Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, WANTING: Women Writing About Desire
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
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[0:58]Today's episode is with Marko Khan and Kelly McMasters, who are the editors of wanting women writing about desire.
[1:06]And by the way, can I just say happy Valentine's Day to everybody out there.
[1:10]I hope you're having a great day. I have lots of lists for great books to read for Valentine's Day, and I just...
[1:17]I don't know. I've always loved this holiday, and I hope that you can give some chocolate hearts to somebody who's meant something to in your life,
[1:24]and I don't know. I think a day celebrating the people we love is truly awesome.
[1:28]So happy Valentine's Day to all of you.
[1:30]Anyway, okay.
[1:31]Marko Khan is the author of the biography, Horses That Buck, winner of the 2008 High Plains Book Award.
[1:38]Her poetry chat book, A Quiet Day with the West on Fire, was the finalist for Floating Bridge Press's 2021 Prize.
[1:45]Together with Kelly McMasters, she's co-editor of two anthologies, The New York Times editor's choice collection.
[1:51]This is the place women writing about home, and now wanting women writing about desire.
[1:56]I have to go back now and read this is the place.
[1:58]Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, Lenny Letter, Tablet, Best, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Review,
[2:04]poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.
[2:06]Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, 2022, and 2023,
[2:11]and have appeared or are forthcoming in journals, such as New England Review,
[2:15]Grist, and the Hopkins Review.
[2:17]Her work has been supported by awards and residencies for the Seattle Mayors Office of Arts and Culture,
[2:22]for Culture, Washington State's Artist Trust, and Breadloaf.
[2:25]She holds an MFA from Columbia University, formerly a program manager for Seattle Arts and Lectures,
[2:30]and Education Director for Hugo House in Seattle.
[2:33]Marko currently serves on the board of the University of Washington Press,
[2:36]and supports her family writing about big data and cloud computing from her home in the Pacific Northwest.
[2:41]Kelly McMaster is a Fulbright Specialist, former bookshop owner,
[2:46]and an author, an essayist.
[2:48]She is the author of the Forest Company, the Leaving Season, and memoir in essays,
[2:51]which by the way, I already started.
[2:53]It is amazing, and she's going to come back on to talk about that.
[2:56]She's co-editor, obviously, as I said, of wanting.
[2:59]Her first book, Welcome to Shirley, and memoir from an Atomic Town,
[3:03]was listed as one of Oprah's top five summer memoirs,
[3:06]and is the basis for the documentary film The Atomic States of America,
[3:10]a 2012 Sundance election, and of course, the editor, the anthology she co-edited with Marko Khan.
[3:15]This is the place.
[3:17]Her essays, reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times,
[3:20]the Washington Post magazine, the Paris Review, the American Scholar,
[3:23]River Teeth, a Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Ten House, New State,
[3:26]Time Out New York, Columbia Magazine, and Mr. Beller's name are at among others.
[3:30]She holds a BA from Vaster College, and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia's School of the Arts,
[3:35]and is the recipient of a push-cart nomination, and an Orion Book Award nomination.
[3:40]Kelly has spoken about creative nonfiction at TEDx, authors at Google,
[3:44]and more, and has taught at mediabasedjow.com, Franklin and Marshall College,
[3:47]and in the undergraduate writing program, a journalism graduate school at Columbia University,
[3:52]among others.
[3:53]She is currently an associate professor of English and director of publishing studies at Hofstra University in New York.
[3:58]Welcome, Margot and Kelly.
[4:00]Thanks for coming in, Momstone, time to read books.
[4:02]to discuss wanting women writing about desire.
[4:06]So exciting.
[4:07]So much. We're so excited to be here.
[4:10]Okay, how did this project come about?
[4:13]And what were some of the requirements for writing for this anthology?
[4:18]Margot, you want to start on that?
[4:20]Sure, yeah.
[4:21]Well, there are several answers.
[4:23]But from my end, a few years ago, my family had the great dog debate.
[4:27]You know, I wanted a dog.
[4:29]My husband and son did not want a dog.
[4:31]And the funny thing was none of us had ever lived with a dog.
[4:34]So this really got me thinking about the nature of desire.
[4:37]Because how could each of us know what we wanted or did not want so badly before we tried it?
[4:45]And so I convinced my family that we were going to have to get a dog to see what it was like.
[4:49]And this felt okay because, you know, you can always rehome a dog.
[4:53]But for so many other decisions we make on the basis of our desires,
[4:58]it can be a lot more complicated.
