Bryan Washington, MEMORIAL
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[1:57]Brian Washington's novel, his first novel, by the way, called Memorial, was just announced as the GMA November book club pick, which is huge.
[2:08]So congratulations to Brian for that. Brian is a writer from Houston and his fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times,
[2:14]the New York Times magazine, the New Yorker, the New York Times style magazine, and many others.
[2:19]He's a national book foundation 535 winner, a New York Public Library Young Lions award recipient,
[2:25]and Ernest J. Gaines award recipient, and an international Dylan Thomas Prize recipient.
[2:29]Wait, there's more. A Lambda Literary Award recipient, a Penn Robert W. Bingham Prize finalist,
[2:34]a national book critic, circle John Leonard Prize finalist, and the recipient of an O Henry Award.
[2:40]So if that's not enough, Memorial was already nominated for the Center for Fictions 2021 first novel book
[2:47]prize, and his first book lot was published by Riverhead. Congrats to Brian for the GMA book club pick.
[2:53]Announcement. Welcome, Brian. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books.
[2:57]Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Zibi. Congratulations on Memorial, your debut novel.
[3:02]I know you already have a lot, which is a collection of stories, but now your debut novel,
[3:06]making a big, big, big splash in the world. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks so much. It's all very,
[3:12]you know, surreal. You know, I feel like anytime someone's interested in the thing that you're
[3:16]trying to do, it's deeply surreal. So the spin. Yeah, massively surreal, but very grateful.
[3:22]And I heard from your publicist that you are the next GMA book club pick, which I am so
[3:28]thrilled about. That's amazing. Yeah, it's that comment about things being surreal. Like, it
[3:33]would have been surreal just like the half the book come out. So to see it, like on that scale
[3:38]on that platform. And so this has been really, you can only be like grateful because it's just such
[3:42]an unexpected thing. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm almost sorry. I'm not talking to you after,
[3:46]because I would have wanted to hear what it was like to have your book, your own time square
[3:49]and all the rest. But, you know, just like DM me or something, because you know, yeah,
[3:53]yeah, yeah, all right. Well, aside from the success of your endeavors, let's talk about
[4:00]your actual endeavors and all of your writing. And I read so many of your amazing essays and
[4:05]all sorts of different publications, like BuzzFeed in the New York Times and just everywhere,
[4:10]New Yorker fiction, nonfiction, all your stories. Let's start with like your roots going back to
[4:15]Jamaica. Can we talk about that a little bit because you wrote a few really beautiful pieces about that
[4:20]and sort of having different cultures in different countries and going back and everybody clapping
[4:25]on the plane on the way to Jamaica, which by the way is one of my favorite places in the world.
[4:29]So I think that's what I want to talk about him. Yeah, anytime that you land.
[4:32]It's just like the best thing that's ever happened. It's one of the only places we regularly
[4:38]traveled to growing up. And I just thought that's what you did on planes. Can you imagine?
[4:44]I mean, we should be in. I feel like that's all we should do on planes. It's a miracle.
[4:47]Yeah, glad I did a lot of things. Until I read what you wrote, it didn't even occur to me.
[4:54]it was only there. No, right. It was really only to Jamaica. So anyway, you taught me something
[5:01]about my own life. Yeah, when you fly to New York, no one seems terribly excited to be there.
[5:06]No, let's get off the plane immediately. Yeah, it was born in Kentucky, but amongst your
[5:11]making. So I pretty early on, I had the opportunity to go back a handful of times. So I think that
[5:20]with every piece that I've written in some capacity, a lot of it has just come down to like
[5:25]the generosity of the editors that I've been able to work with because I've just been able to
[5:30]work with like a lot of folks who are so great at their jobs. You know, like Nicole Chun over
[5:37]catapult and Rachel Sanders used to be at a bus feed and now Rachel Aaron's at the New Yorker.
