Brit Bennett, THE VANISHING HALF
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[2:36]This interview that I did with Brit Bennett is from an event with Penn America. They host virtual authors, Knights, authors, dinners that used to be.
[2:45]And I attended a bunch of them myself before saying, you know what, I would love to just get in there and interview one of these people.
[2:52]So I offered and said, is there any chance I could interview Brit Bennett? And they said yes. And I was so thrilled. And then I read the entire book basically in two settings over the course of a weekend could not put it down was so good.
[3:04]Sometimes when there's a lot of hype around a book, I'm reluctant to read it because I know I'll be disappointed. This was not the case. This book is seriously really great. The story itself is really great and the writing.
[3:16]So a little bit about Brit. She was born and raised in Southern California. She graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan where she won a Hopwood Award in graduate short fiction in 2014.
[3:28]She received the Hurston Wright Award for college writers. She is a national book foundation 535 honoree. And her debut novel, The Mothers, was a New York Times bestseller.
[3:38]Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, was an instant number one, New York Times bestseller. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times magazine, The Paris Review in Jezebel. And by the way, there was a big, I think 17 different production companies were bidding to turn The Vanishing Half into a limited series and HBO one.
[3:57]So I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about that. And if you want to check out Ben's events, you definitely should penamerica.org and they have lots of events all the time that are all for a great cause to help free speech throughout the world. So go check them out too.
[4:11]Thank you so much for having me here tonight. This is such a thrill and Brit. I am so excited to be interviewing you tonight. So just bear with my glee as I ask you questions.
[4:22]Thank you. Thanks for being here. Oh my gosh. I snooped on you earlier today doing your Instagram live with Shondelland to get a little preview of what's been on your mind. So thanks for that today too.
[4:34]I read about how you had asked your mother. Your mother had told you about the small town, which really was the inspiration for this book, but maybe you could share that story with everybody here and go into more how you took that germ of an idea and translated it into what became one of the most sensational novels. I've really read in my entire life.
[4:54]Thank you. And thank you for having me tonight. Thank you everyone for watching. Yeah, I honestly don't really remember the context of the conversation I was even having with my mother.
[5:03]But I just remember her very offhandedly mentioning this town that she remembered from her childhood where everyone was so obsessed with skin color that they just kind of
[5:12]married within the community in hopes that their children would get lighter from generation to generation. And she said to me very offhandedly like it was something that everyone just kind of knows and it immediately struck me. I think all I remember is just being like wait slow down slow down. Let's go back to that thing that you just said that's crazy.
[5:30]And it immediately struck me. I just wrote it down in my, you know, my phone. I have it in my notes when I just jotted down that basic idea. And then at the time I was still kind of finishing up with mothers. So I didn't really go back to it right away.
[5:44]But it immediately struck me as something that was potentially the setting for a novel. It was an idea of a town that's oriented around this really troubling idea.
[5:52]And I think when you're thinking about a novel, the idea of having something that immediately presents itself as a problem, like immediately this town presented itself to me as a problem.
[6:01]And from there I thought about what would it be like to be a licensed person in this town that has this really horrific ideology and what would it be like to be a dark skin person in this town.
[6:10]And that was kind of the basis of the idea of these twin sister whose lives take them in very different directions.
[6:16]So it's one thing to have a little note in your phone and start noodling on a concept, but it's another to then blow it out into all these different interwoven stories across timelines and all the rest.
[6:31]What happened between the idea and like now, like how did you craft it to become what it was in terms of process and did you outline it, like how did you get it from there to here.
[6:45]And I, you know, I talked about it as if this was like a straightforward journey and of course it totally wasn't. I don't really outline, but I know that it took me, you know, many, many drafts and many years of trying to figure it out.
[6:59]I knew immediately that I was interested in these twin sisters, one who you see at the beginning of the book when she has returned to this town with her third same child.
[7:06]And the other one was kind of vanished off into the wind and you don't know what happened to her.
[7:10]opening a book and from there, it was a lot of just kind of trying different things out. I didn't realize originally that I was interested in the lives of the twin sisters children.
[7:22]I thought I would just, I thought originally it would just be like one half of the book would be one sister and the other half of the book would be the other sister and that would be really nice and me.
[7:30]And then I realized I was really interested in their children. I was interested in the men in their lives. I was interested in all these other sort of minor characters that really just kind of gripped me because of their own stories about re-inventing and transformation that really appealed to me.
