Carol Edgarian, VERA: A Novel

[1:39]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. If all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Carol at Guardian is the author of Vera. Carol's novels include obviously the newly released Vera, The New York Times bestseller Three Stages of Amazement and the international bestseller Rise the Euphrates, winner of the ANC Freedom Prize. Her work has been described by The Washington Post as notable for its generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity, and finally, ambition. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, NPR and W, among many others, and she co edited the popular collective drawn from writer's diaries called The Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration and Fame. My gosh, I have to get that. Carol is co founder of the nonprofit Narrative, narrativemagazine.com, a leading digital publisher of fiction, poetry and art and of Narrative in the Schools, which provides free libraries and writing resources for teachers and students around the world. Carol lives with her family in San Francisco, which as you will see in her novel, takes center stage. Welcome, Carol. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss VRF. Thank you. It's so good to be here. This is so fun. Okay. Would you mind telling listeners what Vera is about and also how you came up with the idea for this novel?

[3:26]Carol Edgarian: So Vera is, well, it's set in 1906 San Francisco. And it features Vera who is a 15 year old young woman on the cusp of womanhood. And she is contrary, she is whip smart. She is unconventional in a time when young girls and women were expected to sort of fit a mold. But in a town that didn't fit a mold. San Francisco in 1906 was one of the most murderous towns in America. It was a corrupt society where the mayor was about to be indicted on the morning of the great San Francisco quake. And Vera is the daughter of the most successful madam in town, but she's not being raised by her mother. She's being raised by a foster mother who's the antithesis of a madam. So she is a character who even before the quake is housed but homeless, surrounded by family, but unloved. And she's looking really for a moral center in a very corrupt world. And then the quake hits, followed by three days of fire. And she not only has to survive, but she has to take care of what family is left. And a band of fellow misfits she joins forces with. And it's a book a lot about displacement and sort of that in a disaster, in a crisis like what we've all been through and are still going through, who becomes your people? Who do you count on? And how do you count on yourself? And in terms of where it started, I started collecting books on the quake years ago, didn't think I would do anything with them. But when I started fashioning this idea of an adventure story about a girl, I think we have lots of adventure stories about boys and men, but young women and women who have their own sense of self and their own sort of drive. I was also looking for a moment when society was really tested. I started writing it right before the twenty sixteen election when it looked to me like our society was really on the cusp of pivotal change and crisis. So thinking back to San Francisco in 1906, when the mayor was about to be indicted and everything was sort of at play. And in the space of a minute, society collapsed, seemed like a really fertile ground to talk about all the things I wanted to talk about. Wow.

[6:17]Zibby Owens: I mean, now I feel like I should go write about this. I mean, does. I mean, there's so much intrigue and everything. You know, you mentioned figuring out who your people are or were, you know, when things sort of hit the fan, so to speak. Like, who have your people been? Who are your people when things have happened even with the pandemic or recently?

[6:39]Carol Edgarian: Or like who do you turn to? Just curious. Well, you know, I think about you and so much about what you say about, you know, moms don't have time to do X And I'm the mother of three daughters, two of whom have come home during the pandemic, grown daughters who've come home. And this has been such a painful time, such a time of so much loss so much loss and of potential, so much change, particularly in young people's lives. I think the younger you are in some ways, the more this has impacted you. On the other side, it's been a real stolen time to have my grown daughters eating dinner with us So every I feel both grateful and I feel like coming out of it, we're just learning what we're gonna carry with us. And it's an interesting question sort of, is this a moment of recalibration and reinvention and profound change in our country? I hope

[7:43]Zibby Owens: it is. I hope it is. And what did you learn about that period of time that kind of echoed this, right? Like what does happen when characters who you paint so vividly, right? Like Vera, for instance, and her, I don't even know what to call her. It's not really a stepsister. Her pie is her what? Like adopted sister, And her mom, right? You paint such clear pictures of who they are as people and how Vera never really felt accepted because she wasn't actually a part of their family, that she had this funny arrangement, know, hawked by this glamorous madam, you know, the doyen of town, if you will, in this like secretive arrangement. And then yet she's always just a little bit off and like so direct. And, you know, I loved how she confronted the mayor and just like, yeah, how do you feel about it? You're about to go to prison. Like, yeah. What do you think about that? You know, I'd love that outspoken quality in her. So how do you take the characters and then put them through something like this? Like what, like how I don't even know what my question is, but I guess like you take these characters, you form them, and then you put them in like the most difficult scenario ever. Then what? Like how do you figure out what to do with them? Like, did you figure it out kind of as you wrote or did you know how they would go through it? I mean, I feel like it's so hard to know how even we go through crisis, let alone like fictitious characters.