[5:43]So they've just been super receptive to me writing about a lot of different stuff and not really
[5:48]siloing me into one particular beat. So it's made for a lot of opportunities and just sort of
[5:55]spreading itself around as far as interests are concerned. Well, I feel like this sort of theme of travel
[6:01]and negotiating sort of different relationships is very present in memorial in many ways,
[6:07]but and also the search for family and what that really means and all of that. So tell me a little
[6:12]more about well, maybe you could start by telling people who don't know what memorial is about,
[6:16]what it's about and how you end up writing that novel. Yeah. So I think it really has to
[6:21]depend on like who I'm talking to because sometimes I'll call it a case like a trolley,
[6:25]I've called it like a lowercase love story. My editor started saying like a romcom with teeth
[6:31]like a few months ago and I actually really liked that. So it just it really just does depend on
[6:35]like what headspace I made and I just like used one of them, but I think that it's sort of
[6:41]of based. It's like it's a love story. Like I wanted to write a love story about characters that
[6:46]I wanted to read about that I hadn't seen the page and I wanted it to be a love story featuring
[6:53]characters and communities that were in conversation with one another as opposed to a reaction
[6:59]to trauma or a reaction to the obstacles with your infrastructure or personal that they made
[7:06]been facing. So trying to write a love story that allowed room for each partner to grow
[7:15]into both that relationship, most of the relationships around them and themselves was the overarching
[7:22]goal and it started as a short story that I wrote for a zine and I was in the middle of writing
[7:27]another project that I will never turn back to and I kept turning back to the short story
[7:33]because it was easier and you're right partly but also because it was one that I wanted to see
[7:40]in the ending of and that friends would tell me like hey like that's actually a big clue that
[7:47]you need to just do that and I was like no no you know one movie does like it's not marketable
[7:52]and I pitched it to my agent and she was super receptive but I was still a bit tending
[7:56]to and then I pitched it to my editor before I pressed your sappy and she was super receptive
[8:01]when she really didn't have to be so at that point I set down and really seriously started
[8:06]drafting it and it took about three years or so in about 11ish drafts or so so it was a little
[8:15]bit of work trying to get it to come together and trying to get the different fronts and the
[8:19]place that I wanted them to be but really it was just reaching toward the sort of thing that I wanted
[8:25]to breed and the sort of book that I thought that I might enjoy if it existed that got me to finish
[8:31]uh well your writing style is is very unique and rough around the edges is not and I don't
[8:37]mean that in a bad way like maybe raw I mean raw around the edges it's just so I used to have
[8:43]a good vocabulary and today it's failing me and now I feel like I insulted you which I obviously
[8:47]did not mean to do but it's just so raw it's just that's I don't know how it's the same like bold
[8:56]like the scenes you don't mess around with words you don't need and you don't like use
[9:01]flowery language that has no use and you just say it but it's in such a sparse way that's like
[9:08]even more powerful especially the dialogue and you're used to punctuation and I don't know I was
[9:13]just I was really into it is I'll just know I so appreciate that like I'm really interested in
[9:18]the silences between characters and the sort of spaces between what characters say to one another
[9:25]and also the spaces between like what's actually said by someone and what they understand and
[9:30]what they internalize and how the context in which they're in when they hear the thing can
[9:36]impact what they actually take with them and how in that context changes perhaps their memory
[9:41]or their internalization of the thing that they heard could change as well so really playing
[9:45]with the space between what said and what's understood is always sort of in the back of my head
[9:52]but also like I'm a hyperconscious of accessibility when it comes to language and that might
[10:00]have to do with the fact that I wasn't the most
[10:02]pretigious reader growing up.
[10:05]So what's most impressive to me,
[10:08]or what's really most amazing to me,
[10:10]as far as fiction is concerned,
[10:11]it's folks who use the simplicity of language
[10:14]in order to get five, six, seven, eight,
[10:17]nine different themes across at the same time.
[10:21]So really striving for that is important to me
[10:23]generally, but also for Memorial too.
