Alice Elliott Dark, FELLOWSHIP POINT: A Novel
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[0:58]Alice Elliot dark is the author of fellowship point a novel
[1:02]She's also the author of Think of England and two collections of short stories in the glo-mang and naked to the waist
[1:08]Her work has appeared in among others the New Yorker harpers double-take plow shares a public space best American short stories
[1:15]prize stories the ohenry awards and has been translated into many languages
[1:20]In the glo-mang a story was chosen by John Uptike for inclusion in the best American short stories of the century
[1:26]And was made into films by HBO and Trinity playhouse her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in the New York times
[1:32]The Washington Post and many anthologies
[1:34]She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an associate professor at Rutgers Newark in the English
[1:40]Department and the MFA program
[1:43]Welcome, Alice. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books discuss fellowship point
[1:49]Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here great. I'm happy to have you
[1:54]Okay, I know I said you don't have to perform, but I do I would like you to describe fellowship point to people who have not read it yet
[2:03]Okay, well, it's a big long
[2:07]550 something page book about
[2:11]three women two women who are 80 and a young woman who's 26
[2:17]How they interact about various subjects the main one of which is
[2:22]What's going to happen to a beautiful piece of land in Maine that's owned by the two 80-year-olds?
[2:29]They have shares in a fellowship
[2:32]that has was started by
[2:34]That one of them great great great grandfather or great great grandfather. Sorry in
[2:41]1875 and they've now it's the year 2000
[2:45]They're both 80 and one of them Agnes is
[2:50]Single and has no children, so she can't pass her share to anybody
[2:56]She's worried about what's going to happen if it goes to the children of her best friend Polly
[3:01]There's another shareholder and her nephew Archie because there've been noise around about possibly developing the land which
[3:10]Totally horrifies her and then another thread of the book is this young 26-year-old assistant editor who works in a publishing company in Manhattan
[3:19]And she has the bright idea
[3:22]To ask Agnes to write a memoir
[3:26]Agnes is a very popular children's book author
[3:29]And she thinks of Agnes writes a memoir about how she came to write the books and what was her inspiration?
[3:35]that it will be
[3:36]Really good for
[3:38]Selling the books and it will also be good for getting her ahead in her publishing career
[3:43]So those are the basic those are the basics. I love the scenes that take place in publishing
[3:50]So the whole thing and even
[3:52]The aspiring writer not aspiring writer because she's already an author, but the
[3:57]the writer's block of
[3:59]Moments and and trying to figure out how to structure what's next and
[4:04]You you we've did a breast cancer diagnosis or
[4:09]Towards the beginning and you had one line which I loved when
[4:13]She had said you had said maybe the surgery would slice away her writer's block as if
[4:19]Having some massive surgery when at least he owned some ancillary benefit of producing
[4:26]writerly material
[4:29]That would be nice wouldn't it?
[4:32]She's kind of a tough crusty character who has very high principles and
[4:39]She does her best to make good decisions in life, but she's also
[4:44]Is capable of making
[4:46]remarks that sort of make people recoil because she thought what she's so blunt
[4:52]Which was very fun to write, you know fun to write a person like that. I'm not like that
[4:58]I always thought when I got to be an old lady. I could be like that, but I'm not so sure
[5:04]I mean having having a filter is takes energy you might as well
[5:08]It's true. It's true. It takes a lot of energy
[5:16]And practice. Yes
[5:19]But Agnes is also, you know very sympathetic her husband goes through
[5:24]a rejection where he does not get promoted and she says something lovely like
[5:30]This isn't a nice thing to do to this old band
[5:33]Yeah, and that's actually that's actually Polly. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's probably the best
[5:39]Polly the best friend who is married with
[5:42]Three children has had a fourth child who died as a nine-year-old
[5:46]But yeah, she she's not as harsh as Agnes and she yeah
[5:52]She has more empathetic feelings like that in a toward
[5:57]Toward a lot of people
[5:59]Well, at least you get both sides of the coin here
[6:04]And we know you as an author then can have
