7:44]You have become passionate about it. And I had, I had stopped, essentially stopped doing my real

[7:50]work and was spending all my time researching this book. I would sit in the packet. She was like,

[7:54]are you maybe spending too much time on this? Because I just, I couldn't stop. I really became

[8:00]obsessed. And so Ann was like, this is yours. This is your book. It's not mine. See if you can

[8:05]make it happen. And so we very quickly, the timing at that point was, so this was September of

[8:13]2018. And it would need to be wrapped up by, you know, first draft of July of 2019. So it was

[8:20]then a quick move. So I came up with an outline and just was able to quickly sort of present it

[8:27]and show what I would do with it. And so that's the, that's the publishing story of how this book

[8:32]came to be. And then the first string is the reporting of I was already in it. And then this kind

[8:39]of just came the craziest story that there is. As a freelance reporter, you have to do a ton of

[8:45]hustling. And so this was all the sudden I was doing some publishing hustling that I

[8:50]had it realized I was going to be doing, but it was. So you basically accidentally wrote your

[8:56]own. I accidentally wrote a book. Exactly. And then wrote a few books. And then after we were

[9:01]working on this, they decided it would work well for this, the young readers, you know, as parents

[9:07]are preparing to vote. Obviously we want to help our kids prepare to vote too. So that was,

[9:12]that was the idea for the young readers. And, and that didn't come about until probably five

[9:16]months into writing the, the adult book. So it was a very quick clip, but I had spent at that point

[9:25]nine months really diving in. And as I look at it and hindsight, I was researching it as if I

[9:31]was going to be writing the book myself, even though that wasn't the plan at all at the time.

[9:36]So I'm grateful that I couldn't stop and became obsessed or I might have been in real

[9:41]trouble. So I read a bunch of your previous articles for the Wall Street Journal and all the rest

[9:47]and talk. I read about why, you know, patterned leggings are now all the rage. I mean, it's great.

[9:55]I don't know. I don't think I can pull off the pattern leggings that well, but, you know, my daughter

[9:59]daughter loves it.

[10:00]So that's good enough.

[10:01]Listen, I wrote that story because I was,

[10:05]and mostly still am, of purely black leggings workout

[10:09]person.

[10:09]And then all of the sudden, I was nearly one of the only

[10:14]people that have leggings just got wild.

[10:17]And that's, you know, it's a great consumer story.

[10:20]It was a tough sell at first.

[10:22]But then I had some female editors in the realm who

[10:26]were like, no, really, that's the thing that's happening.

[10:28]And that's one of those stories I got so much feedback on.

[10:32]And you never know what to get to hit people,

[10:34]but that one, the pattern, liking this, and it was one that,

[10:38]as I wrote it, it's all female-owned businesses.

[10:42]And mostly young people are who were making it work.

[10:45]So it was a really fun story.

[10:46]I also read my house super type A planner's

[10:48]tackled Disney World because I wrote a similar thing,

[10:52]which I don't think I ever even published.

[10:53]I just like gave it to all my friends

[10:55]because they knew that for a while I had been going to Disney

[10:57]World quite often.

[10:58]It was something like the neurotic New Yorker's

[11:00]guide to Disney World.

[11:01]And basically I had all the insides scoop on Disney.

[11:06]And I was like, oh my god, here's like, this is it.

[11:08]She did the same thing.

[11:09]You did all the research.

[11:10]I planned that it tracked for you.

[11:12]And I wish I had known to call you at the time.

[11:15]That was another, I mean, it's fascinating.

[11:17]And then also, I think it scared me

[11:19]because man, you have to work to make it work.

[11:23]And so I just, I felt sorry for my sexual and waiting

[11:27]for him to demand the Disney trip

[11:29]because it almost scared me.

[11:31]And it had to be done.

[11:33]But I loved hearing about people's intricate planning

[11:38]as a very good spot.

[11:40]My point in bringing up some of your past work

[11:42]and your profile of the Juice Press owner

[11:45]and just like all these very relatable lifestyle type

[11:49]features, how did you go from those?

[11:53]And I understand how, now I know the story.

[11:55]But what is it that brought you from that type of writing

[11:58]to the obsessive fart?

[12:00]That's what I find super interesting.

[12:01]Like, how did you become obsessed with this?

[12:03]Had you yourself been thinking about voting?

