Ramona Ausubel, THE LAST ANIMAL
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Ramona Osveil is the author of the last animal Ramona grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[1:08]She is the author of three novels and two short story collections.
[1:11]Her new novel, Last Animal, was published in the spring of 2023, winner of the Penn Center
[1:16]USA Literary Award for Fiction and the VCU Cabelle First Novelist Award.
[1:22]She has also been a finalist for the near public library Young Lions Fiction Award, California
[1:26]and Colorado Book Awards and longlisted for the Story Prize, Frank O'Connor International
[1:30]Story Award and the International Impact Double and Literary Award and New York Times
[1:35]notable book selections.
[1:36]She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where she won the Glenn
[1:40]Shafer Award in fiction.
[1:42]Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Tinhouse, the New York Times, NPR's selected
[1:46]shorts, one story electric literature, Plowshares, the Oxford American, and collected in
[1:51]the best American fantasy and online in the Paris Review.
[1:54]She has been a finalist for the Pushcart Prize and a fellow at the Breadlof Writers
[1:58]Conference and the Solani Writers Conference.
[2:02]Ramona has taught at Tinhouse the community of writers, writing by writers, the low residency
[2:06]MFA programs at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Bennington.
[2:10]She is an assistant professor at Colorado State University.
[2:13]This was recorded live from the Miami Book Fair where we were sort of up in this little
[2:18]room which we talk about above the chaos below and we just had a wonderful time getting
[2:24]to know each other face-to-face and talking about her book and her career and all of that.
[2:29]It was sponsored by Moleskin and the Moleskin Rep.
[2:32]Colin came over and introduced himself and that was fun too.
[2:35]So thank you to Moleskin.
[2:36]Thank you to Miami Book Fair.
[2:38]Enjoy the episode.
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[3:25]Welcome, Ramona.
[3:26]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read books live from the Miami
[3:30]Book Fair in this little conference room with a lot of noise outside delighted to be here
[3:35]with you.
[3:36]I'm so happy to be here.
[3:37]Thank you for having me.
[3:38]Your latest book has gotten so much attention.
[3:41]I'm so excited for you and yet you have this whole cane and of other stuff.
[3:44]So why don't we start with the last animal and go from there?
[3:47]Sounds like a plan.
[3:48]Okay.
[3:49]Please tell us new.
[3:50]What's your book is about?
[3:51]So I started the very beginning of the book, started when I was living in Berkeley, California
[3:58]and I had a newborn baby and she was sleeping on my chest and I also am a writer.
[4:05]So I was like, the basis is sleep.
[4:06]I should open my laptop and do some work and I popped it open and this story appeared
[4:12]about scientists working to de-extinct the William Ameth.
[4:16]And I had this like wave of feeling of both like, here I have this like, you know, new creature
[4:21]that has never existed before in the world lying on my body and she is mine to protect
[4:26]and I have no idea how to do that.
[4:28]There's no like manual.
[4:29]I just have to follow my instincts and here we are this species that like, remove, you
[4:36]know, we just kill things off.
[4:37]We destroy things all the time, trumping around.
[4:40]But then we also have the possibility of making something new or bringing something back.
[4:45]and is that hubris, a ridiculous and terrible or is that something beautiful and real?
[4:52]So I knew at that moment that that would be a novel but I didn't know anything about
[4:57]what the actual story would be yet and it kind of sat for a few years before I was ready
[5:02]to pick it up and find the story within that.
[5:06]So it became, it's very much fiction.
[5:08]I am not a biological scientist but it's about a single mom and her two teenage daughters
[5:14]who end up with the chance to try to work on this name of the project and the girls
[5:19]are not on board, they are frustrated and feel like they would rather be home doing teenager
[5:24]things than being dragged around to Siberia with their scientist mom.
[5:29]But it's sort of a question of like, if you love something enough, can you save it?
[5:32]Anything.
[5:33]Well, early in the book, the teenage girls proved to be a great addition to the voyage
[5:39]and end up stumbling on this baby, will we mammoth?
[5:42]And they're going through and they're like, wait, it looks like this might be the trunk
[5:46]or this might be this and then they pull out, now they're the heroes and the mom has
[5:49]become also a hero by association and all of that.
[5:52]What about this notion of like, our kids can actually help our careers in ways we never
[5:57]would have expected it.
[5:58]Yeah, I think that's a question we're always having to ask because the narrative in the
[6:03]world is, it's going to set you back or it's going to be something that you have to
[6:08]sort of battle for both pieces, your job and your kids.