[6:08]both sides
[6:10]represented
[6:12]I'm not sure I'm either side, but it was fun to write into those uh
[6:17]It was fun to write into those characteristics and
[6:21]Just inhabit them for a while and why make them 80
[6:25]That just happened when the characters came in to my imagination
[6:31]They were 80 and
[6:34]It took a few years for me to wonder
[6:37]What am I doing this feels like career suicide to be right about
[6:43]People who are all because they're not
[6:45]Really traditional
[6:47]Harroons and
[6:50]Then I just was so far in at that point. I thought well
[6:52]I really actually have a lot to say about old women. I've always loved old women since I was a child my
[7:01]Grandma used to take me to visit her great ants and they lived in what I came to understand was a nursing home
[7:08]But I thought it was a mansion
[7:11]They were sisters. They together. They had candy. They painted plates
[7:16]Over there. I just think they really have the life. This is it
[7:20]This is it and ever since then I was kind of
[7:24]Fascinated by older women because I noticed early
[7:29]That people didn't pay attention to them. So I thought they got to have a lot of freedom and
[7:36]were able to be
[7:38]In the world without having to answer for a lot, you know and they always gravitate in a part of your summing to
[7:48]The old woman in the room because I think there's stuff going on there
[7:52]That no one else is bothering to figure out
[7:55]But I'm curious
[7:57]It's almost like people don't want to acknowledge that suit that will be them. It's like
[8:05]Yeah, I think that's a lot of it and yeah, there's something
[8:09]I don't know with biology, you know that once you're not of
[8:14]Had to be producing age that you're
[8:17]extraneous to the biological
[8:20]Needs of the species or I don't know what it is, but we all know it, you know once you get to be a certain age
[8:26]You start to feel
[8:28]A difference and then it just keeps going and it's kind of a fascinating thing
[8:34]I really felt as I was writing this and I was inhabiting these women. I started this one
[8:39]I was in my 50s. I'm in my 60s now. They were older than me
[8:42]And I really felt like
[8:46]These are we're like wasting a lot of political energy in this country by not
[8:52]Having older women be much more of a force than they are
[8:57]Because the older women I know are very active. They're vital. They're
[9:01]Keep they keep up with everything. They're just
[9:05]The same but older, you know, they have physical things
[9:09]But a lot of them don't have any other deficits and yet they're shunted aside. So
[9:17]I got to be very
[9:19]You know, sort of politically
[9:20]Motivated to make sure that I portray them as being highly viable citizens
[9:27]Interesting. Yeah, I keep
[9:30]You know shouting for the rooftops over here about how huge
[9:35]readers older women are and how nobody bothers marketing to them because
[9:39]You know my everyone in my family
[9:43]All I do is see older women commenting on Facebook even now and
[9:47]Being massive consumers and very engaged with material
[9:50]They do have time to read for the most part and are super smart and engaged and thoughtful and yet everyone's trying to get
[9:58]You know millennials who have
[10:00]like 8,000 things going on and might not,
[10:03]I don't know, I feel people miss the marks sometimes
[10:06]and not doing campaign.
[10:08]So I don't know, I'm trying to,
[10:09]I'm doing some presentations to nursing homes
[10:11]and I'm like, I made this like a priority.
[10:15]That's so terrific because I've really found
[10:18]being out with this book,
[10:20]that women, let's say, starting at 55,
[10:25]but especially if they're around 75 to 85 themselves
[10:30]and even I've gotten letters from people in their 90s,
[10:35]they are so grateful to have a big book
[10:42]where two 80 year old women are the main characters
[10:46]and they have a lot going on in their lives
[10:50]and they're just so grateful to see it
[10:52]because that reflects their reality
[10:56]and they don't really have that reality reflected very much
[10:59]in any forum and I agree with you about the marketing
[11:04]because as I've been doing this,
[11:05]I've been thinking, there's a huge market
[11:09]that's not being marketed too.
[11:10]Yep, I know I shouldn't have revealed the secret of mine.
[11:13]Well, it's, I mean, I guess it's my secret too
[11:20]because now that I've figured this out,
[11:23]I want to figure out how to get this book
[11:26]into the hands of more people who I know will appreciate it
[11:30]at a level and in a different way than younger readers.
