Katherine Vaz, ABOVE THE SALT
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[1:03]Katherine Vaz is the author of Above the Salt, a novel.
[1:07]Katherine is a former breaks Copeland Fellow in fiction at Harvard and fellow of the Radcliffe
[1:12]Institute.
[1:13]She's the author of Saudad, Mariana, and Six Language, which was optioned by Harrison
[1:18]Productions, Fado, and other stories, and our Lady of the Artichokes.
[1:23]Above the Salt, which fellish to November by Flatiron, was 18 years in the making.
[1:27]Vaz is the first support to use American to have work recorded for the archives of the
[1:31]Library of Congress.
[1:33]Welcome, Katherine.
[1:34]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Above
[1:37]the Salt, a Novel.
[1:39]Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me on the program, Zippy, and thanks
[1:43]for all you do for writers because it's so encouraging, you know, writers or so solitary.
[1:49]So this is a real treat.
[1:50]Oh, I'm so glad.
[1:52]Happy to help.
[1:53]I love writers.
[1:54]And speaking of, you are so breathtakingly talented, the way that you write.
[1:59]Oh.
[2:00]I'm reading a book that's been assigned in school as like an example of something.
[2:05]I mean, your language is just, it's just amazing, immersive, beautiful, otherworldly,
[2:13]like soulful, spiritual.
[2:15]I don't know.
[2:16]You're a beautiful writer.
[2:18]So I'm sure you know that.
[2:19]But anyway.
[2:20]And you know, it helps to hear that, and it's so encouraging.
[2:25]And I will say that we writers all have their challenges and it really makes sense
[2:30]to look at strengths and weaknesses.
[2:33]And I worked with editors to hone the story and make the story, the spine of it exist
[2:41]on the top of the book and carry people through.
[2:43]And one of the most wonderful comments I've gotten are comments from readers saying, oh, yes,
[2:49]it's a beautiful poetic book, but the story was so great.
[2:53]And it had twists and turns I didn't expect and I cried here, there, which I loved here,
[2:57]of course.
[2:58]So that's always very encouraging.
[3:01]I can give you the capsule version of the book.
[3:03]It's based on true story.
[3:05]And I have Portuguese ancestry and have written a lot about the Portuguese in America.
[3:12]It's a nice time to do that because suddenly Portugal and Lisbon are just exploding with
[3:18]tourism and popularity.
[3:20]But this is based on the true story of a group of people on the Portuguese island of
[3:24]Madeira who were converted to Presbyterianism, violently driven off the island.
[3:30]There was a boy named John Alves who was raised in jail with his mother who was condemned
[3:36]to die for heresy.
[3:38]But believe it or not, Illinois adopted them, took them in very 19th century American generosity
[3:44]at work.
[3:46]And John Alves met and courted and fell in love with someone he met in the Lincoln household.
[3:52]He went off to the Union army, came back and then something happened because he ended
[3:59]up wandering the West for decades before he found her again.
[4:03]So it's kind of a love in the time a cholera meets cold mountain with a Latin Portuguese
[4:09]element, I guess you could say.
[4:10]Wow.
[4:11]Do you mind if I just read like a paragraph or something to give listeners a taste of
[4:15]your of your prose here?
[4:18]This is still from the beginning, but this is this is when John is in prison with his mom
[4:23]and he's screaming.
[4:24]She's just been taken away.
[4:25]He gasped when his throat offered nothing more, not even raw bleeding, a wash over
[4:29]him came music.
[4:30]People were singing the hymn pouring out our rapture suite.
[4:33]The sounds traveling.
[4:34]He guessed from the hillock between the dolphin flexi and the jail men and women and children
[4:38]funneling words to heaven that heaven and turn was raining upon him.
[4:42]The tiny fish in the tides swished and salted the wind that blew the melodies of these
[4:47]unseen souls to him.
[4:50]Someone was splitting pineapples with a machete commanding the breezes to carry the juices
[4:54]spray.
[4:55]Oh, happy home, where thou art loved light of light enlightened me.
[4:59]The songs commanded him to abide by mama's anthem.
[5:02]If you live through one minute, you can survive the next.
[5:06]Drink us up.
[5:07]Eat us up.
[5:08]The world is a musical instrument.