[6:11]They're always going to be sort of like trying to pull from the same pot of time and
[6:15]love and attention and it's going to be like, you're going to be in that thing of scarcity
[6:18]all the time and having to make a choice and whichever one you're going to choose the
[6:23]other one will be hurt by it.
[6:26]And while there's some truth in that and there certainly have been moments for me when
[6:29]I have felt that, I also feel like I know as a writer that my kids are like, they are
[6:36]the source material.
[6:37]Our family that what it is to raise them, what it is to think about somebody going on
[6:42]past me, what it is to love something beyond any reason or material or language.
[6:49]That's like there is so much of that and it's a bounty rather than a scarcity.
[6:54]So even when I'm not writing directly about family, I feel like it's still in there
[6:59]and it's still kind of like it's what I'm pulling from.
[7:02]So some of the book was, I mean I had, that was my second baby, so I had a three
[7:07]year old at the same time and it was, that is like the thick of it where you've got
[7:10]the little, the little one and then the even little or one, like how am I going to do
[7:14]this and they need different things at different times and I had a, my second book was
[7:17]about to be published and I felt like, is it going to work?
[7:20]Is it going to be present?
[7:21]Well, I survived this and I really wanted the answer to be yes.
[7:26]So part of the novel is like that wish to find the story that says yes.
[7:31]all fits together and it all belongs and I get to be whole through it.
[7:36]I don't have to divide myself up between my job and my family.
[7:39]That's amazing.
[7:40]Yeah.
[7:41]The book also raises all these sorts of questions of cloning and what's going to happen
[7:46]in the future and can you revive something and what is the relationship of animals and humans
[7:50]and like it's like this whole broader things like what are we even doing here?
[7:54]Right.
[7:55]It's like this existential notion as well.
[7:56]It's a lots of pack in a novel.
[7:57]It is a lot.
[7:58]It's a whole wild figure out.
[8:01]Were there any massive departures from earlier drafts like when you were first starting
[8:05]to work on it versus later drafts?
[8:08]Well, a very important one was that not just the early drafts, well into the book.
[8:13]I think until really the last big draft, there were four members of the family.
[8:17]The dad was alive.
[8:19]Well, but he was kind of just a shadow of the mom.
[8:22]He was never the point.
[8:23]He was sort of like, he was important because he helped her get her start and he was
[8:27]such older than her.
[8:28]So she was always sort of even when he was alive in the early drafts.
[8:33]She felt a little bit less than she felt like the kind of kid running behind trying to
[8:36]catch up, but he had no real purpose for a long time.
[8:41]And I realized quite suddenly I was like, oh, his purpose is to be in absence.
[8:48]The reason this book is going to work is because he is no longer there and the three
[8:53]women are trying to figure out who they are now with him gone.
[8:58]And it's about grief, the immediate grief, losing somebody, the long-term more existential
[9:03]grief of what we are doing to the planet and what our future here will look like.
[9:08]And it felt like everything came together like completely in a way that it just hadn't
[9:15]until I realized that he was not physically alive anymore.
[9:20]It only took me, I think, like a couple of weeks to sort of pluck him out and to figure
[9:26]out what his death meant.
[9:27]It was so simple and it almost felt like my subconscious had known all along and that
[9:32]was where we were going, but I just hadn't, like it hadn't clicked yet.
[9:38]Yeah.
[9:39]You were really beautifully about that grief from all the perspectives.
[9:42]Did you do that from a place of personal experience?
[9:46]My dad is wonderfully alive, so I have not had that grief yet, yeah, exactly.
[9:52]And I've got all the things.
[9:53]But yeah, from other experiences and from watching people watching my mom lose her
[9:59]mom and...