[11:33]I've had lots of younger readers,
[11:35]lots of letters from men,
[11:37]lots of all kinds of people who I didn't know
[11:40]what the market would be for this book.
[11:42]No one ever really knows,
[11:43]but I did find out that it's an identity book
[11:46]for older women, which is really gratifying to me.
[11:50]You think about how many people talk
[11:53]about how isolating it feels not to be able
[11:56]to connect with someone in fiction, right?
[11:59]There's so much talk about the power of having novels
[12:03]or memoirs to make you feel less alone,
[12:05]but what if you are looking for that
[12:07]and then there's almost nothing to grab onto
[12:09]that makes you feel even worse?
[12:12]And so I feel like production from a range of viewpoints
[12:16]has expanded in some areas
[12:18]and yet some are still sort of need to be dusted off.
[12:21]So I love what you're doing and I didn't
[12:24]be to say that this is my, no, I do not hear it,
[12:27]so this is obviously.
[12:28]No, I totally understand I do
[12:30]when you're in a position to really make massive advances
[12:34]in this area, I'm not, but I totally applaud
[12:38]that this is something that you're really thinking about
[12:40]because it's out there.
[12:42]I mean, my grandmother, until probably, I don't know,
[12:47]six months before she passed away at 93,
[12:51]every time we talked, the first thing we asked
[12:53]was what are you reading?
[12:55]What are you reading?
[12:56]And my husband's grandma, she would come here
[12:58]and she's like, look at the books
[13:00]and she would just sit and read every time
[13:02]she visited the whole time.
[13:03]And all they wanted, they just wanted to talk
[13:05]and I'm not basically this on a sample set of two,
[13:07]this is obviously much bigger, but.
[13:08]It's also affected that the people who are now
[13:13]between 75 and 95, let's say,
[13:16]they grew up in a reading era.
[13:18]Yes.
[13:19]When it was, you know, when you would go to a dinner party
[13:22]and it would be, let's talk about this book.
[13:25]Yes.
[13:26]Instead of, let's talk about this TV shower, this movie
[13:28]or this politician, it was like,
[13:30]everybody had read the books, you know,
[13:32]so it was a common conversation.
[13:35]I remember that so well when I was growing up,
[13:37]so I was lucky enough to grow up around a reading family,
[13:40]but that doesn't happen anymore.
[13:43]You know, you don't go to a dinner party
[13:44]and everybody's just read the same book.
[13:47]Maybe a very literary dinner party.
[13:49]Maybe a very literary dinner party,
[13:51]but not just, you know, a suburban dinner party.
[13:54]Sure.
[13:55]It's different now, but then it really was like that.
[14:00]Well, not just the same book,
[14:02]but there were only like a couple of TV shows.
[14:04]I mean, I feel like that's the thing that we've all lost.
[14:06]Yeah.
[14:07]There's just, you know, there's so much choice
[14:10]that we don't bond about the same things at all.
[14:13]Yeah, it shows the movies books.
[14:15]I mean, it's nice that everybody gets to customize,
[14:18]but it's also really not nice.
[14:21]Yeah, I wonder about that too.
[14:24]I mean, I do feel something's lost by having
[14:30]every case, every taste cater to it,
[14:32]every, at every moment, you know,
[14:35]and not having some common, I don't know.
[14:40]I mean, it's a big subject.
[14:42]Yeah, we don't have to tackle that.
[14:44]I am curious though, in your, in your touring
[14:47]and publicity and getting to know your reader audience,
[14:51]what has been most successful
[14:54]in terms of reaching those readers?
[14:56]Like what have you done?
[14:57]How do you think?
[14:58]I mean, obviously you have such a giant platform
[15:00]because you're so amazing,
[15:02]but like what have you done to,
[15:04]to ferret out the readers who need this the most?
[15:07]Well, I'm still working on that
[15:08]because I think that I, you know,
[15:12]I didn't, I really didn't think of who was going
[15:16]to be the reader for the book.