[7:45]So it took a lot of trial and error to try to leave all of the stories in a way that was even coherent let alone, hopefully moving and interesting to the reader.
[7:54]And I mean, like paint me a picture here. I have to know how you did it because it looks so it looks so seamless when you read it. But of course it's not when you do it.
[8:06]So did you keep it all in your head? Were you cutting and pasting like crazy?
[8:10]Eventually there were some flashcards. But as far as like the kind of beef I beat of it.
[8:15]Honestly, that that was again, it was trial and error because at first I thought, well, you know, were you going to see, is the first chapter does it right? And then immediately you see Stella and might have a delay when you see Stella that became something I was trying to modulate.
[8:29]And then as far as the daughter is originally I originally thought the book was going to be chronological. You know, I thought, oh, I'm just going to be moving to time.
[8:36]And then if there was always something to me that didn't feel it felt disjointed the lives of these women. It didn't feel like they existed in the same timeline really.
[8:45]So then once I realized that that kind of freed me to to play around with that timeline and make some other sort of figure imaginative leaps.
[8:52]So yeah, I mean it took, there was not a streamlined process at all. There was a lot of frustration and a lot of, a lot of being my head against the wall.
[9:00]I mean, actually a lot of really great help from my editor who was just in the trenches with me the whole time trying to help me figure this thing out.
[9:07]Well, your editor then deserves some sort of medal or something. I don't know.
[9:12]You know, one thing I was struck by in the beginning was how all the characters had left home, like in a pretty dramatic way, Desiree and Stella both left.
[9:21]That when you go through generations due to eventually leaves and Kennedy eventually leaves and Reese has left his family and early has left his family.
[9:29]And they do so in part to find themselves, but also just to escape right and and begin again.
[9:35]So I was wondering sort of why you incorporated that theme and what did you yourself ever leave behind that might have amplified this message in your personal life.
[9:45]Yeah, I have never had it as dramatic a departure as all those characters that you just described. All of my leavings have just been, you know, going somewhere for school or just wanting to move or why do something new.
[9:57]But I think I've always been drawn to that idea.
[10:00]and leaving home is something that's,
[10:01]I mean, I think it's inherently pretty interesting,
[10:03]but I also do associate it so much with change.
[10:06]I think that it can be really hard to change who you are
[10:09]when you're around the same people
[10:10]who have always known you to be one certain way,
[10:13]versus once you get a little bit of distance
[10:15]and then you can kind of try out different people
[10:18]and you can sort of play around with who you are
[10:20]in a little bit of a different way.
[10:21]So I think all of these characters experience that similarly,
[10:25]when Stella is growing up in this town,
[10:27]she kind of dabbles with passing.
[10:30]She's tried it before,
[10:31]but it's not something she can really get away with
[10:33]because she still lives in her mother's house.
[10:36]Like she can't truly commit to this life as a white woman
[10:40]in a way that she finds herself,
[10:41]she kind of starts to ease into it more once she
[10:44]and her sister goes to New Orleans.
[10:47]She can kind of ease more into that life,
[10:49]but then fully commits once she has left her sister behind.
[10:52]But I think that's true of a lot of these characters
[10:54]that once they gain that physical separation,
[10:56]you can make that kind of mental and emotional separation
[11:00]that is required in order to become a different person
[11:03]or to become the person that you want to be.
[11:05]So is there a piece of yourself that you wanted to change
[11:08]and like reinvent in a new place?
[11:10]Or is there half of yourself you would like to have vanished?
[11:16]I don't know about that,
[11:17]but I do know that I think in writing this book,
[11:21]I kept thinking about my relationship with my family,
[11:23]which is very close, but at the same time,
[11:25]I think sometimes that closeness can feel sort of claustrophobic.
[11:28]You can feel sometimes kind of trapped into the person.
[11:33]For example, I'm the youngest child in my family.
[11:37]So there is a sense of always kind of being the baby
[11:41]when you're at home,
[11:42]which can be nice sometimes in ways
[11:43]and other times can be a little bit frustrating.
[11:46]So I think there are things like that
[11:47]of having these roles that you can be him into.
[11:50]And I'm talking about this in a very kind of,
[11:53]very sort of low stakes way.
[11:56]I think the stakes for all these characters
[11:57]are so much higher of the types of roles
[11:59]that they're trapped into the ways
[12:01]in which they're trying to very frequently.