[5:00]And so this got me thinking about whether it's ever really possible to know what we want.
[5:06]I've come to realize that the mystery of why we want what we want is far more interesting than any specific thing.
[5:14]We can say we desire like the question itself, the mechanics, the backstory.
[5:19]That's also interesting to chew on.
[5:22]And as I've gotten to a place in my life that I guess I can call a solidly middle age,
[5:27]and thinking more about what I want because time is more precious than it used to be.
[5:32]And also I take fewer risks than I did when I was young, like I'm a lot less impulsive.
[5:37]So as I scope out how I want to spend my time and what's important to me,
[5:42]I'm so grateful to hear how other women are approaching this subject and how it's changing for them as they age.
[5:49]And how do I are different life experiences carry so many different learnings.
[5:55]And I think this conversation is especially important because historically women just haven't had the same kind of autonomy and power to make these kinds of decisions for themselves.
[6:06]So to even have the luxury of chewing on this question of want and desire.
[6:12]It's really been taboo. And in some cases and places it still is. And that's why I think this anthology is so important.
[6:21]And they think how did you like what what did you pitch to the authors like right about it at what was your thing.
[6:28]Yeah, so this is our second book together that we co edited our first one was women writing about home.
[6:34]And when we worked on that book when we first pitched that we learned a lot experience and when we first pitched that to editors.
[6:43]A lot of them responded and said, you know, this is 2016 we're about to have a woman in the White House, do you really need a women only space to talk about home anymore.
[6:54]And then, of course, that's not how 2016 happened. And in 2017 by the time our book came out, you know, it was a completely different landscape. And I think, similarly, when we started pitching this to writers and to editors people, this was before the pandemic, it was before the Me Too movement.
[7:14]I think this was a very natural continuation of the discussion of home in the way that the writers had it in our book and desire comes out of that.
[7:27]And so what we found really interesting is we said we want all five senses activated we want to feel the want and that's why it is called wanting right.
[7:38]And John, by is a lot of writers came to us with their first drafts and either they were writing about what they didn't what they wanted, but couldn't get.
[7:47]Or so many said, and most of them were mothers.
[7:51]I don't even know what I want because I don't have the time to think about it. And those were two really interesting.
[7:58]And so we just take strands that Margot and I really pushed the writers through and came out with some incredible, you know, once we kind of pushed through that and got to the desire itself like Margot said wanting is an active verb.
[8:14]Once you get the thing it's over or once you've helped right. And we wanted of our readers to really sit and do in the want.
[8:23]Hope each piece that we decided to include brings to the table.
[8:28]Interesting. That's so sad. Not even having time to know what you want. I mean, I relate to not having time. It's just sad. That's sad. Yeah.
[8:37]Yeah. So did they did they all go back and find something they wanted after like, do they figure it out or did you cut those essays.
[8:45]Yeah, it was a little bit of both.
[8:47]The pandemic also really threw revenge and things. This book was actually supposed to come out in 2021. And so there were people who we really wanted to include who just couldn't make it happen.
[9:02]So the first piece is that we just didn't have time to work on fully to bring to fruition and the funny thing about an anthology is it is like a living organism until the day it finally goes to print.
[9:18]So with each essay that would come in and be finished in wanting to curate a really wide range of stories and experiences and voices.
[9:31]Every essay that comes in where we say, yes, oh my god, definitely. It changes the rest of the puzzle. Right. So as the pieces come together, it's like always moving and shifting.
[9:44]And so we found this with both books sometimes. I mean, it's crazy, but sometimes you get two essays that are basically exactly the same and you can only take one.
[9:54]Yeah, it's a process.
[10:00]but for sure we would have lots of things on one particular topic
[10:04]and that we weren't getting or that we thought,
[10:06]yes, we definitely need something about music, right?
[10:09]And we went to our music critic person that we adore
[10:13]and they turned in something entirely different,
[10:16]which we loved even more,
[10:17]but to know that we wanted,
[10:19]so it's a lot of surprised us too.
[10:21]So part of this is what you are wanting about
[10:23]in the anthology.
[10:24]It's like a very meta, right?
[10:26]And learning that you don't always get
[10:28]what you think you want
[10:29]and that's okay, yes.
[10:31]I edited two anthologies that came out in 2021
[10:35]that came out like very quickly,
[10:37]so I didn't wait around.
[10:38]I'd like, I'm thinking about something,
[10:40]we didn't edit them and others and they don't get it.
[10:43]But I found that too.