[9:11]Carol Edgarian: Right. Well, I think one of the reasons I became a writer was from my earliest days, I always wondered what makes people tick. I mean, what makes people tick? And I think you have a real character. I know I'm working in a place that's interesting if you have that complexity, contrariness. What I like to call a character's wrong rightness. So in fiction, I just keep pushing the characters to moments where they have to show different sides of themselves, they're stressed, certainly a quake, surviving the quake and the fire is the definition of a stressful moment. But it's also how do they show up for each other or fail to show up for each other? And I think what I try to do in the book is show as many sides, as many moments of possibility. And one of the things that is so fun in the writing is at a certain point characters become these full people and they surprise me. I have a certain notion about who they are and what they mean to themselves and to each other. And then they make a turn and I have to be smart enough to go with them. Interesting.

[10:38]Zibby Owens: So tell me about how you got started writing. Like how did you, I know you've written multiple novels and you edited a collection on writing, which by the way, I have to get that advice book. That sounds awesome. How did you get into this? Like, what did you like, where did you grow up? What's your whole story? What's my whole story?

[10:57]Carol Edgarian: How much time do we have? You know, I was and I think so many writers are, this is true, but I was the kid, the voracious reader and in a house that was tumultuous. So in many ways, books were home to me, books were my safe place to go. And I just unearthed a journal from when I was nine, 10 years old and I was writing poetry, I was writing stories. So that was always sort of the place to go where I was always thinking about story. I didn't really think of myself as a writer. I would never have said I'm a writer till in college, I started writing my first novel that ultimately became Rise of the Euphrates. But it took me ten years to finish it. I'm not the fastest writer, alas. But I think it's always been how I make sense of the world is through story. What connects us, what's universal? And again, what makes people tick? It's fascinating to me. I just took my first plane ride since the pandemic and sitting in an airport listening to people talk. I mean, I could eavesdrop all day long. Parachute in on people's lives and you get the whole thing in a moment. And that's always the challenge on the page. Can you get the whole life from a moment?

[14:06]Zibby Owens: So interesting. Yeah, I'm always wondering about people. I felt like I didn't realize this was something shared by so many people until I started interviewing authors. But turns out I'm not the only one who's like wondering and listening and imagining. And people always say that you should focus on something you're interested in. Like if you're writing a book, for instance, like people will say, pick a topic that you don't think you could get tired of, right? Like you were endlessly fascinated by the earthquake already, right? Were already researching that. So it's like supernatural, very natural, I should say. And I feel like the same is about people. Like learning about new people just does not get old. Like I don't think I would ever get sick of hearing people's stories for their lives. And so if you can like somehow put that into literature, like how great is that, I guess?

[14:53]Carol Edgarian: That's impossible challenge, but it's an endless loop of how we're all connected. You know, the news of the day, And I think good fiction has to read like the news of the day. It has to feel really important and urgent. But it also, the news of the day tells us the who, what, where and when. But stories tell us how and why. How did they come together and why? What was moving through each of those characters that made this moment possible? That ability to sort of see behind the screen and have insight, like what's better than that. And also to fly on a magic carpet, as much as the entertainment factor. I really wanted this book to read as an entertainment too. And that sounds contrary to the central disaster, but people are funny. We're full of volley. We do stupid things. You know, we can't help ourselves. And I love that aspect of human nature that, you know, can we in our folly come together?

[16:11]Zibby Owens: Especially in the face of natural disasters. And I feel like those are happening, obviously, particularly in California, I feel like all the time. There's all the fires and all these tragedies that still are happening today. And it's so much, you know, what, two hundred don't make me do the math. Two hundred and fifteen years later or something from the earthquake, people are still, you know, running from the hills and dealing with fire and dealing with what do you do when your home is suddenly gone. And there's sort of a timelessness to the theme of your book and how people who does what in a disaster like that?