[15:18]It just seemed like, you know, a big story
[15:22]and characters to me.
[15:24]But now I'm trying to think about how to reach older readers
[15:29]and go into like you said, retirement places
[15:33]where there are book groups and book clubs.
[15:35]And I mean, I have ideas about it too.
[15:38]Yeah, we should talk offline about it.
[15:40]We'll talk offline.
[15:42]I know what I'm doing.
[15:42]I'm doing like a class in this elderly,
[15:45]like continuing education thing
[15:48]and I'm going up to a nursing home in Massachusetts.
[15:51]And anyway, I don't know.
[15:52]Okay, we'll get back to that.
[15:54]Let's talk about, tell me about how you go
[15:59]about structuring a book where you know there's so much
[16:03]going on over over the course of so much
[16:05]that you're going to have this, you might like a saga,
[16:09]right, like a 500 juicy pages of information
[16:13]and twists and turns.
[16:15]Do you know that at the outset?
[16:17]And how do you have to structure it?
[16:19]Do you have like, do you have all your plans laid out
[16:22]or do you just start with a little idea?
[16:24]And you're like, I'll just, I'll give this
[16:26]as many pages as it needs to get where I went.
[16:29]And then I know when I've reached it.
[16:33]B, I didn't know what the outset.
[16:35]The characters came to me one by one.
[16:38]I knew when I got the first character,
[16:40]which was Virgil, who doesn't have a big part in the book,
[16:43]but he, he was the first character who came to me.
[16:46]And when he came to me, he came in such a way
[16:50]that I knew, oh, I'm in a novel.
[16:54]You know, it just felt like it had a different quality to it.
[16:58]It was, I think it's the first time
[16:59]I've ever really written purely from imagination,
[17:04]except for the settings, Philadelphia and Maine,
[17:07]real places, not fellowship point, but Maine.
[17:10]But the characters were all made up before.
[17:12]I've always taken a little bit from here
[17:15]and there from people I know.
[17:16]And this time they just appeared whole as themselves.
[17:21]And I started putting them together
[17:23]and having them talk to each other
[17:25]and watching what they said to each other
[17:27]and thinking about their interactions.
[17:30]And that taught me how, oh, they were.
[17:33]I always like to test out characters by putting them
[17:36]in kind of extreme situations like,
[17:39]and then what do they do, like at loss in the wilderness
[17:42]or something, you know, and just see like how they behave.
[17:46]It's a good little exercise.
[17:48]But then I, then I, a couple of things led to the structure
[17:53]of the book, which was one was I saw a mini series
[17:59]based on trial up novel.
[18:01]And I thought, oh my God, I just, you know,
[18:03]I really love these big plots
[18:05]with twist, turn, subplots, all of it.
[18:08]I want to try and learn how to write one.
[18:11]So that came.
[18:12]And then the other thing that happened was
[18:14]visited my friend Tina in California.
[18:17]And she, she was very involved in land trust
[18:20]and with University of California cataloging
[18:22]all their land.
[18:24]And she told me that so many of the donors were women.
[18:28]The, you know, who donated their ranch that they'd inherited,
[18:31]you know, thousands of acres, kind of branches.
[18:34]And I started researching women land donors
[18:39]to and women founders of national parks and all of this.
[18:42]It was really fascinating subject,
[18:45]not really a well known history in this country
[18:50]of that kind of conservation and donation by women.
[18:55]And it, I started having a thought that women
[18:59]have not been able to control the land that they owned
[19:04]for very long.
[19:05]1900 was the first date that women in all 50 states.
[19:10]Well, the states that existed in 1900
[19:12]were allowed to control land.
[19:15]Otherwise it was brother, husband, father, uncle, cousin.
[19:20]You know, any man could have control over it
[19:23]before the woman could.
[19:24]So then I just thought women have a different feeling
[19:29]about land owning than men do because it's not part
[19:32]of our DNA really isn't.
[19:34]You know, we've lived on the borrowed land
[19:40]and sort of the good will of others for a long time.
[19:44]And it sort of has made it possible, I think,
[19:47]for a lot of women to not hold that as an identity.