[10:44]Sometimes the topics would come back
[10:46]and I was so surprised or have so moved
[10:48]or something I expect.
[10:50]When you read books by people,
[10:52]you forget that you're never reading their first draft,
[10:56]but yet when you get an essay from an author,
[10:58]you're like, oh, totally.
[10:59]Anyway, it's different.
[11:01]It's different.
[11:02]And also some novelists are like,
[11:03]so it's a totally different skill set for a novelist,
[11:06]I think, to write an essay,
[11:08]whereas I think memoirists and people used to writing
[11:11]have a much easier time.
[11:12]Not, these are like broad generalizations,
[11:14]which I probably shouldn't make,
[11:16]but anyway, some of the things I found too.
[11:19]Yeah, we did find that there were people
[11:23]who said yes readily,
[11:25]but then when they actually sat down
[11:27]to write, realized how scary this particular topic was,
[11:31]or the place that they went with it,
[11:33]they suddenly realized they didn't actually want it in print.
[11:37]They started thinking about the people around them,
[11:39]the people that were gonna read it,
[11:41]their children perhaps,
[11:42]or their partners or their mothers.
[11:45]And they said actually,
[11:47]and then they would sort of go to a safer place.
[11:50]So of course, was usually not as interesting.
[11:54]So that was a challenge too.
[11:56]Wow.
[11:57]Wasn't there that anthology?
[11:58]And I'm forgetting who edited it,
[12:00]but you didn't know who wrote which essay?
[12:04]Yes.
[12:05]That was brilliant.
[12:06]That was really smart.
[12:08]I can't remember what that was called,
[12:09]but I'm pretty sure I did a podcast about it.
[12:11]Oh my gosh.
[12:13]That was a mixed genre.
[12:15]Wasn't it?
[12:16]Yeah.
[12:18]It'll maybe come to me if my brain would wake up a little bit,
[12:21]but it was really good.
[12:22]But anyway, back to yours.
[12:24]I read so many of these,
[12:25]Joanna Raycov's essay.
[12:26]Oh my gosh.
[12:27]I emailed her after I was like,
[12:28]oh my gosh, I just read your essay.
[12:30]It's so good.
[12:32]It's so good.
[12:33]I felt like I was in that hotel lobby with her.
[12:35]So Joanna Raycov for anyone listening wrote
[12:37]my Salinger year, and I'm a huge fan of hers.
[12:40]And actually she's coming to the retreat.
[12:42]We're doing it in Nashville in April.
[12:43]But anyway,
[12:44]and I had read my Salinger year,
[12:46]and I'd watched the movie,
[12:47]and I knew about her,
[12:48]but this particular snippet of her relationship
[12:53]and how her kids were in the hotel room
[12:56]with her husband next door,
[12:58]and she walked into the hotel lobby across the street,
[13:01]and it was like blown over by seeing this old love.
[13:04]Oh my gosh.
[13:05]It was so good.
[13:08]I think that was a really great example of a piece
[13:12]that went through, she worked so hard on that piece,
[13:16]and it's such an important piece to her life.
[13:19]And it went back and forth and back and forth,
[13:21]and she's amazing.
[13:23]She is ruthless in editing.
[13:25]She wants to get every sentence right,
[13:28]and she's an amazing writer to work with as an editor.
[13:31]So it's a really different,
[13:32]I knew her only as a reader before,
[13:34]not working with her as an editor,
[13:36]and it's really exciting to see
[13:39]if you have read her work before,
[13:40]it's sort of the, you know, the history part.
[13:44]So it's very exciting.
[13:46]It was very exciting.
[13:47]Are you accepting this anywhere?
[13:49]Like is any place gonna excerpt that essay?
[13:52]We will fingers are crossed shortly.
[13:55]Yes, I'll break it out.
[13:57]Okay.
[13:57]Well, I hope this is the one you put forward.
[14:00]I mean, I love them all, I shouldn't say that.
[14:02]They were all really great.
[14:03]But I think just in terms of like a traditional,
[14:07]like love story type thing,
[14:09]this was like, wow.
[14:11]Yeah, I hope it's our next movie, you know,
[14:14]her next book, or maybe it'll just go straight to film.
[14:17]That would be great too.
[14:18]Oh my gosh.
[14:19]And then Michelle Wilden, who's one of our
[14:21]to be books authors, by the way.
[14:23]Oh my gosh, her, you know, it's so funny,
[14:26]cause we knew anyway, I worked with,
[14:28]I'm sorry, I keep talking about myself in this podcast.