[16:46]Carol Edgarian: Well, that's really the question. And that's the question I think we're all being asked right now. Ultimately, is your own moral compass of what is right and what is wrong. And when society gets leveled or challenged, that really becomes the question of the moment. And in terms of living out here, I grew up in Connecticut. San Francisco is my adopted home. And you can't live on this coast without being constantly aware of being on the edge, right? If it's not the quake, fires. But it's also, I don't know, I've now written two novels about San Francisco. So clearly it's caught my fancy. This beautiful place that's intrinsically dramatic, the hills and the valleys, the micro climates. If you dig just a little into the history of San Francisco, it was founded by miners. It was founded by the ultimate entrepreneurs who like bet everything on finding gold. And the city grew up around servicing those miners. So in the early days of the city, the prostitutes were revered. They were very powerful people. And I wanted to look at this character Rose, who wasn't just a madam, but she was one of the major power brokers as I imagined her in the town. She knew everybody's secret. And of course, if you know the secrets, you have great power. But she also was a mother. And Vera is looking for that sense of family that her mother denies her. And that's one of the currents in the book is like, is the love?

[18:43]Zibby Owens: Where is the love? Wow. Now I feel like I should play that Black Eyed Peas song. Yes,

[18:48]Carol Edgarian: I love that song. Okay, okay.

[18:51]Zibby Owens: If I did like a highly produced podcast, I would have cue in some of that music, but I don't think I digress. And so I know this is off topic, but how did you end up doing your Instagram live show where now you pick a word a month or I know. Where did that come from? Well, I'm

[19:09]Carol Edgarian: a wordy gal and I love, words are stories. Every word has its root. And along the way, many, many words have changed, and we've sort of lost the original meaning. But the original meaning is part of the story of what makes a word. And I've been on a bit of a hiatus, but I'm going to pick it up again in September. But like, let's take the word vote. The root of vote is vow. So when you think about like that resonance, that when you vote, you are making a vow, it's got a whole different feeling to it, doesn't it? And that's so true about so many words. So I just love going on that exploration of words. Tell me a word, if not this moment, another moment, like, what are you curious about? I love hearing from people telling me, would you look at this word? Would you look at this word? I would say overwhelmed.

[20:12]Zibby Owens: I only say that word more than any other word. With all you're doing,

[20:19]Carol Edgarian: I can completely believe that. It's such a moment in time when you're doing so much. But I don't know anybody who isn't using that word right now. No, everybody's overwhelmed. Yeah, of whatever

[20:35]Zibby Owens: life has handed you or that you've taken on, you know? So what do you do when you're not working on a book or do you always have a book going?

[20:45]Carol Edgarian: I always have something going. Right now I've started a new book. I've got a couple essays and a story that is keeping me up at night that I have not been able to finish literally in seven years. So I think I'm almost done with it. But also in the other half of my life is being part of Narrative, my nonprofit Narrative Magazine. We are a leading digital publisher of fiction, poetry and art. We publish some 300 artists a year. Wow. And one of the cool aspects of not just publishing all the writers and love is mentoring and discovering new writers and bringing them to the fort. One of our original narrative prize winners, Natalie Diaz just won the Pulitzer Prize and Ocean Vuong and so many writers seeing them early in their career and bringing them forward. But also our library of thousands of stories and poems because it's all free and accessible, teachers all over the world are teaching from it. And that has been just a really cool part of the sort of legacy of narrative is particularly in this pandemic when ninety percent of students around the world were learning online to hear from teachers in little villages in India or Serbia or Africa who don't have access to books, but are reading stories. And they're seeing themselves in the stories. They're seeing possibility. That's my other gig. And there's never enough time, but it's really fun to watch it grow. Wow, that's amazing. I love that. So do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Read everything and reread the stuff that really resonates for you and take scenes apart like you're a surgeon. Why? What happened there? Why did that move me? Why did that work? And writing is about generosity. I think it's about giving the reader as many gifts as you can inspiration, entertainment, your curiosity on the page and keep just how much can you give? Don't save it for later. The bucket keeps refilling. I guess that's two things I would say.

[23:28]Zibby Owens: Excellent. Well, this has been so nice, Carol. It's so nice to have met you and chatted with you and so elegant and classy. It's like you're just you have this, like, way about you. It's it's very nice. I feel like I should call you, like, missus Edgarian or whatever. Like, I feel like, no, seriously. Like, I can like, you're almost like another from another era of like Oh. Class and I don't know. It's just so you have such presence. It's very nice to see. So and it comes through in your writing the way you write in such an elegant way. So anyway, it was really nice spending time with you. Really nice spending time with you and just keep on doing what you're doing. It's just you're rocking it, girlfriend. Thank you. All right. Well, maybe I'll see you in Northern California if I go on my road trip. Okay. All right. Take care. Have a great day. Take care. You too. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.