[12:03]And the way that they transform is so dramatic, right?
[12:06]Everything becomes,
[12:07]everything that you would think is static becomes fluid
[12:10]from race to gender to names.
[12:14]I mean, everything is like influx constantly in this book.
[12:17]And I think that's what's so unique
[12:19]because you never know who you're getting to know
[12:22]as they get to know themselves.
[12:24]So I wondered if you could just talk a little more
[12:26]about that sense of fluidity that nothing is stable,
[12:30]except perhaps love.
[12:32]Yeah, I mean, I think that that was one of the things
[12:34]that really drew me into writing this book.
[12:36]I knew I wanted to write this story
[12:38]that was going to be about passing,
[12:39]but I wanted to write into this kind of literature
[12:42]of passing from my perspective as a 21st century writer.
[12:45]And from my perspective,
[12:46]I think sometimes sort of most famous passing literature
[12:50]kind of essentializes identity in this way.
[12:53]It almost sometimes there's something
[12:56]kind of inherently contradictory about those stories
[12:58]because you have a character who's moving
[13:00]one from one category to another,
[13:02]which kind of destabilizes those categories.
[13:05]But at the same time, there's often a way
[13:07]in which if they are exposed,
[13:10]it's because somebody senses that you are black.
[13:14]They sense an essentialized blackness within you
[13:17]that you cannot rid yourself up.
[13:19]And that is what makes you black
[13:20]because there's something essentially black inside you.
[13:23]Like there are those types of,
[13:24]you know, those types of kind of understandings of race.
[13:27]So there are ways that I think a lot of passing stories
[13:30]can actually be sort of transgressive in one way,
[13:34]but also sort of this kind of very regressive way
[13:36]of thinking about identity,
[13:38]where identity is essentially fixed within you.
[13:41]And I think for myself, I wanted to write against that.
[13:43]You know, I wanted to write against that idea
[13:46]that there's anything essential about these identities.
[13:48]The idea that there's anything stable about them
[13:50]or that there's anything even clear.
[13:52]You know, like Stella's experience of passing
[13:56]when she finally sort of commits to it
[13:58]is that she goes into get a job
[14:00]and somebody mistakes her for white
[14:02]and she just goes with it.
[14:04]And there's something so absurd about that
[14:06]because she walked into this office building
[14:08]as a black woman and she left as a white woman.
[14:10]And how is that even possible?
[14:12]You know, how is that possible, but it is.
[14:14]So there was always something to me very,
[14:17]I think absurd is like one of the words
[14:19]that I was thinking about this
[14:21]about these identity categories
[14:23]because again, they determined so much about our lives.
[14:26]So the fact that leather Stella is black or white
[14:29]determines whether she can get this job or not,
[14:31]but she becomes white because somebody believes her
[14:33]to be white and she just says, yeah, I am.
[14:35]You know, so what does that mean?
[14:38]That, you know, her racial identity determines
[14:41]this like very real fact of can she pay her rent
[14:43]and can she feed herself?
[14:45]But at the same time, it's so flimsy
[14:46]that she can just easily slip into one category.
[14:49]You know, so to me, it was that contradiction
[14:51]between those two things of the very real implications
[14:55]of all of those categories of race or gender,
[14:57]but also just the flimsiness between them
[15:00]and the ways in which they are permeable
[15:02]and ways that we may not easily assume
[15:04]but in ways that at least I believe to be true.
[15:06]So you must be asked all these questions about identity
[15:09]and all this stuff all the time.
[15:10]Like this must be your, I mean,
[15:12]like your bread and butter,
[15:13]you must talk about this forever.
[15:15]Does it make you turn a lens like onto yourself
[15:18]to think like, how do I feel about my own identity?
[15:22]Like how important is your race,
[15:25]your gender, your sexuality, like to you as an author
[15:29]and to you as a person?
[15:30]And how did that play into the writing?
[15:32]Is it that you want all that to be fluid?
[15:35]Is it that it's so central to your core of your soul?
[15:38]Like tell me about your relationship to your own identity.
[15:42]I mean, that's a really huge question.
[15:44]But you know, I think it's like, you know, again,
[15:48]it's a, I guess it's fluid.
[15:49]It's something that's sort of,
[15:51]that I don't have like an easy answer towards
[15:53]because I think there's a lot of ways
[15:54]within this book I was thinking about ways
[15:56]in which identity and labeling identity
[15:59]can be really important for community formation.