[14:30]I promise, I'm just trying to have like a conversation,
[14:32]but I'm sorry.
[14:33]Anyway, whenever she described one with the book
[14:35]that's now called Wine People,
[14:36]she would be like, I just wanna eat some glass.
[14:40]I'm gonna have a glass of sun's hair
[14:41]and eat oysters while I read this book.
[14:44]And that's how I feel about her essay.
[14:46]It's so like all the food and like just getting in there
[14:50]and smelling and sensing.
[14:51]I mean, so good.
[14:53]Yeah.
[14:54]Michelle is one of the best food writers that I know
[14:56]and I have been a super fan for years and years.
[15:00]I teach her work.
[15:01]She has this amazing essay on eggs
[15:05]that I teach every year to my students.
[15:07]And she just has a way about showing food to me
[15:12]and to her readers in a way that I've never heard before.
[15:16]And so that was one at the beginning
[15:18]in our first list that Margot and I said,
[15:20]okay, we need food.
[15:21]And I said, we need Michelle.
[15:23]So I was so thrilled when she said yes.
[15:26]I'm trying to see if there's like a line I could read
[15:28]to give an example.
[15:30]I mean, they're all good,
[15:32]but maybe even just this.
[15:34]Enjoying the food was almost beside the point.
[15:36]I made some version of it for years into college
[15:38]and still it started to seem a little dated.
[15:41]Besides by then there were so many other things I had to eat.
[15:43]I had to know about Phuagran,
[15:44]why drinking late harvest wine with it
[15:47]made for an entirely different taste.
[15:48]I had to try sweetbreads and chantrails
[15:50]and fresh wasabi root,
[15:52]which for some reason I ordered off the nascent internet.
[15:54]Did I know what to do with fresh wasabi root
[15:56]besides great it?
[15:57]I did not,
[15:58]but I thought it might be interesting.
[15:59]I had to stand in the street corner
[16:01]outside Murray's cheese shop on Bleaker
[16:02]and eat a few ounces of chili,
[16:04]alsatian, mustard cheese all by itself.
[16:07]A heel of baguette might have been nice.
[16:09]And in truth, I wasn't hungry for mustard right then.
[16:11]I was visiting New York and the cheese I'd always heard
[16:14]so much better than its bland American sandwich slice.
[16:17]It was right there in front of me.
[16:18]So I stood there on the cobblestones and ate cold cheese
[16:21]and I did it all because I could not refuse the opportunity.
[16:26]So good.
[16:27]So good. Oh my gosh.
[16:29]That's exactly the, I mean, she captures so well.
[16:32]It's not just the deliciousness of the food
[16:34]and the, you know, those senses, the taste and the smell.
[16:37]But that feeling of just jumping in with two feet,
[16:41]you know, just going for it that, you know,
[16:44]having a desire and then taking that leap.
[16:48]Yeah, that energy is so key.
[16:52]And the details, right?
[16:53]Like the heel of the baguette and the cold cheese,
[16:57]like little things, I don't know.
[16:59]Just, it's like crazy.
[17:01]I was just like a couple little words change
[17:03]how you think and feel about everything you're reading.
[17:06]I know.
[17:07]So it's just a prime example of that.
[17:11]Lisa, today as I say, talk about that one.
[17:15]Amazing. Well, yeah, we knew we wanted Lisa.
[17:18]I mean, I read three women in a galley.
[17:21]I can't even remember who sent it to me.
[17:23]When we started talking about this book,
[17:25]that was just the most obvious choice.
[17:28]When we wrote to Lisa, it was like Lisa still answered
[17:31]her email, you know, now we get all through assistant.
[17:36]But that was just, it was like so obvious.
[17:39]We wanted her, you know, part of what we were looking
[17:42]for besides writers, we loved who's writing his words,
[17:46]like you say, that's who sentences we adore and admire.
[17:50]We were also looking for contributors
[17:53]who were going to be willing to go to this vulnerable place
[17:57]and just leave it all out on the page.
[17:58]And so in some cases, we were looking for writers
[18:02]who already trafficked in these ideas, desire longing,
[18:06]the body sex, all of that.
[18:09]And in other cases, you know, we were sort of hoping
[18:12]for these other topics and hoping that people would go
[18:15]to that vulnerable place in a similar way.
[18:17]Lisa was just an obvious choice.
[18:19]I mean, she's so powerful on the page.
[18:22]She, you know, holds no punches
[18:24]or whatever that expression is, pulls no punches.