[10:00]friends lose parents and the way that those absences feel like they just never they shift but
[10:07]they never go away and I didn't you this we are sort of taught like you're gonna it's gonna be
[10:13]super super super sad at first and then it'll get quieter as you go like it you learn to live with it
[10:21]but it doesn't ever go away and it's something that is also instructive and becomes part of
[10:26]our sort of like cellular makeup in our bodies and in the way we make choices in the world
[10:32]and I feel like it's really important actually not to push that away and not to walk away from it
[10:37]and not to do the thing of like it hurts so I have to shut the door but what if you what if you
[10:42]welcome that in and actually like work with it and then put it yeah yeah so remote how did you
[10:53]become a writer we're like go to the beginning just for a minute okay so I think I mean in some
[10:59]ways I feel like the very beginning is that I was a super shy and awkward kid who I had a couple
[11:05]of really close friends mostly one really best friend and that was it and I didn't know how to be
[11:10]like out loud as myself at all and then we had a poetry unit when I was in the sixth grade and I
[11:18]like was myself out loud on the page and I remember so vividly feeling like I said something real
[11:25]that actually belonged to me and it made the leap into someone else and these classmates of my
[11:32]who otherwise found me so I mean probably I didn't even know who I was I was like a non thing
[11:37]but they got it they like felt the thing and they're like whoa that's really that's a really
[11:42]that right pain sense to me like I felt the key is magic so from then I knew that I would write
[11:48]I didn't know what like how career worked or anything obviously I was like 12 years old but
[11:53]it stuck that feeling stuck and I studied poetry in college and then I had this idea to write a
[11:59]novel the only thing that I made me think that it was a novel that it was very long and it had
[12:04]like a lot of narrative stuff but having been a poet I did not have any idea what a novel really
[12:11]was or how it worked at all so after college I took I was like I think it was the second year
[12:16]after I graduated I would terrible the horrible job working as a personal assistant for these two
[12:22]very mean women one of them was a little less mean than the other actually but I hated that job
[12:29]so much so I took Fridays off to write and I felt like that was this is it I have to turn this
[12:33]into something that gets me out of this situation right now and I applied to graduate school
[12:39]in fiction with the concept that this was going to be a novel thing and I had just enough pages
[12:46]to apply and fortunately get in but when I got there and turned a story and everyone was like
[12:53]oh this is the process really closely it's really good it's no interesting that there's no plot
[12:58]and I was like plot what oh no so I put that novel down because I was like I think there's a few
[13:04]things I need to learn about how fiction works before I can do this and I wrote short stories
[13:10]for the two years of the workshop figured out how to write like figure out what a story was what
[13:14]my version of the story was and then I picked that novel that got that actually divided it into
[13:20]because I thought that it was going to be both my grandmothers sort of based on their stories
[13:25]two very different views of the 20th century that like you know poor Romanian Jews and the
[13:30]once very rich midwest earners but it was a little big so I divided it into and that ended
[13:36]by my first two novels so wow look at that two for the first of all yeah although it's
[13:44]definitely two for the present two no I know I'm kidding yeah I know you talked about these
[13:49]like a thousand times but I'm really interesting so the first the first I started in 1939 in
[13:54]Romania and that's more historical fiction and now you've gone to like speck almost speck
[13:59]not speculative but what if yeah how did you approach that versus this some of the approach
[14:05]that feels key to me is that I don't know what I'm doing at the beginning so I don't have like
[14:10]the idea that it becomes historical fiction though that does have fantastical element too so I kind
[14:17]of the fanta I was more guided by the fantastical piece I think than by the idea that it was
[14:23]historical though obviously it's set in 1939 and it was based very much on stories my grandmother
[14:28]told me I'm her only grandchild she's still alive she's 103 and a half oh my gosh she's amazing
[14:37]she's like a mutant superhero yeah she's that's a incredible person so we had a lot of conversations
[14:44]about her her early childhood in Romania and then coming here and you know just all these sort of
[14:50]like little seeds of tales that felt like that's really real that one would when she got
[14:55]she got a bad cough when she was a child there and the prescription was to ride back and forth
[15:00]across the river in a carriage it's like this is why you need to do to get rid of the cough you're
[15:04]gonna like go very quickly across this river in this carriage three times in the coffee keel
[15:08]like that was a real a real thing that happened but also the idea of survival in extreme circumstances
[15:14]so I started with that and I in the beginning it was much closer to trying to follow a more
[15:21]real progression of events based on what I knew and it was okay but I wasn't doing anything
[15:31]new or anything that mattered these are stories that you know you could find elsewhere so I
[15:36]some point I realized that I needed to sort of take a step away from that from trying to recreate
[15:42]the past and move closer to trying to recreate some kind of truth instead and find something
[15:49]that was mine to say and a way that this story would be alive in the present instead of in the
[15:55]past and that's when I have the idea that the so it takes place in this tiny little Jewish village
[16:01]in the Oxbow of a river so they're almost an island and separated from the world and they
[16:07]they realize that the war it has arrived that there's no physical escape possible and so they