[10:26]Oh, good, okay, great.
[10:27]That's a kind of thing.
[10:29]Yes.
[10:30]That's a kind of thing.
[10:31]Same.
[10:32]Good. You tried to do that.
[10:33]No, that's a good thing.
[10:35]No, no, it was a little bit of technical,
[10:37]so it's the next thing here.
[10:39]Like, okay, you're doing that.
[10:40]I don't know.
[10:41]I feel like you tried to do a thing,
[10:42]and then it's like, did I do the thing?
[10:43]And then other people tell you, like,
[10:44]okay, like you did the thing.
[10:46]Okay, talk about it.
[10:47]Talk about it now.
[10:48]Okay, you did the thing.
[10:50]That's awesome.
[10:51]We go back to nothing, the reader growing up.
[10:53]So did you not like to read at all,
[10:55]were you late reader?
[10:56]Did you just tell me about your reading and childhood?
[10:59]Yeah.
[11:00]And maybe just be crowded.
[11:01]Like what you said you grew up in Kentucky,
[11:02]but now you're in Houston.
[11:03]What happened in between?
[11:04]Like where'd you go and going back growing up?
[11:07]I mean, we only put one at a time.
[11:08]This is good to see you.
[11:09]No, no, no, no, no, no, like who are you?
[11:12]Yeah.
[11:13]It was morning Kentucky news to Texas when I was like three or so.
[11:17]And we, our first, the first house to live in
[11:20]was like just outside of Houston proper.
[11:23]And it was a very white neighborhood,
[11:27]like a very white subdivision.
[11:28]But the street itself is like deeply diverse.
[11:31]And my parents and friends and like very cohort of folks
[11:35]have moved to that area at the same time
[11:37]was deeply diverse.
[11:38]So I was really fortunate to be privy to like a lot
[11:41]of different folks coming from a lot of different communities
[11:44]clicking a number of different cuisines.
[11:46]And I think that like my earliest reading ventures
[11:49]were cookbooks, partly because the final of my parents worked.
[11:53]So like if I wanted to eat like I have to cook it,
[11:56]I didn't know how to do that.
[11:57]So really just like bugging friends and like bugging friends
[12:00]as parents and just like being cookbooks was like how
[12:02]I passed my time pretty early on.
[12:05]And I don't know.
[12:06]I was, I did like all of like the Texas boy things.
[12:10]Like I was really into like football for a time.
[12:14]And then I was like no longer like once I stopped live
[12:16]it was like left my brain and like it's entirely evaporated.
[12:21]I've played full back.
[12:23]Yeah, I played full back, which was like an experience.
[12:26]And like I was pretty slow sort of
[12:28]didn't make myself structurally for me to be doing that.
[12:31]But what I really fell into like narratively was film.
[12:35]So I think that I was, it's a boom now.
[12:38]And it's nothing that I can appreciate now.
[12:39]But I watched a lot of foreign film or foreign from the states
[12:43]in either case.
[12:44]So the ways in which you could tell a story of structurally
[12:50]and also narratively in the kind of stories that you could tell
[12:54]I've always seen really wide open there because I was just, you know,
[12:57]we had like a local pop sponsor and they had like a bunch
[13:00]and every, you know, they had like everything.
[13:02]We traveled the world of blockbuster.
[13:04]So like a lot of, a lot of my early narrative education was
[13:08]through film.
[13:09]And then I went to the university season for undergrad
[13:12]and I took a class with the guy named Matt Johnson.
[13:14]And he was just incredibly generous with his time.
[13:18]And then like deeply kind, I was like, what I was trying to do on the page.
[13:23]And it was encouragement to just keep going.
[13:25]So it was really fortuitous to meet him.
[13:29]And then I didn't know my fae after undergrad.
[13:31]And I met Joanna Leak, who was also deeply generous
[13:34]in other time and deeply encouraging.
[13:35]So they really lucky to meet folks who were into what I was trying to do.