[19:51]You know, they pass through the land,
[19:54]they love the land and they love the land so much
[19:57]that they don't want to develop.
[19:58]They'd prefer to give it.
[20:00]to a trust or a park or something.
[20:03]So once I had all those elements together,
[20:06]I had the idea how I structured it after that
[20:09]was trial and error, you know, lots of pages,
[20:12]lots of throwing away.
[20:14]Well, and how long did it take for the whole book
[20:17]to be written?
[20:18]I started in 2011 and I turned it in to my agent in 2018.
[20:25]Then I did a couple of drafts with my editor, Mary Sue
[20:29]Ruchi and she was at Simon & Schuster
[20:32]and then she moved to Scribner
[20:34]and took me with her over to Scribner.
[20:36]And then I think I wrote the end of the book
[20:41]when it was already typeset.
[20:43]I just was not happy with how it ended.
[20:47]So I came up with a new ending.
[20:48]So I would say the whole thing was done by 2020,
[20:52]nine years, nine years, but not nine full years
[20:57]because I don't work during my teaching semesters.
[21:00]Not on something big like this is too big.
[21:02]I couldn't keep it in my head and keep all my student work
[21:05]and everything in my head at the same time.
[21:08]And tell me more about your teaching.
[21:10]And teach at Rutgers Newark in the MFA program
[21:14]and in the English department.
[21:16]And the semesters in full swing right now.
[21:19]Oh my gosh, thanks for even taking the time.
[21:22]No, it's wonderful.
[21:24]It's good too, because now you have
[21:25]like a built-in audience, right?
[21:27]Hands-on marketers.
[21:28]Yeah.
[21:29]Well, I'm not so sure they would be very, you know.
[21:32]I'm not so sure they would be very, you know.
[21:34]I mean, there's lots of reasons.
[21:37]So I'm not, you know, I've mentioned,
[21:39]my grad students are interested to say
[21:41]are working to become writers themselves.
[21:44]My undergrads, I've mentioned as I'm teaching lit.
[21:48]Well, I'm a writer too and I kind of understand
[21:51]and they're like, okay, okay, teach, move on.
[21:57]Oh my gosh, it's so funny.
[22:02]Can you talk more about how you got to this place
[22:07]in your life, how you became a teacher and writer.
[22:10]And if you knew from it, when you were a child,
[22:13]if this is the path you were going on,
[22:14]or how we could get a child writer,
[22:17]I was a child writer.
[22:19]I think I started at about seven
[22:22]and kept going, kept going, kept going.
[22:25]And then when I got through school,
[22:28]I stopped during the college years.
[22:30]I just got to a place where I felt people like me
[22:34]didn't become real writers.
[22:36]You know, it was wonderful at school
[22:39]and I went to a school that had a lot of literary stuff
[22:41]going on.
[22:42]But I just didn't live in a culture where people became,
[22:46]they were more, you know, very sophisticated consumers
[22:51]of literature, music, art, but not creators.
[22:55]So it took me a little while to get back to it.
[22:59]And it really happened after college
[23:01]when I just found that there was nothing.
[23:04]I went, I mean, there were a lot of things
[23:06]I wanted to do, but I was too shy to go try and do them.
[23:09]I was really desperately shy.
[23:11]So I took up writing again,
[23:13]and I wrote poetry until I was about 30.
[23:16]And then I started writing prose
[23:18]and just kept going from there, started teaching,
[23:22]started working at Rutgers in 2000.
[23:27]And yeah, now it's a good balance
[23:31]because I have one son.
[23:32]He's also trying to be a writer,
[23:35]or he is a writer, he just wrote a big novel.
[23:38]And he, once he left in 2010,
[23:42]I, all of a sudden, could manage everything.
[23:46]Before that, I always feel like you can do three things,
[23:49]not four things, you know, something,
[23:52]something, you know, a child, job, writing,
[23:57]you know, and then house friends, blah, blah, blah,
[24:00]put all that in, I mean, you could,
[24:02]you could parse it out to eight things,
[24:03]but I think you can do three things with full heart.