[16:14]decide to imagine that nothing else exists to start the world over again and just shut themselves
[16:20]off so there's this leap of imagination and faith that instructs the rest of the story and of
[16:26]course the real world is still going on around them and eventually catches up with them so
[16:30]that's when it was like it became a book then instead of just like you know that sort of document
[16:37]of family stories it sounds like a movie it wasn't it wasn't made into a movie it was not made
[16:42]into a movie no okay it's reminding me of something I'll think of it well it should let's do it
[16:50]okay and then your next novel was much more contemporary commentary on wealth and everything else
[16:56]so talk about that yeah so that's the other that was based on the stories from the other side of
[17:00]the family this one went further into that I believe it's funny to say it goes further into the
[17:04]fictional when the first one is like about people who pretend that the world doesn't exist so that's
[17:08]we say the names again because I want to get them wrong I'm really bad with Tim one is here except
[17:12]all of us and the second one is called sons and daughters of ease and plenty so on my mom's side
[17:20]there was once lots of money mostly from steel but also before that from cotton and you know all of
[17:27]the all those old Kentucky kind of money so the bunny is gone and has been gone for a few generations
[17:33]so I sort of grew up with these stories of this kind of like big this bigness of like feeling like
[17:39]we are I don't know like we come from something something that takes up space which is very much
[17:45]the opposite of the other side there are museum wings with family names you know things there's
[17:49]like a real sort of presence physical presence in the real world but I don't belong in that anymore
[17:57]it like doesn't belong to me so I wanted to write toward that question of what what it means to
[18:04]move away from that kind of that thing that we're taught in this country to move
[18:09]toward so how what happens when we're receiving from that instead of moving toward it and also what
[18:14]is the weight of the way that money was earned slaves and and send industry and all of these things
[18:22]we know to be deeply deeply not right in the novel the losses that he happens very quickly
[18:29]wearing in my real families it was mostly because people were artists they got made in money
[18:35]gets that when you're making art it is not replaced but in the novel I wanted it to be quicker
[18:41]because it felt like it needed to be sort of sudden and shocking and send the mother and father
[18:44]off on different paths to try to reconcile themselves and their identities and who they want to be
[18:49]going forward and each of them they're living Cambridge Massachusetts and each of them
[18:54]believes the other to be home so they think they're the only one that has left but in fact both of
[18:58]them have left meaning that the children are alone in trying to sort of camp out in their backyard
[19:03]and figure out how to be how to be how to exist how to take care of themselves so it takes place
[19:09]over the course of a week and each of them goes on these sort of separate journeys the mother drives
[19:12]across the country with a giant and the dad tries to sail to Bermuda with a pretty lady and the kids
[19:18]are making it work at home just the three of them I feel like that's the experiment I would like to
[19:26]have too like if I were to disappear how would the kids all function in the house without me yeah
[19:31]yeah I mean it would be fascinating yeah yeah I should put a little camera exactly yeah
[19:38]oh my gosh I feel like my kids are just getting the age where I'm like I feel like you guys are good
[19:41]right right I mean you know what to do you know how to talk some food well maybe not that
[19:45]but you didn't call me yeah make that yeah no survival is possible when how old are your kids
[19:53]eight ten and then I have 16-year-olds wins yeah yeah so my yard nine and 12 so it's
[20:00]zone. Yeah. Yeah. Which is good. And we're worrying about them like falling down, you know,
[20:06]the crawling, worries and like panic. Yeah. Okay, you guys have to get the test. Okay. And then
[20:11]you wrote a bunch of short stories and then you have this novel and now what is coming after this
[20:17]because you haven't done enough. I have to ask you about another thing. I mean, it is true that
[20:23]because the book comes out takes the book publishing process as you know is slower than I think
[20:27]people realize. So when a book comes out, it feels like I lived there in that land quite some time
[20:33]ago. And now every time I get to share it, it's wonderful and it's great. But it is where I definitely
[20:37]feel like my sort of writing heart has moved to places. So I'm happy to answer that question.
[20:42]I have three things. I've got a new novel thing. It's very blobby. And it's sort of like these little
[20:49]like little balls of goo that I'm holding on to and I don't at all know what they're going to turn
[20:53]into. But it is something I started. I taught a novel writing class last semester and I wrote alongside
[20:58]my class. So I have what came from that and I'm looking back at it now and trying to figure out
[21:02]what it might turn into. And I try to write one short story every season. Not to do with the season
[21:09]just as a way of like three months is plenty of time to write a story in and amongst all the other
[21:13]things I'm doing. But it also keeps me moving. And I really like that. So I'm still doing that and I
[21:19]probably in another year or so have a full group of them. And then I'm also working on a craft
[21:26]book about getting unstuck. And it's like 101 doorways to get through the next part of the book.
[21:33]So yeah, I'm really excited about that. And I'm hoping that will happen too. So I feel like I'm sort
[21:38]of living in three different little new worlds. I need your craft book. I'm like, can you just
[21:43]could you snip down a few doorways in advance? I don't need 100. It's just like a five, like three.
[21:49]It would be good. Well, you need his one. And where are you based by the way? I was in Boulder, Colorado.