[12:07]You know, it was like a latent interest of yours

[12:10]that then just percolated because there was the opportunity

[12:12]like, or was it completely random?

[12:14]Like, how did you get there?

[12:15]Like, what made you so obsessed with?

[12:18]I had, I mean, before I was a journalist, I was an attorney.

[12:23]And so I went to law school

[12:24]and you read all of these, the major civil rights

[12:29]and voting law cases and then and learned about the passage

[12:32]of the 13, 14, the 15 amendments and the slavery

[12:35]and all of those things.

[12:39]And so the legal side of me is always there.

[12:43]And I found all of those cases interesting

[12:45]and sort of never gave that up.

[12:48]And then when I was a legal reporter at Reuters,

[12:51]you have to follow, of course, all the current day cases.

[12:54]And so I never sort of left the world

[12:57]of knowing what was happening in the arena of voting rights,

[13:02]but I had never fully focused on it.

[13:04]You're absolutely right.

[13:05]It was just the idea of, I always kept up to date

[13:08]without diving in.

[13:11]And then what really sort of got me

[13:14]on the track of being obsessed with voting

[13:18]was all of the questions that came up after the election

[13:22]of the Electoral College.

[13:24]And what happens when the popular vote

[13:27]and the Electoral College vote don't match up?

[13:29]And I knew, I knew that, but I didn't know

[13:33]how many times it happened before or what the protocols were.

[13:37]And then just all of the stories after the election

[13:40]on voter turnout and I just couldn't believe

[13:45]how low our voter turnout is for younger people.

[13:50]And so that was a thing that I just kept.

[13:53]I mean, I read way, way too much news and always have.

[13:57]So I think all of those seeds were there.

[13:59]And then just once I started really diving into the history

[14:03]and laying out the timeline of those Supreme Court cases

[14:08]and how much it impacts current day.

[14:10]That's when I just couldn't let it go, basically.

[14:14]And it just seemed like a way, I mean,

[14:17]it sounds so obnoxious in a way,

[14:19]but I was trying to find what part could I play

[14:23]in helping us be a little more active?

[14:28]And I'm not a person who, I talked to so many people

[14:31]in the book who were so inspiring that just saw the issue

[14:36]and created organizations and rallied people.

[14:39]And I'm much more, I mean, I'm not a shy person.

[14:43]I'm clearly, as your listeners can tell,

[14:45]often talk too much, but I'm much better digging

[14:48]into the words and what's there than I am

[14:52]at standing in front of people and talking.

[14:55]So this just sort of felt like my way

[14:57]to get good information out there.

[15:00]And then it was also I can stop because I learned so much.

[15:02]And I would have thought because of my background

[15:04]that I understood what was going on with voting.

[15:07]And I understood what voter suppression was still happening.

[15:10]But I understood it at a top level

[15:13]and this let me keep digging and digging.

[15:16]And I was learning so much.

[15:18]It was in a way it was a selfish project too

[15:20]because I learned so much about something

[15:23]that we all do regularly or should do regularly.

[15:27]If you're lucky enough that your parents taught you to vote,

[15:29]generally you go and vote pretty often.

[15:32]And I had taken that for granted too.

[15:34]The being that my mom brought me with her to vote,

[15:36]we live in a really small town and we would go to our library

[15:39]and she would chat with the poll workers.

[15:43]And I would listen for gossip

[15:44]because that's how small the town was.

[15:46]And we vote and it was done.

[15:48]So it was just something that I always did.

[15:50]And then when I started researching and realized

[15:52]how we just fail our young people

[15:56]by not teaching them how to vote.

[15:58]And then we get upset when their voter turnout is low.

[16:01]Well, if no one's taught you that you have to register

[16:03]and then many states 30 days in advance,

[16:05]there's just so many little details.

[16:07]And so I was so moved by the people

[16:09]who were doing that work and this seemed like a way

[16:10]to tell more people about their work essentially.

[16:13]That's awesome.

[16:14]I remember taking my twins when they were really little

[16:17]and it was so cold out.

[16:18]And the line to vote was like wrapped around

[16:21]this outside courtyard that was like six kind of

[16:23]basketball courts all lined up outside

[16:25]in some sort of school or just like,

[16:27]and I mean, they still are like,

[16:28]can you remember that time?

[16:29]We had to wait an hour now.

[16:30]You know?

[16:31]I know.

[16:32]I'm like, yes, I remember that time.

[16:34]Great to take them.