[13:39]I just receptive to it.
[13:41]Amazing.
[13:42]And what do you think like, why didn't you give up?
[13:44]Like what made you keep going?
[13:46]This is like the thing I'm always most curious about.
[13:48]Like 11 drafts of Memorial.
[13:50]And why not just put it aside?
[13:52]What drove you to keep working on it?
[13:54]And you know, I've come to think a lot about it now.
[13:59]And at this point, like it seems like a bit much.
[14:02]But it's like what I wrote a memorial.
[14:05]Like it wasn't a book that I wrote on contracts.
[14:08]So like if I hadn't finished it, then like no one would have cared.
[14:11]Because there was no fine at all.
[14:12]The addition one where you know, but I really wanted
[14:17]to see how it went end.
[14:19]And I was teaching ESL at the time, which is a job that I loved.
[14:24]And you know, I have a teach.
[14:25]And then I would like write on the weekends or right
[14:29]during lunch or if I had like a day off,
[14:31]I would like go to like the coffee shop
[14:33]and just like sort of work on it.
[14:34]Because it was just I just wanted to see how it went in.
[14:38]And then for the longest time, like I thought,
[14:40]but you know, I would finish generation of it.
[14:43]And then I would show it to my friends.
[14:44]And then they would read it or not read it.
[14:46]And then that would, you know, sort of memorial.
[14:48]And I was like quite all right with that.
[14:49]Like it was quite happy with it.
[14:51]So really just wanting to see what a narrative
[14:57]where there isn't really like a clear antagonist
[15:00]and where our characters that are, you know,
[15:03]hopefully approaching one another from a place of love
[15:05]and like from a place of growth could end up
[15:07]in like what that would look like was really,
[15:10]it wasn't really important to me.
[15:11]So just trying to see like if it was a thing
[15:15]that I could do was to drive her in a lot of ways.
[15:19]Interesting.
[15:20]So was there anything in your life that happened
[15:23]that particularly I'm referring to the not especially
[15:27]mother and a lot of the mother-in-law-ish person coming
[15:30]to stay from Tokyo and, you know, the boyfriend,
[15:33]like jetting off and like leaving the new,
[15:35]I'm not explaining as well, leaving the new person there
[15:39]to have to deal with his mother.
[15:41]You know, it would be like,
[15:41]I start dating someone and I'm like,
[15:43]see yeah, you hang out with my mom.
[15:44]Like that would not fly, but even now that I married me.
[15:48]So what inspired that?
[15:50]Where did that piece of it come from?
[15:52]Yeah, I really, that scenario arrived for me like in tact.
[15:57]And there isn't really a one-to-one correlation
[16:01]between any of the characters and like any of their arcs
[16:04]and things that I've experienced.
[16:06]I think like the most tangible one might be that like
[16:09]I worked at an aftercare place for like five years
[16:12]and it was a job that I really love.
[16:13]But aside from that, like there's not a lot
[16:16]where you could try a direct line.
[16:19]But at the same time, like I wanted to read something
[16:22]featuring the kinds of relationships that I'd had,
[16:24]the kind of relationships that my friends had had
[16:25]trying to put that on the page was really important to me.
[16:29]And I knew that if I wanted to write a story
[16:33]in which the ending was open for the characters,
[16:39]like not necessarily like structurally open
[16:40]but open as far as the possibility from,
[16:43]I would need to at least create like a stable foundation
[16:47]and the intro, like a sort of like bait-and-switch,
[16:49]like you think you're gonna read a narrative
[16:51]about one particular thing, like a sort of very strange
[16:55]meat-cute and then it becomes something else
[16:58]so it becomes many different things.
[16:59]So I was really lucky in that that scenario arrived
[17:04]mostly in tact from the very outset.
[17:08]But at the same time, I think that was like one
[17:10]of the very few things in Papa Book
[17:13]at the beginning, like I knew that, okay,
[17:15]like this will probably stay everything else,
[17:17]like changed a handful of times,
[17:19]at least, you know, over the pressure radio.