[21:56]Amazing. Yeah. You're like hiking, skings, hiking, skiing, yep, the whole thing. Yes. But the kids are
[22:03]it's funny how hiking is like the last frontier for kids. That's like the hardest thing to get them
[22:08]to do is the easiest thing for me to do. But it's like not, you know, it's not, you're not flying
[22:13]downwards and gravity is not pulling you. So it's the, it's the, but now they can do it. It's like
[22:18]we went for a really great, like really long, I mean long for us, like a mile, like real customer
[22:25]and everyone loved it. And I was like, we did it. We're here. We could, we have raised hikers.
[22:30]Exactly. But yeah, we skiing, do like that country cross country skiing and all those things.
[22:37]Really wonderful. Yeah. What a nice place. Yeah. It is. And what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[22:43]Oh, man. I think the biggest thing and the thing that I always come back to and remind myself of
[22:50]every time is that it's not about like we think of the publication. This is like glimmering beautiful
[22:57]sort of like prize at the top of the hill. And it is lovely for a moment when you get there and
[23:04]you're like, I did it. I have a thing. I can hold it in my hands and I can share with people if that is
[23:08]amazing. And I don't want to minimize it. But it is so brief and so small compared to
[23:15]the actual relationship that you get to build with your own work and your own mind and your own
[23:21]way of noticing your life while you're writing. That is so much longer lasting and so much
[23:28]richer and so much bigger than any of the like accolades or like, you know, pops of champagne
[23:35]that happened. And it's there no matter what that publication process does or doesn't look like.
[23:41]It's there if no one buys the story or the book in the end. It's there when you get a
[23:47]crabby review or don't get a review. It's just like that relationship is real and it's
[23:52]and it's irrefutable and just live there. Like live there as long as you can. Don't rush to the end.
[23:58]That's wonderful. Do you have any books that you are your go-to books?
[24:03]I feel like it changes over time. Justin Torres as we the animals is something I go back to.
[24:08]It's a really different book than I have ever written. So it's not that I'm ever aspiring to
[24:14]that. But it's so tight and so pure that I feel like I can read a few of the vignettes and I'm like,
[24:19]oh yes, that is what writing should be handy. George Saunders was really early and important
[24:25]influence. Still the sort of permission of yes you can write in your own voice and yes you can
[24:31]try something really weird and mean it. I feel really grateful that he exists for those things.
[24:38]And Louise Erdrich is another I mean she's got there's I don't I don't there's not a particular
[24:43]book because she has written prolifically and so well in every book amazing. I don't even know how
[24:48]that is possible. But the sort of that similar like writing as yourself writing about your place
[24:54]in your world and feeling free to move around. She has a lot of work that you know follows similar
[24:59]characters in similar place. But also there they're always surprises. So I want I always
[25:05]want to be surprised by myself. I never want to write the same book again. I always want that
[25:09]feeling of not knowing. So as I'm starting this new Blobby novel thing. I'm like, hey this is hard.
[25:16]I don't know how to do this at all. And even though I will admit the Australia city on the
[25:21]plane on the way here and I'm feeling a little like, oh yeah this is easier places. They're like
[25:27]some magic. How is this book at work? But I also know that that's the pleasure is that I'm going
[25:34]to find my way through the total darkness. And and I'm going to arrive at I'm going to actually
[25:41]learn something. And I'm going to write something that I've never written before. That's the
[25:46]like the the harder it is the more possible reward there is in it too. Wow. I love that. Okay and
[25:54]what are your plans here at the Miami Book Fair today? What what's your panel? What are you doing?
[25:58]I've got a panel right in a little bit on female characters. And I don't know. I'm going to go to
[26:04]some things. I'm going to also probably try to run to the ocean. Not run. Let's take that you
[26:10]Uber. Get me. I feel like this is it feels really good to have some moist air. My hair is very
[26:17]curling. It's it's extra like like widening every minute. I was like I'm not even going to blow
[26:22]dry my hair. Yeah. I'm like I give up. It's not even worth it. It's not worth the 10 minutes.
[26:25]Like I have a total hair. It's like yeah, a little. Yeah. We need a little bit of it. No. It's just
[26:30]and I'm going to embrace the size of the hair that will happen. Yeah. I do that last night. We're on the same
[26:39]page. Yeah. All the things. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on mom's time to read
[26:44]books. Such a pleasure to meet you and congratulations on everything. And I can't wait to read
[26:48]everything. Still to come. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
[26:55]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books. Don't forget to
[26:59]follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for
[27:04]my newsletter at zibiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom
[27:09]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[27:14]And thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:18]now trim music.