[5:10]The banana trees sway like tall, jeweled women with violent hair who are mad to dance
[5:14]but only in one spot, such a racket.
[5:17]And someone somewhere is splitting a guava or beating egg whites until they form castles.
[5:22]Listen, someone is opening a fish, lifting the spine by its tail to get to the meat
[5:26]still printed with the memory of its bones.
[5:29]I mean, that's just gorgeous.
[5:31]It's just gorgeous.
[5:32]I mean, it's so evocative.
[5:34]It's like all these things, even how birds can sustain you.
[5:38]Oh, just all the language.
[5:40]I don't know.
[5:41]It's just stunning.
[5:42]I had a lot of help with the practical work of making the story move.
[5:47]And that comes naturally to my husband, bless his heart says, you know, Catherine, you
[5:51]missed your calling.
[5:52]You should have been a poet.
[5:53]But to me, they're not they're one and the same.
[5:55]I mean, you can be a novelist who has a poetic voice that just channels through me.
[5:59]There was a funny thing that happened.
[6:01]I live in New York City as you do.
[6:03]And I was walking in Gourmet garage.
[6:06]If you remember, actually, I was buying groceries and the only passage in that book that
[6:12]didn't have revisions or changes was one when I was shopping at Gourmet Garage.
[6:17]And the last passage in the entire book came whole into my head.
[6:23]And it's the only one I kept intact at the end.
[6:27]And it was funny because I very calmly finished shopping.
[6:29]I went home and I sort of tilted my head forward and wrote verbatim what had come into
[6:34]my head.
[6:35]But that's a gift.
[6:36]Writers will tell you that's the sort of thing that's just this magical gift that happens
[6:39]and it's very rare.
[6:40]Gourmet garage.
[6:41]You know, tons of people.
[6:42]Is it out of business?
[6:43]I thought it was still there.
[6:44]It's not a business.
[6:45]I liked it.
[6:46]But, you know, I'm just like, so you've written several other novels and short stories
[6:53]and children's books.
[6:54]And you are just a writer's writer.
[6:56]How did this all begin and how have you been able to, you know, continually innovate
[7:02]and have more products and new ideas and, you know, take us through like how that has
[7:07]happened for you?
[7:08]Well, I was one of those lucky people who instead of just thinking of writing as something
[7:13]I wanted to do, I knew at the age of 12 there was an actual model where I thought that
[7:19]this is who I am.
[7:21]As, you know, the voyage getting from there to here.
[7:24]I mean, there was, I went to a Catholic school called our Lady of Grace in California.
[7:27]And Sister Anna Maria, I think wrote something on the board and said, use these words
[7:33]in a sentence.
[7:34]And I don't remember the sentence I wrote, but I remember the sensation of feeling like
[7:38]it just got given to me and I thought, this is what I want for the rest of my life.
[7:45]Now, being a child, I didn't realize how circuitous the road would be.
[7:51]But I think we all know that sensation where you are kind of wandering and you don't
[7:56]know what to do.
[7:57]What's right about whatever you're dealing with.
[8:00]And suddenly you think, ah, that's it.
[8:03]And the issue for just life in general, not just writers is the patience required to get
[8:08]to those moments where you think this is it.
[8:10]Now, in this case for this book, it accumulates your life accumulates.
[8:15]And I was invited to give a talk at the Library of Congress in the Hispanic Division about
[8:21]my previous book.
[8:24]And the woman in charge said, they have a really strange exhibit in the map room.
[8:29]I really want to show you.
[8:31]And it was something called the Portuguese Protestants of Illinois, which made us laugh.
[8:35]And she said, you know, this sounds like something would be right if you're alley.
[8:39]And I did a little preliminary research, but I thought, no, I don't know.
[8:44]It was like my own love story.
[8:46]I don't know about this guy.
[8:47]And I don't know if I want to get involved.
[8:51]And then suddenly, I read an interview with him in which he talks about being an old man
[8:56]going back to the Lincoln household.
[8:58]And I have this in the book.
[9:00]And he is so overcome with memories of love when he was a young man that his hand is shaking
[9:08]too much to sign the Lincoln guest book.
[9:12]And another person there has to do it for him.
[9:15]And that kept me going.
[9:17]If I took over 15 years to write this book, that kept me going.