[16:02]You know, for example, when Jude arrives in LA,
[16:06]she becomes friends with a group of drag queens
[16:09]and who have all found community with each other
[16:11]and kind of welcome her end to this community.
[16:14]And that's a space that I think, you know,
[16:16]there are ways in which forming those types of spaces
[16:19]around identity can be really lifesaving.
[16:22]You know, and really important.
[16:24]One of the flip side, there are also ways
[16:25]in which labels for certain types of identities
[16:27]can be restrictive and that they can feel
[16:30]like they box you in in some way.
[16:32]So I was thinking about that.
[16:34]I think a lot for the book too,
[16:35]that kind of moving between ways in which
[16:38]any type of labeling can be really liberating
[16:40]and also ways in which it can make you feel trapped.
[16:42]when these characters kind of moving between
[16:44]and a lot of those different ways.
[16:46]So I think I think on a lot of ways writing the book
[16:48]has caused me, I think to any more than anything,
[16:52]it's causing me to take a step back when I am,
[16:55]I mean, one, I think what I'm speaking
[16:57]because one of the things that I've got about in this book
[16:59]is the way in which identity is so much more complicated
[17:02]than our language allows.
[17:03]So a good example of that is just Stella's daughter.
[17:07]You know, I still have not really decided
[17:08]a way to racially identify her.
[17:11]I don't really know as the accurate way
[17:13]to describe this person who is a daughter of a black,
[17:18]white, casting mother and it has a white father
[17:21]and believes herself to be white, a later decide.
[17:23]You know, like I don't have,
[17:24]there's not like a succinct way to describe her.
[17:26]So I think part of it is maybe take a step back
[17:29]and be critical of the language
[17:30]that I use in thinking about identity.
[17:32]And also in the ways in which I make snap judgments
[17:34]about other people's identities
[17:36]because part of the book is that you just have no way of knowing.
[17:39]Identities are not as clear as we believe.
[17:42]I think that it's true for people too, right?
[17:44]You don't know the core of people's identity
[17:47]on the surface.
[17:48]You don't know what people are going through on the surface.
[17:50]You just, you could pass by them on the street.
[17:52]It's like how the drag queens who your reference
[17:54]like literally could be somebody completely different
[17:57]or you could just be going through something
[17:59]really challenging.
[18:00]And you just might not know.
[18:01]It's almost like shining an extra machine onto everybody
[18:05]and what would that do to society
[18:06]if we all could actually see inside
[18:09]what was really going on?
[18:10]Maybe everything would be a little better.
[18:12]I hope, I don't know.
[18:14]Maybe.
[18:15]Or much worse.
[18:16]I don't know.
[18:17]Maybe some people want to see inside.
[18:19]Yeah, pretty much.
[18:20]In terms of going back to your craft a little bit
[18:23]because even what you were saying with language,
[18:25]like the way that you were able to tap into different ways
[18:29]of speaking based on all the different characters
[18:31]and just even in so few words,
[18:34]like paint such a picture of what was going on
[18:36]and what someone's personality was like.
[18:38]And then how you had all these cliffhangers,
[18:41]like I think the scene where the, you know,
[18:43]where the wine bottle drops is like,
[18:45]that's going to go, that's going to be like a jeopardy question.
[18:48]And like what's the best even biggest cliffhanger?
[18:52]In terms of things like that,
[18:53]did you pick those up in your MFA program voice and language?
[18:57]And I know we already talked about structure,
[18:59]but cliffhangers and building that suspense
[19:02]because that's something in this book that was just so,
[19:05]like, propulsive, not to use an overused word, but, you know.
[19:09]Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
[19:11]I think for this book, you know,
[19:14]when I start to realize the structure of it
[19:16]was going to be kind of these pieces
[19:18]that it wasn't necessarily this one continuous narrative
[19:21]that you were going to have these kind of starts and stops.
[19:25]Then I did become interested in the idea
[19:27]of those types of cliffhangers.
[19:29]And I think for that section, particularly, you know,
[19:31]that's dead center of the book.
[19:32]So thinking about that middle point of the book
[19:35]or the movie or whatever you're looking at
[19:37]is usually when something big happens.
[19:39]So the idea of that being the moment
[19:40]where the stories start to converge.