[18:28]And yeah, I loved what she did with this piece, you know,
[18:32]thinking about the things that form us,
[18:37]that form our desires and those early experiences
[18:40]and then blowing it out into such a bigger cultural critique.
[18:47]I heard that her movie version was just canceled
[18:49]for some reason.
[18:50]Did you hear that?
[18:51]I did just see that.
[18:52]Do you know any more about it or what happened?
[18:56]You know, just her post.
[18:57]Yeah.
[18:58]Just her backs too.
[18:59]Yeah, that's all I saw.
[19:00]Believe someone else will pick it up if they're smart.
[19:02]I was hoping not to.
[19:04]Seriously.
[19:05]I couldn't wait to watch that, right?
[19:08]Oh my gosh.
[19:09]Well, anyway, Karen Russell biking to Biscayne Bay.
[19:12]It was short and sweet, but that was a great one.
[19:15]What else?
[19:16]These were also great.
[19:17]A Lurgick, Tara Conklin.
[19:19]I love Tara Conklin.
[19:20]Oh my gosh.
[19:21]Oh, addiction.
[19:22]The one by C. Shapiro.
[19:23]I mean, I read that so many of these.
[19:25]That was also great.
[19:26]And I read her book when it came out, you know,
[19:29]stop quitting blah, blah, blah, but this was particularly good.
[19:32]I don't know.
[19:33]I just feel like your book gave us like an extra layer on people.
[19:36]I felt like maybe I already kind of knew, but I now I know them even better, which
[19:40]is like the best kind of writing, right?
[19:43]So it's great compliment.
[19:45]I love that.
[19:47]Yeah.
[19:48]I mean, I could go on and on.
[19:49]But these are also great.
[19:50]Give listeners like a little more background about the two of you.
[19:53]And how did you team up originally and what's like your life story in two minutes or
[19:57]less?
[20:00]Okay, I'll do that.
[20:03]Kelly and I went to the same grad program.
[20:06]We were both at Columbia, but not exactly at the same time.
[20:09]We actually didn't know each other there.
[20:11]But we published our first books in the same year in 2008,
[20:15]which now seems like forever ago.
[20:18]And Kelly was running the reading series at KGB bar.
[20:21]She invited me to read along with Amanda Paterson.
[20:25]She was in my nonfiction cohort.
[20:28]We were, but the whole time, yeah, Amanda's in this book.
[20:33]And so we went to KGB and we read and it was awesome.
[20:38]And that's really when we met.
[20:41]And then we kept in touch and in about 2015,
[20:47]I, so I had my son in 2010,
[20:52]the very end of 2010.
[20:54]And I thought I was going to write another book.
[20:57]But suddenly I was just completely overwhelmed.
[21:00]And I won't get into the whole story because that's a whole
[21:03]another podcast.
[21:04]But that was when our first anthology project was kind of born too
[21:08]because I really wanted to be making something.
[21:11]I wanted to be working with words and books,
[21:14]but I just didn't have the stamina.
[21:16]My first book took me eight years to write.
[21:18]And I couldn't do it.
[21:20]I couldn't travel what I wanted to write about.
[21:22]It was going to require a lot of travel and a lot of research.
[21:24]And I just couldn't do it.
[21:27]But I have been writing some essays that were all I realized hung
[21:29]around the theme of home.
[21:30]And Kelly's first book, which was amazing.
[21:32]Her memoir, Welcome to Shirley, was all about that.
[21:35]And I thought, well, maybe you should just write a bunch of essays
[21:39]but from a bunch of different people and put them together.
[21:41]And when that'd be interesting.
[21:42]And also, I was really struggling at the time with my relationship
[21:45]with home in a new way as a new mom.
[21:47]I was feeling really good.
[21:49]I was feeling really stuck.
[21:52]I was in a place I did not think I was going to wind up.
[21:55]I had left my job to take care of our son.
[21:58]And anyway, when I reached out to Kelly,
[22:00]she dove right in with this idea and had a whole bunch of other ideas
[22:05]of other writers.
[22:06]And then I thought, oh, my gosh, this would be so much more fun
[22:10]if we did this book together.
[22:11]And so that, like, launched us on this whole journey.
[22:15]And then suddenly, we had a lot of fun.
[22:18]And then suddenly, you know, we were, when we finished, this is the place.
[22:22]I think we both felt, well, that was a fun experience that let's never do that again.
[22:28]And here we are with wanting.
[22:30]And admittedly, I really do think we need to do a third book,
[22:33]but I think we should just give it a few years rest.