[9:22]Not the goals or the plots or much is that moment of what kind of love was that as an old
[9:31]man, the memory is making him shake so much he can't sign his name, a competent person
[9:38]physically able can't sign his name.
[9:41]And when I was in Illinois doing research, it was a wonderful moment where they were so
[9:46]happy in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library that I was not there to check genealogy
[9:52]like my great uncle had been, or great great uncle was the Paul Bear or Phil Lincoln, that
[9:56]kind of thing, that they kept running down to the vault for me.
[10:00]and saying, let's get the guest book up. Let's get Mary Todd Lincoln's cookbook. Let's bring it
[10:04]up, which was wonderful because the dessert pages were stuck together with sugar. So I'm a real
[10:10]believer in when you do a book. It's not just fact or word. It's bringing the world into your veins
[10:18]and going out and being surprised, meaning people. In Illinois, I met a botanist at Illinois
[10:25]my college named Dr. Laurence Zettler, who was developing ghost orchid perfume. And I thought
[10:31]that has to be a cameo in my book because who knew that ghost orchids were out in the prairie of
[10:37]Illinois? And it was only last year that in London at the Royal Agricultural Garden Annual event,
[10:45]he gave me a vial of ghost orchid perfume because we went there basically to get it. I wish I
[10:51]could tell you it's this intoxicating wonderful sand, but it was kind of sort of neutral smelling.
[10:58]But I think research like life, you have to say, all right, world, let me open my veins. I mean,
[11:06]Emily Dickinson has a beautiful line about keeping the soul a jar. And that is, I think, what
[11:13]writers have to do because we get very goal-oriented. We get, here's my plan, here's my outline.
[11:19]And then we miss that point of going from discipline and will into inspiration and saying,
[11:27]all right, tell me what the story is. So that part of it really took a lot of years to get right
[11:33]in terms of writing these characters. It's been a real thrill to have it done, though, I must say.
[11:40]I mean, it got into People magazine as a book of the week. It got, you know, you put it on
[11:46]your top 15 list for November. And I've been so heartened by readers writing to me saying that they
[11:55]fell in love with Mary and John and my characters. And that means the world to me as a writer.
[12:01]That just made it all worthwhile. It's amazing keeping the soul open. I love that. I feel like in your
[12:09]book, the way you write about love is particularly soulful and packed full. What are you tapping
[12:16]into in your own life, if anything? Which loves are you? Yeah, I feel like you're putting an IV into
[12:24]and dreams are really great question. And I think one thing I wanted to get across
[12:29]is there's this wonderful Portuguese word that people are hearing more and more now, which is so
[12:33]Dodd and in Brazil, they say so dodgy, which is most of you, one of those impossible to define
[12:39]words. But it means the kind of longing for people or places that are missing so that the absence
[12:49]of them is the biggest presence in your life. And you can have so Dodd for people who are still
[12:53]in your life, but there's that longing. And I think that attitude, that a capacity for grief
[12:59]and sorrow increases your capacity for joy and love was something that I always grew up with.
[13:08]And that was that emotional capacity is large if you can contain all those things because
[13:17]being in love with someone, of course, is you accept grief that might come. You take it all in.
[13:25]And I think one of the things that happened to me personally when I was writing the book
[13:30]was my father died. This is now about 10 years ago. So it was one third of the way through.
[13:36]And he's kind of in the character of, that his name was August, the Mary's father.
[13:42]And he was a magical gardener. And so that got me through that. I put a lot of the love I had
[13:48]for my dad who came from the Azores. His family came from Azores. And I felt a lot of love and
[13:55]missing him. So I think the love of Mary for her father was the flip side of my grief.
[14:03]You know, and I think that those aren't opposites. We tend to shy away from grief and sadness.
[14:09]And I think the idea of embracing it as part of having a large capacity is important.
[14:14]But there's another personal thing, which is a lot more fun, which is that at the beginning of
[14:19]this book, when I was the Radcliffe Institute for starting it, I met Christopher Surf and
[14:26]the entire span of our relationship together has been this book. So I've been
[14:30]doing my own love story while writing this long love story. I won't tell people how it turns out
[14:36]later in life. So that fueled me too. And I guess just that feeling of books and language
[14:44]are a way of sharing the language we all feel inside. But we don't really use on a day-to-day
[14:51]basis. We can't. I mean, even when you're fond of someone, even when you love someone, you don't
[14:56]constantly say it. And we all come up with cliches when, you know, we try to comfort people or say
[15:02]we love someone. And I think language and books and love stories are a way of really getting into
[15:09]that bedrock of emotion where language can help us connect with each other.