[17:21]Well, I was struck in one of your essays about
[17:23]the experience with your uncle in Jamaica
[17:25]where you saw a group of gay men around the boat
[17:29]and you were like, oh, look great.
[17:31]And before you knew it, your uncle was like hurling stones
[17:34]at them and you were just standing there
[17:36]and then you all just paddled off or something like that
[17:38]and left the men and you were like,
[17:39]well, I'm not coming out to this crew.
[17:42]Forget that.
[17:43]How then does everybody in your family
[17:46]then react to this book, which is very open
[17:49]and, you know, graphic, I don't know if that's the right word,
[17:51]but very just, you know, I guess graphic
[17:54]as many relationships, stories, you know,
[17:56]many sort of sexual scenes are no matter what,
[17:59]but you're right and then it doesn't happen
[18:00]as often literature between two men
[18:03]and what does your family think about that?
[18:05]You know, the family members that I have
[18:07]that I know have read it have been overwhelmingly
[18:11]positive.
[18:12]I gave a galley of it to my mom once I have
[18:16]like a solidified galley back in December
[18:19]and she would set like updates every few weeks
[18:22]just sort of like, U.K. at U.S.B.S.
[18:25]like I did like telling me like, okay,
[18:26]like it's here right now, it's like, it's like here.
[18:29]It's like here, like not like whether they liked it or not
[18:32]or like what are they just like telling me
[18:34]like it's like this group.
[18:35]Okay, where I like galley is in Atlanta, right?
[18:37]Like they like that in galley's like in New York,
[18:39]like this is the person you know.
[18:41]And everyone that I've heard from,
[18:43]you know, is going to have to change.
[18:44]It has been just like really supportive of the story
[18:48]and really, you know, just like overwhelmingly positive
[18:52]toward what I was trying to do,
[18:55]which is also like I feel like if everyone is positive
[18:58]that also makes me a bit aware because like what am I not seeing?
[19:03]But I think it, you know, a lot of that, you know,
[19:06]grateful for it, but it also comes back to this idea
[19:09]like what I wanted to try to do with the book.
[19:10]It's like not operating in binaries
[19:14]and not silo characters into archetypes
[19:19]that don't give them room to change or room to grow
[19:24]or room to expand their language, right?
[19:29]Or to silo them into like one position or another
[19:32]because they may not have the language of the lexicon
[19:34]to have the conversations that the folks around them,
[19:39]whether it's family, whether it's loveers,
[19:41]or it's friends want them to have.
[19:43]And just putting in every character in a position
[19:46]to be able to like move toward goodness.
[19:49]So, so far, everyone has been like overwhelmingly supportive
[19:54]which is like also, I think, sorry,
[19:56]like I'm waiting for it like this.
[19:58]Okay, thank you, thank you.
[20:00]Oh, it's just like, it's very shape. Yeah. Yeah. Keep in holding your breath. Yeah.
[20:05]Well, I'm not too long. As soon as I say, that's like, I'm getting inside. So like, so on.
[20:10]Like, oh, good. I was waiting for that. Exactly. Compared. So are you working on anything new now?
[20:15]Yeah. So I have like a project that I'm trying to get in the shape. And I don't know if it'll
[20:22]stick or if it's just sort of like a hiccup in the middle goal. Like, the biggest thing
[20:27]on the horizon is that I'm adapting the series for television. 84 is producing it. And Scott Rudin
[20:34]is a rather routine production is assisting in the production. And a big thing for me,
[20:41]during the option process was that like, if it was going to end up on screen, I wanted to be
[20:47]a person to adapt it because it just seemed like a really cool opportunity for one thing. But also,
[20:52]there was like a certain way I wanted it done or certainly that I wanted to see it. So I'm just
[20:57]really fortunate that 84 was super receptive to that. And there's such great folks and the
[21:03]reduction folks are such great folks. So trying to figure out what the iteration on screen will look
[21:09]like will probably keep you busy for a while. I would think. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a big
[21:17]job to do. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be, it'll be another taking bit. I'm working with really
[21:23]cool folks. And I think everyone's approaching it from the standpoint. You know, we just want to make
[21:28]like a cool thing, like a really solid thing. And that's, I think it'll be a good experience.