[24:09]And after that, you're doing things a little bit less.
[24:13]So after he left, and you know,
[24:15]kids take even more than a third.
[24:18]Yes.
[24:20]They're like in your head.
[24:21]So once he moved on, I really,
[24:23]that's when things started getting a little more organized
[24:26]for me.
[24:27]And it's no surprise that I started this book in 2011
[24:31]because I just had the headspace
[24:34]that I hadn't had since he was born to write a big book.
[24:37]Yeah, I say that I, it wasn't until I got divorced
[24:40]and had every other weekend without my kids
[24:42]that I even, like, think again.
[24:45]That's like, that's how I got your book.
[24:48]That's how I've done basically everything.
[24:50]No, I totally get it.
[24:53]Yeah, there's no way I could have,
[24:56]I mean, even still, I could barely, you know.
[24:58]Yeah.
[24:59]But yeah, I beat these kids.
[25:01]Look at that.
[25:02]I'm just stuck because when,
[25:05]and also that you have to drop,
[25:07]like I will drop anything anytime
[25:08]if someone has an issue, right?
[25:10]And then of course you can do.
[25:11]Yeah, I mean, that's it, like, so.
[25:13]I think that's forever.
[25:15]I think that's where we're to go.
[25:17]So what's next for you?
[25:18]You have this big book out.
[25:19]Congratulations, amazing.
[25:21]You're teaching, like, what next?
[25:23]I'm writing another book.
[25:25]And after that, I probably will write enough.
[25:29]You know, at this stage, I just,
[25:32]I really wanna just be writing full time.
[25:35]I'm not quite finished with teaching.
[25:37]There's still things I wanna do in that part of my career
[25:41]because, yeah, they're just things left.
[25:44]But I'm looking forward to being a full-time writer.
[25:48]And when I am, I'm gonna go at it pretty hard
[25:52]until I just feel like, okay, enough.
[25:54]And then I'll just enjoy looking at the ocean or something.
[25:58]I don't know.
[25:59]That's how I picture my future.
[26:04]This is totally inappropriate.
[26:05]You don't have to answer this.
[26:06]I'm always really interested with people
[26:08]who have let their hair go gray or white or whatever.
[26:11]You don't have to talk about it.
[26:12]And I could cut this question, but I'm curious.
[26:14]I'm happy to talk about it.
[26:16]So I had very dark hair that people
[26:19]took called black hair.
[26:20]It was very dark.
[26:22]And it's, I started getting white hair, I guess,
[26:26]in my 30s.
[26:29]And then I started,
[26:32]and I guess when I was about 40,
[26:33]I started doing suburban blonde
[26:36]because I had enough, you know,
[26:38]I had enough gray hair by that point.
[26:40]It wasn't really black anymore.
[26:42]It was turning gray.
[26:43]And then at a certain point,
[26:45]I guess something happened that I didn't color it fast enough.
[26:49]And I noticed that it was actually white underneath,
[26:53]not gray anymore.
[26:55]And I thought, okay, well, that, I like that.
[26:57]You know, I can live with that.
[26:58]But it is funny.
[27:00]You know, women love it.
[27:02]And then tell, you know, my friends will say
[27:05]that their husband said, don't you dare do that.
[27:09]It's really, there's a big gender divide
[27:13]about the white hair thing.
[27:15]Interesting.
[27:16]I think it looks gorgeous.
[27:17]Thank you.
[27:18]I did read an article.
[27:19]I was debating if I should just let myself go gray,
[27:22]which is sort of selfishly motivated question.
[27:24]And I did, there was a whole thing in the times
[27:26]about how women think it's cool and men are just like,
[27:28]they don't want their wives necessarily to be home.
[27:31]Exactly.
[27:31]I've run into that so much.
[27:33]I don't really understand.
[27:35]I mean, I guess it makes them think,
[27:37]they all look older if they look like,
[27:40]if they're with a woman who is not afraid
[27:43]to identify as being older than,
[27:46]I mean, I think it's that stair perspective.
[27:48]It's not women's perspective at all.