[15:15]That's beautiful. Really beautiful. I'm so sorry about your dad. And now I want to hear more
[15:19]about your following in love with Christopher Surf, who, by the way, was on this podcast
[15:24]just about many years ago. Yes. Wait, tell me about that. And what was that like? And had
[15:29]were you both married previously? Or what? I don't know. This is not about this. But tell me
[15:33]my second marriages for both later in life. And I will say this is very amusing because I have
[15:38]young people, both men and women, young men and women, who come up and say, oh my god, you're
[15:44]my model because otherwise I just I just want to give up. And I said, well, I did give up.
[15:48]You know, I was alone for a number of years. And it had that feeling of a later in life love
[15:55]when I met Chris. We had actually met like 25 years before in California, but didn't even go out.
[16:01]And he lives in New York, I lived in California. And I was at the Radcliffe Institute at a party.
[16:07]And a wonderful woman named Liddie Hess, who people in the publishing world will recognize as
[16:12]someone who is this wonderful person able to put editors and all sorts of places. She ran a publishing
[16:19]program, the Columbia publishing program, said his name. And I said, oh my gosh, I haven't heard
[16:23]that name in years. And I had a friend named Varlio Connor, who had a book coming out with
[16:29]Bellevue literary press, which was put out by Bellevue hospital. They were doing books on medical
[16:35]topics. And she had an article the cure coming out. And I said to him, well, I'm going to a
[16:40]book party at Bellevue Hospital. You're welcome to join me. So our first date was at Bellevue Hospital
[16:45]for a book party, which was a wonderful marriage of all sorts of things. And I knew my life had
[16:50]changed right away. This is very romantic, but we kissed in the cab kind of sat back like it was a
[16:55]movie scene. I got out and went to my hotel sat on the end of the bed. We'd had dinner and talked
[17:02]for four hours. The phone rang again. And he said, I wanted to hear your voice again. So that was
[17:07]it, me. Oh, I know, isn't that, I mean, you know, whenever we have a quar, I think, oh, but you
[17:13]have such a good story. You know, it's like to the course, you know, it's okay. He's very dear. And
[17:20]of course, he's comes from a publishing family. His dad started random house and Chris went
[17:26]into Sesame Street. So he's a joyful, colorful person. So that inspires me. I married someone who
[17:32]really inspires me. Oh, my gosh. I love that. So you said you were working on this for 15 years.
[17:37]But meanwhile, you've had all these other things come out and, you know, have been so prolific
[17:43]in so many ways. What happened? Do you just like leave it on the computer and every so often
[17:48]go back to it? Or like, how do you keep the momentum without forgetting what's happening?
[17:52]I feel like if I don't work on something for a little bit, then I have to read it all the way
[17:56]from the beginning. And then I'm like, wasted all this time. And I'm like, oh, forget it.
[17:59]Like, how do you keep going back into something over a prolonged period of time without sort of
[18:03]losing the thread and keeping all the momentum? Well, the, the, the proper answer to that is I do
[18:09]lose the momentum, lose the thread. And I have to go back and say, maybe I've lost that for a
[18:14]reason. Maybe I'm almost trying to tell me something that and I try to go back. And it accumulates,
[18:21]but I feel like I work very slowly. There's a wonderful thing. If I can give a gift to your listeners,
[18:26]it's that friend introduced me to something called the Pomodoro technique. Do you know what that is?
[18:33]I've heard, yes, I've heard other authors talk about it. You can Google it. So people who are
[18:37]listening can look it up in brief. It's 25 minute timed work sessions that sound awful and too
[18:45]disciplined and uptight. And I thought, I don't know, I don't think this will work. But a very magical
[18:50]happened suddenly 25 minutes goes the timer rings. And you think, how did I do that? I just wrote a
[18:55]page. There's a capacity you have to have for letting the world surprise you and letting the world
[19:01]come in and say, here's what's going to happen. And when you try to wheel something in place,
[19:08]it doesn't work as much as saying all right world, let me embrace you and see what happens.