[21:34]I didn't mean job in a negative way. And then, you know, and exciting.
[21:39]It is work. Like, it is slightly worse. I know, like, I'm in the midst of like all this work. So
[21:44]like, oh, my God, it's more work. But I'm trying to have the casting positive light on like
[21:49]the amount of work. And it is because, you know, otherwise it would be inevitable. But, you know,
[21:54]well, I feel like it actually might be easier than most to adapt just because I feel like your
[21:58]scenes are so visual. Like, I can see it all like the taxi or whatever the car pulling up to the
[22:04]curb at the airport and the kitchen scene with, you know, waking up late and having the mother-in-law
[22:10]character be there. Like, they're just so, I see it. I don't know if that's what's in your head.
[22:15]But like, I have a clear vision of those scenes. Yeah. Yeah. When I'm writing, like, I'm,
[22:20]I don't know. I just pull a lot from film because so many of my narrative reference points and so
[22:25]many of my structural reference points are from things that I've seen. So trying to paint as clear
[22:34]a picture of the world and of the characters and of the interactions as possible is really
[22:39]important to me and something that I really set out to do. And that probably comes through more
[22:44]and, like, the editing process. Like, once the story is actually there, trying to hone in and
[22:50]cut away all of the unnecessary bits so that you just have story and you have the reader and
[22:55]they're able to ideally have a relationship with that story and it becomes their own.
[23:00]I feel like I have to use what you keep referring to is what do you say? Like, your narrative
[23:04]creative process or something to film. I feel like I need to use that to like justify the amount
[23:09]of TV. I let my kids watch and I'll be like, no, no, no, no, they're just, you know, bolstering their
[23:14]film narrative of storytelling. That's exactly what it is. So expanding the canon. They're expanding
[23:19]the canon. Expanding the canon. Thank you. You've been better. Yeah. Expanding the canon.
[23:24]So I'm just gonna leave them in front of the TV. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[23:30]Other than perhaps watching lots of TV? Uh, watch as much TV as you can. But other than that,
[23:36]I think that one thing that I would say is not to take too much heed of the market, which can be
[23:43]an incredible temptation, especially when, like, your first starting out or a few feelings of
[23:48]though you don't have connections or who you feel like you don't have, like, a buy line or
[23:53]if you feel like you need that more to your buy line because the market really doesn't know
[23:57]what the market wants until the market wants it. For a memorial, like, a difficulty when it
[24:05]came to, like, initially drafting it and then editing it was that there weren't too many direct
[24:10]comps that I could pull from. And there really weren't very many tonal comps that I could pull from.
[24:17]And it wasn't until, you know, really probably early March of this year that I was convinced that
[24:23]like six people would not read it. So I would just try to tell the story that you're trying to
[24:30]tell to the best of your ability and really create a world on the page, which is going to be
[24:33]difficult regardless of what your narrative looks like or what you set out to do. But if you're
[24:38]able to achieve that, you know, I think that that's like the biggest boom and a lot of folks.
[24:44]Awesome. Well, great. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for our little chat today. I hope I didn't
[24:50]know not at all. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
[24:54]All right. Well, thanks for coming on. And I'll be watching Morning America to see
[24:59]everything on. I'm so excited for you. So it's awesome. Thanks so much, Libby. Okay. Take care.
[25:08]Thanks so much to Fairty brand for being my sponsor this week. Fairty brand.com
[25:14]and her code Zibi for 25% off. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[25:19]Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[25:35]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[25:40]now trim music.