[19:42]And I just, something about the dark red wine
[19:46]on that white carpet was really memorable to me at least.
[19:50]And I was thinking about this moment
[19:52]that we can be the shock that this character is experiencing.
[19:55]So I think I thought about it in that way.
[19:57]But I think in general, thinking about the suspense.
[20:00]I think of this kind of as a fake mystery story
[20:03]because the mystery is not really where Stella,
[20:07]that's kind of what feels like the mystery at first,
[20:09]maybe is we've got to find Stella where did she go?
[20:12]But I tell you where she went.
[20:13]That's not really the journey.
[20:15]The journey is more like what has become of Stella
[20:18]or where Stella in a kind of more existential way
[20:21]of what happened to Stella.
[20:22]That's more I think the kind of,
[20:24]the question pulling you through.
[20:25]So I think for me, I think for both of my books,
[20:28]I think the thing that I did take away from my MFA program
[20:31]is this idea of creating suspense by revealing information
[20:35]and instead of withholding it.
[20:38]So for me in this in the vanishing half
[20:40]and like the opening section, I tell you, you know,
[20:43]this is Desiree, this is Stella,
[20:45]this is kind of what happened to Desiree,
[20:46]this is kind of what happened to Stella
[20:48]and here is the setup for the whole town
[20:50]because I didn't want the question reading the book
[20:52]to just be what happened to Stella.
[20:54]Like I just wanted to tell you right away,
[20:56]she's living as a white woman somewhere
[20:58]and we're gonna kind of go on after giving you that information.
[21:02]And so what has this been like for you?
[21:04]I know you already had a New York Times bestseller
[21:06]with the mothers which I have to go back and read
[21:07]and now I'm so excited to have a new thing on myself
[21:10]that I like can't wait to get into
[21:11]but you've had such success.
[21:13]I mean, this was like such a blowout hit
[21:16]during such a crazy time of the world.
[21:19]And you must, like your life must be somewhat different
[21:23]even if you're in the exact same place, right?
[21:25]Like how does it feel to you?
[21:29]Like to have had all this happen.
[21:30]Like you're only 30 or something like that.
[21:32]That's crazy.
[21:34]So what does it feel like that you've been on set
[21:36]on this trajectory and have like 17 studios
[21:38]like bidding over your movie rights
[21:40]and it's just nuts and having so like what does it feel like to you?
[21:44]I mean, I think exactly what you just described, you know,
[21:47]I think it's been, you know, weirdest year of anybody's life
[21:51]and certainly been the weirdest year of my life.
[21:53]And I think for me,
[21:54]it was just very strange to kind of swing
[21:56]between these polls of being really excited about things
[21:59]happening with the book, being really horrified
[22:01]by everything else.
[22:02]And also I think the weirdness of experiencing
[22:05]all of this in isolation has been really strange.
[22:08]Just, you know, the talking for the, you know,
[22:12]the TV rights for the book and having these really intense
[22:15]Hollywood conversations of just being by myself
[22:17]and by empowerment, just kind of dealing with all of it.
[22:20]So it's been a weird feeling of feeling
[22:22]both really exposed but also very alone
[22:25]and also really excited about the book
[22:27]and also really devastated by everything else happening
[22:29]in the world.
[22:30]But it's been kind of a weird year of swinging
[22:32]between those polls a lot of the way.
[22:33]So do you have some amazing work of fiction
[22:35]that's gonna come out of this time of these,
[22:39]of these, the fascination between the two polls?
[22:42]I mean, I don't know how amazing it will be
[22:44]when I've been writing because again, by myself.
[22:47]So I'm like, what else am I like when I was, you know,
[22:50]sort of earlier in the lockdown,
[22:52]I just had, you know, eventually my,
[22:53]I was teaching a class, the class when I was in Zoom,
[22:55]and then eventually the class ended in like May.
[22:58]So I just had this like, you know,
[23:00]five, you know, I don't know, five weeks or whatever
[23:03]in between when the class ended and when the book came out.
[23:05]And I just was basically just working on this next book
[23:09]because I had so much like anxiety about what's going to happen
[23:11]with the banjo cap and I'm publishing in a pandemic
[23:14]and is anyone gonna care?
[23:15]And then all of the other just normal anxiety
[23:17]of being in New York at the time.