[16:35]Yeah, it's great to, I mean, I don't know.

[16:37]After that, they were like, I'll pass.

[16:38]But so in all your research,

[16:41]if you could think of like the most powerful thing

[16:44]you've found or that you would want to say about voting

[16:48]or that could convert non voters to become voters,

[16:52]like what would that be?

[16:53]What was like the most powerful thing?

[16:55]I think the most powerful thing sounds like such a simple thing,

[16:59]but that is that the person who has the most influence

[17:03]on getting people to vote is you.

[17:07]You have the best chance of getting your friends

[17:10]and your family and your colleagues.

[17:13]And you know, if you go to church or synagogue,

[17:16]those people to vote if you help them learn the rules

[17:20]and provide them a plan.

[17:22]And those things can actually be pretty,

[17:23]it's pretty simple to do once you are in yourself

[17:26]with the information.

[17:27]And I think that that is the most important takeaway

[17:32]of the book is that I hopefully help you learn

[17:36]the websites that you can find an information on.

[17:39]And then if you just start a text chain

[17:42]with five people that you want to make sure go to the polls

[17:46]and to think of those, you know,

[17:47]if you have friends that you know are going to vote,

[17:51]don't, you know, maybe don't choose them

[17:53]for your text chain.

[17:54]But if you have a niece who's starting 18

[17:57]as I do, it'll be her first time to vote.

[17:59]No, people like that that you can make sure.

[18:02]Today's the last day to register.

[18:04]Okay, make your voting plan.

[18:05]Look up where your polling place is,

[18:07]especially now, what are the vote by mail rules?

[18:10]If you can help people with that information,

[18:12]it can make a big impact.

[18:13]And if we all did that,

[18:15]I think it can be a big, a big change.

[18:19]And then I think the second thing is one

[18:21]that requires a little more educating,

[18:24]but I do think those of us who are lucky enough

[18:27]to be able to vote easily and have mostly always been able

[18:30]to vote without trouble.

[18:31]If we can educate ourselves a little bit

[18:34]on whatever is going on in your state,

[18:38]see what the League of Women voters is trying to do

[18:40]in your state.

[18:41]And it's on their website,

[18:42]and you can go to the League of Women voters website.

[18:44]And it tells you sort of what lawsuits they're involved in

[18:47]or organizations they're helping out.

[18:49]I think understanding what's going on in your state

[18:52]to make it easier and more convenient to vote

[18:54]is the second step for those with a little more time

[18:58]and inclination.

[18:59]I love how in the back of your book,

[19:01]we're on Skype so nobody can see this,

[19:03]but you and me, sorry.

[19:04]But I am showing that you have this great checklist

[19:07]of all the things you need to know.

[19:09]With like, thank you for voting a checklist,

[19:11]what you have to do today,

[19:13]what you have to do 40 days before an election,

[19:15]30 days before an election.

[19:17]This is like really great and for 10 days before

[19:19]the day before and then an election day,

[19:21]what you have to do.

[19:22]And then you have this great thing called

[19:23]thank you for voting, tell your friends.

[19:24]And you have like this little says,

[19:26]dear at, at, at, at, let's make our voices

[19:29]here at an election day.

[19:30]I pledge to you that I'm gonna vote in the next election.

[19:32]Will you pledge to vote too?

[19:33]Thank you for voting and then you're supposed to put your name.

[19:35]So this is great.

[19:36]It's like a whole campaign you can do on Instagram

[19:38]at thank you for voting to spread the word

[19:40]and make it all viral.

[19:42]So, at thank you for voting.

[19:43]It would be great to.

[19:45]Yeah, I'd love to see people do that.

[19:46]I'm very excited for it's, you know,

[19:48]once a book actually goes out in the world,

[19:50]I hope that people do that.

[19:51]And I'm a big checklist person.

[19:54]And so I wanted to include that

[19:55]because I think it's so any voting can be overwhelming,

[19:59]but I.

[20:00]I felt, feel for myself and hopefully by laying it out can kind of, you know, if you're a checklist person, it's right there, right there for you.

[20:07]So Aaron, what are you working on now? Now, the book is coming out. Not that you have to be working on anything, but I'm just want to know.