[27:50]I mean, women have very different ideas
[27:53]about how they feel good about themselves.
[27:56]You know, and I just knew I would feel good
[28:00]not doing all that coloring anymore is so boring.
[28:06]Expensive if you go to a place
[28:09]which I did sometimes, sometimes I did it most.
[28:11]All of that, I just was like,
[28:12]oh, I could just get rid of that part of my life.
[28:15]I'd be so happy.
[28:17]But it is complicated.
[28:18]It's complicated.
[28:20]I've never looked back.
[28:21]I'm happy with it.
[28:23]But I do notice that people immediately think of me
[28:28]as older.
[28:29]And then they'll say, your face doesn't look old.
[28:32]And I'm like, well, you know,
[28:34]I don't know exactly what you're saying.
[28:37]I'm not the guy, like 25, either even if I had so blonde.
[28:45]I think it depends a lot on what the color is.
[28:47]Like if you were to do it
[28:49]and you find you have like a gorgeous gray,
[28:52]it makes a lot of difference.
[28:53]And if the texture is nice and all of that.
[28:56]Yeah.
[28:57]My mom has a friend with this like a amazing Bob,
[29:00]like beautiful grays and whites.
[29:02]And I was like, but how would I know?
[29:04]Maybe I have that.
[29:05]Maybe I would look like that, but I would never know.
[29:07]Probably not.
[29:09]I mean, definitely you saw a lot of people in the pandemic
[29:12]like, let's just happen.
[29:13]And so many people I thought looked so much better
[29:16]with the gray hair because it kind of matches your skin tone.
[29:19]You change when you get older.
[29:21]You know, and your skin tone looks great.
[29:23]And then they went back
[29:25]and, you know, I was a little bit sad.
[29:29]Yeah.
[29:30]I'm more gray.
[29:31]I think than my mom at this point.
[29:33]So anyway, yeah, my mother is gray
[29:36]and she envies this hair.
[29:38]He was trying to like put platinum coloring in her hair.
[29:43]And it doesn't turn this color.
[29:45]This is not a color you can get out of a bottle.
[29:48]It just, it's like an absence of something that you create.
[29:52]It's very cool.
[29:54]Well, I love it.
[29:55]Thank you.
[29:56]And sorry for talking about that.
[29:57]I love it.
[29:58]Oh, it's, you know, what else?
[30:00]I'm always happy to talk.
[30:02]I could have talked the whole time about.
[30:06]My kids actually have a whole section
[30:08]in school this year about hair
[30:10]and how it's so central to identity
[30:11]and it's allowing them to teach about
[30:13]all these different things.
[30:14]And I'm like, oh, that's great.
[30:15]That's so smart.
[30:16]It's so true.
[30:18]It's so true.
[30:19]I should offer you what this is speaker.
[30:21]You're second grade.
[30:23]I love to come in.
[30:24]I love to come in.
[30:25]I love to get in here.
[30:27]Yes, it's real.
[30:28]It's real.
[30:30]Awesome.
[30:31]All right.
[30:32]Well, Alice, thank you so much for the fun chat
[30:34]and congratulations on your buck.
[30:36]And let's stay in touch and start our own, you know?
[30:40]Yes.
[30:41]Really interesting marketing approach.
[30:43]I'll be too.
[30:44]OK.
[30:45]Thank you so much, Sophie.
[30:47]Honor to meet you.
[30:48]Honestly, big things you're doing have been so exciting
[30:51]to all women in the publishing world.
[30:55]Oh, thank you.
[30:57]Trying hard doing more than four things.
[31:00]And I was like, oh, no, she's not going to be doing
[31:02]like 20 things.
[31:04]Well, I've honored to talk to you as well.
[31:06]So thank you.
[31:07]All right, have a great day.
[31:09]Thank you.
[31:09]OK, bye.
[31:12]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[31:14]Don't have time to read books.
[31:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[31:18]and at Moms.
[31:19]Don't have time to read books.
[31:20]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[31:23]and sign up for my virtual book club
[31:25]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:27]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[31:29]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[31:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[31:33]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.