[23:19]So I've been able to, I think, try to pour some of my energy
[23:24]into working on something else and I think it's been really great
[23:27]to be able to start a new project
[23:30]and think about a whole different new fictional world
[23:33]and give me at least some place to put all of my energy
[23:36]that has just been contained in my paper right now.
[23:39]And can you tell us anymore about that book?
[23:41]I had still very early, but it's about music,
[23:44]it's about singers who have a lifelong few.
[23:46]So it's a really different project for me,
[23:48]but one that I've been really excited about.
[23:50]Wow.
[23:51]Did you have an eye to make this into something cinematic
[23:54]when you were writing the vanishing half?
[23:55]Or was that just like not even in your consciousness?
[23:58]I don't, I mean, I think that you're always influenced
[24:00]by watching TV or films with these other things.
[24:03]I'm sure those elements kind of creep in as you're writing,
[24:07]but I never thought I don't think about casting it
[24:09]or anything like that.
[24:10]I never think that far on anything.
[24:11]So I don't think about it,
[24:13]but I am excited to see what the adaptation will look like.
[24:16]And have you been able to see your family
[24:18]or friends like at all or have you even like
[24:20]have you even walled up completely this whole time?
[24:23]Yeah, I got to go back to California for the summer.
[24:25]So I saw my family and been able to see friends
[24:28]at the park and everything while the weather's still nice.
[24:30]So hoping that we'll hold out for a few more weeks of nice weather
[24:34]before we've all for a treat
[24:35]and to our adventures of solitude.
[24:37]Yes, exactly.
[24:38]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[24:41]I think my advice is very basic advice,
[24:44]which is just read everything.
[24:45]I think you've learned from things that you like
[24:48]and also from things that you hate.
[24:49]So I think reading widely.
[24:51]And that's not to say read everything like,
[24:52]you have to read everything that's ever been written.
[24:55]That's just to say read widely.
[24:57]So I think that's one of my just advice
[24:59]and just be patient with yourself
[25:00]because the work will be bad for far longer
[25:03]than a whatever, because if that's like
[25:05]if you ever feel like your work is good,
[25:07]which I think most writers I know never feel that way.
[25:10]So you have to just learn how to be patient with yourself
[25:12]and trust that that's part of the process
[25:15]is kind of hating your work.
[25:16]And the difference is I think being able
[25:19]just to stick through it and to believe
[25:20]that you can make it better
[25:22]throughout all of the challenges
[25:23]and wrestling with the work.
[25:25]And what type of books do you like?
[25:26]Like what are some of your biggest influences
[25:28]and what do you'd like to read sort of even when you're tired?
[25:32]Yeah, I mean, different things
[25:33]I've been kind of doing sort of a slow reader,
[25:36]but I've been doing bouncing a lot more nonfiction
[25:39]and fiction these days.
[25:41]I'm reading a lot of biographies
[25:42]because of the new book.
[25:45]There's lots of music biographies that I've been reading.
[25:47]Also, you know, just a lot of general fiction.
[25:51]I loved, I think the book that I've read recently
[25:53]and I loved the most was Feast Your Eyes
[25:54]by Miley Goldberg, which came out last year.
[25:57]It's the structure of the book is like an art catalog
[25:59]where she is describing photographs,
[26:01]but you don't actually see the pictures
[26:03]as you're reading the book.
[26:04]You're just reading descriptions of them.
[26:06]So I love that.
[26:07]I've been thinking a lot about how do you write about art
[26:09]that the reader does not get to actually experience
[26:11]because I'm writing about music that doesn't exist.
[26:13]So it was really cool to see how somebody is doing that
[26:17]with describing pictures that you never get to see.
[26:19]Very cool.
[26:20]Well, thank you.
[26:21]I know everybody else is going to have a lot of questions,
[26:22]so I don't want to monopolize you,
[26:24]but thanks for letting me probe into your inner psyche
[26:26]for a few minutes and find out more of the back story.
[26:30]So thanks.
[26:31]Thanks.
[26:34]Thanks again to Audible for being this week's sponsor.
[26:36]Everybody go to audible.com slash zibi
[26:39]and you get a month free of Audible on me.
[26:42]Thanks for listening to this episode
[26:43]of moms don't have time to read books.
[26:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens
[26:48]and at moms don't have time to read books.
[26:50]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[26:53]and sign up for my virtual book club
[26:55]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[27:00]for the sound editing.
[27:01]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:03]for providing this fantastic intro and outram Music.