[20:13]You know, I don't, I don't have any big project that's next. I'm excited to hopefully get back to writing a few stories that take me, you know, a couple of weeks or a month to write instead of you're going to have when you're used to being a newspaper

[20:29]reporter. And I'm, when I was at Reuters, it was, you know, I'd write two or three stories a day. Now I get to spend a couple of weeks reporting, but I wouldn't mind doing something that runs a little quicker, but I would, I'm hoping, you know, the way the news cycle was with coronavirus and then the protest, there isn't a lot of room in the news right now for freelancers to write feature stories. That's just not where we are, but hopefully if things calm down a little bit and we have time to take a larger view.

[20:58]So I hope to write stories highlighting what the people in the book are doing right now because of course the nature of a book is you have to cut it off a little early. So they've started all different new initiatives. And so I want to write about that and I'm really anxious to write more. This is the same topic, but on how companies are helping people to vote because I think that's anyone who works in the corporation could get their corporation to help employees and customers vote.

[21:24]Easy ways they can do it in nonpartisan ways and I think that has a chance for a big impact though. That's a business story I want to write soon. And then otherwise I don't know. I'm anyone. I love authors.

[21:37]My quarantine book club has saved me. I have a lifetime of admiration for people who write books and then after doing one it is times 100.

[21:47]And so I think you know when they were diving back in and writing another one is so impressive to me. So while I hope to get there the people who in and immediately have a new idea hats off hats off to them.

[22:01]I am not there yet. I'm hoping to read some more books. I feel like writing the book and when we've been in quarantine I've been able to read a ton but I missed so many books while I was writing this one.

[22:13]I don't have any advice to aspiring authors. It's so hard. I think like I said I it is in you that you want to write a book. I think that's wonderful and probably the most important ingredient.

[22:27]I think there's no magic to it. And part of the way I was able to do this was because Anne gave me such amazing advice and the way her processes.

[22:37]It's work. You have to sit down and do the work and put the words on the page and set yourself up by doing the necessary preparations.

[22:47]And so I think in the best way possible it's not magic. So often I think when I was younger would look at authors work and just think oh gosh they just they had this idea and they write so beautifully and it just you know fell from them basically.

[23:03]But now I you just have to think every sentence has been worked and reworked and I sort of one thing I don't know if this is helpful to all writers but that I tell younger reporters all the time who are hesitant to get started because I often find for myself I talk myself out of ideas and just don't know how to get started because I can be overwhelmed with how well other people do it.

[23:29]But just anything you read in the newspaper or books I mean 18 people have probably looked at that and helped improve it.

[23:36]You know and so just getting it down and then recognizing how much work you get to do on the back end I think it's important to and seek out good readers that's also what I would say so important to not get trapped in your own mind which I think is so easy to do.

[23:54]So find people who are going to be read your work and be kind but honest I think it kind but honest reader is the most important one you would have maybe that is my took me a while to get there maybe that's my top advice find the kind be brave take the leap and find the kind and honest reader.

[24:15]Well thanks Erin thanks for coming on the show and thanks for inspiring all of us to vote it's so important I will be touting your message and you know tagging you and all the rest especially as we get closer to the election so thanks for getting ahead of it and having this book come out and all of it and thank you.

[24:32]It improves the country really so it's important so important.

[24:35]That's big but I still just say thank you and I hope the book is helpful and if people have voting questions I'm easily findable on Twitter and Instagram and I'm happy to try to find the answer for them it's not in the book ask me and I'll search it out.

[24:52]Well my my last question to you is I'm loving the dress that you're wearing which no one can see except for me which is a blue yeah my favorite colors that's like a blue and.

[25:01]I have to well maybe I'll cut this part out but where did you get that dress I think that this is it's a shirt and I think it's Maria Corday how okay I'm literally like with go by the same I'm like.

[25:15]Just last year.

[25:17]Thank you.

[25:18]All right.

[25:19]Thank you again thanks for coming on the show and thanks so much I really appreciate it.

[25:26]Thanks for listening to one of my debut Tuesday episodes in the July book blast series.

[25:32]I really hope you enjoyed it and it's really my pleasure to bring you some debut authors you might not have heard of or have listened to so enjoy I hope you really got a lot out of it.

[25:42]Thanks again for listening to my podcast moms don't have time to read books if you liked this episode please follow me on instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at zibi Owens.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to.

[25:58]Thanks a lot.

[25:59]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode I hope you'll all check out my summer beach bundle at page one books dot com.

[26:06]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at textures sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.

[26:14]Thanks for listening you could always email me at zibi at zibi Owens.com.