[22:37]Yeah.
[22:38]Yeah.
[22:39]And just to sort of cap that conversation when Margot first contacted me for this is the place.
[22:45]We were friendly, but not friends.
[22:49]And so she had no idea that I had just left every my entire life had just blown up.
[22:55]And it just left my marriage and was living in a new place in this little in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
[23:02]with a one year appointment at F&M College with two little little boys.
[23:08]And so I was, the email came in and I had the stack of papers that I was grading.
[23:13]And the kids are, you know, finger painting on the floor and painting each other.
[23:18]And I thought, that is what I want to do.
[23:21]I want to think about home because I don't know anything about it right now.
[23:26]So that was such a huge bomb for me in terms of having all of these voices of these other writers and women who A were writing,
[23:37]which I wasn't at the time and reminded me, okay, this is a process.
[23:41]What you said at the beginning is it be when you receive an essay from someone.
[23:45]It's not finished and perfect.
[23:47]And I forgot that.
[23:49]Yeah.
[23:50]And so it started me writing again.
[23:54]And then with this particular, at that point, I was still shell shocked and just, you know, grasping for survival mode.
[24:01]And then with this particular book when we started talking about desire, you know, I started dating again in my 40s.
[24:08]And wow, desire is so different as of, I will say sort of fully formed adults than it is the last time I dated in my 20s.
[24:20]And what was amazing is just the range of voices that we were able to collect in this book from, I think our youngest is 20.
[24:29]When they wrote it, they were 26 or 28 and our oldest is 80.
[24:34]And so when I think about desire and the way desire changes in a woman's life, both reflective in terms of our people desiring me.
[24:44]And then that's that question shifts to what do I even want this.
[24:50]And then what do I want coming next.
[24:53]Does that, this seemed to be a really in the same way that home was sort of the perfect thing for Marco and I to talk about in that period.
[25:02]Certainly for both of us right.
[25:04]Margot's in a different phase of her life to desire and want and ambition and sex and beauty and time and money and all of these things.
[25:14]So the questions right now, they always are, but the change the answers change so that's amazing.
[25:21]Okay, so if you did a third together, what would it be?
[25:24]Home wanting what next?
[25:28]You must have some ideas like lingering, percolating.
[25:32]We have a few ideas.
[25:34]I mean, I think in the sense that home and wanting our progression of sorts like home is the beginning, you know, a formative place that as we grow, you know, we begin to change more right in the beginning it's like you're in it, but you've not designed it.
[25:54]And as you grow, you are have more and more power over, you know, what kind of home you're making for yourself and then wanting is this in my mind.
[26:06]Yeah, more of this kind of middle age that bulk of like where you run up against your friends getting cancer and your friends dying in all of the sudden, the reality of your life being half over.
[26:21]lucky is really front and center and like a reassessment, this kind of middle age time reassessment of priorities and what is it that you really want out of your life, your relationships, your commitments, your relationship with community, all of those things.
[26:39]And so I guess to me, the third book is focusing on the kind of later years. I mean, I don't know if it's about aging or if it's about faith or but something in that kind of, you know, what is what does it look like towards the end.
[27:00]And of course, we're not there yet, but I'm thinking a lot about the people in my life who are more that stage of life, my parents, my friends parents are just, you know, old former colleagues who when I worked with them seems, you know, so young and suddenly we're all just not so young anymore.
[27:24]I feel that very deeply.
[27:28]Well, that would be great. I would pick that one up in a heartbeat. Amazing. Well, thank you both so much. This was so fun. And I really enjoyed essays and I haven't read all of them yet, but I want to go back and just, you know, treat myself to the ones I haven't finished yet.
[27:44]But the ones I've read I absolutely love. So congratulations. It's awesome. Thank you so much and good luck. Congratulations on the book shop. Thank you. Thank you. You guys should do an event where are you based by the way.
[27:58]Marcus on the West Coast. I'm on the East Coast. Well, you should do do an event at the store or something. Yes. Oh, that would be amazing. Okay. We'll talk to our public. Actually, it would be so cool to invite a bunch of contributors. Yes.
[28:10]And do like as many of them who want to come and like a whole panel something.
[28:16]Okay. Okay. All right.
[28:18]All right. Have a great day. Thank you.
[28:20]Okay.
[28:21]Thank you. Bye bye.
[28:23]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books.
[28:27]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
[28:32]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:39]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Tech's just sound for the sound editing.
[28:43]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.