[19:14]And one of the things that happened is 20 years after finishing my second book, which was called
[19:20]Mariana, which is about a nun who has a love affair in Portugal. It's based also on a possibly true
[19:27]story. That was in six languages. It did better in Europe because she's a romantic icon in Europe.
[19:34]20 years after that, a woman named Anne Harrison who'd been optioning at found a woman named Sandy
[19:41]Welsh in London to do the screenplay, which is now in process. And Sandy is a very accomplished
[19:48]wonderful artist who's done a lot of things for the BBC, like Jane Eyre, Emma, she does these
[19:55]literary adaptations. That came after 20 years.
[20:00]finishing something.
[20:01]So one thing that does keep me going
[20:04]is that trying to be calm and saying,
[20:06]all right, world, what gives her out there.
[20:09]And the world is such a tormented, difficult place
[20:14]full of so much horror and conflict.
[20:17]And I think a capacity for saying,
[20:21]please world be beautiful and do something.
[20:25]Maybe I can share it is, well, who knows?
[20:27]but that's kept me going.
[20:29]That's kept me going as a writer.
[20:30]Wow, that's beautiful.
[20:32]What are you working on now, now that you're,
[20:34]this big work has come out?
[20:36]Yes, you can.
[20:36]Thank you.
[20:37]I'm actually trying my hand at a screen play
[20:40]based on one of my stories.
[20:42]I studied screenplays back in my 20s
[20:46]to learn about story structure.
[20:47]That was a usually useful tool.
[20:49]And I've had a lot of students
[20:52]who've gone on to be very successful
[20:54]in screenwriting world and writing.
[20:57]And they say, you know, Katherine,
[20:59]you taught us how to do that and use movies as an example
[21:03]about story spines.
[21:05]Why don't you try one?
[21:06]I think I'm still a novelist and short story writer.
[21:10]But I'm doing that as a way of moving on.
[21:13]My next book, here's what I hope
[21:17]that it's short, contemporary, and funny.
[21:19]Oh, we'll see if that happens.
[21:22]But that's my aim.
[21:24]I just read Beasting, which I maybe laugh a lot.
[21:28]It means it is a tough book, too.
[21:30]And I thought, oh, you know, this is wonderful, a family
[21:34]and a humorous story.
[21:35]It seems like something to try.
[21:37]So something short and contemporary.
[21:40]And I think it's very difficult for writers to be
[21:43]in that fallow period where you think,
[21:45]all right, what's next?
[21:47]And that learning that kind of patience
[21:49]is another kind of lesson.
[21:52]What else are you reading?
[21:53]At the moment, I've just started open-throat by Henry Holt.
[21:59]I just read Andrew Ritker's hope.
[22:01]Oh, yeah.
[22:02]Yeah, he's someone I met at the breakfast you hosted.
[22:05]And I loved that book.
[22:08]So I just finished that.
[22:10]The Center for Fiction sent me some books because we're friends
[22:14]and let us descend is next on my list.
[22:17]I did want to read The Profit by Paul Lynch.
[22:20]That got that lined up.
[22:21]And I've had the James McBride have an earth grocery store
[22:25]kind of queued up to move on to as well.
[22:29]So I've got a pile of New Yorkers to get through.
[22:32]But I think reading is a good thing
[22:35]to fill up with in these in between phases.
[22:38]I tend to work on one thing at once so that my brain can
[22:42]stay attuned to the one thing without jumping,
[22:47]trying to become and waiting for those things that
[22:49]might happen for the thing I'm working on.
[22:51]That, yeah, other people have different ways of doing things.
[22:54]But that's mine.
[22:55]Amazing.
[22:56]OK, last pieces of advice for aspiring authors.
[23:00]Yeah, I think I have a really creative one,
[23:02]which is don't call yourself aspiring.
[23:05]You can change your life the moment you decide who you are.
[23:09]Without getting out of the chair, where you listen,
[23:11]if you say, not, I want to do this one day, but I am a writer.
[23:15]And I believe in making actual physical gestures
[23:19]to the world to be part of that community
[23:23]in a generous, heart-responsive way.
[23:26]For example, when I was a somewhat penniless college student,
[23:30]and I knew who I was and what I wanted to be.
[23:34]And I wasn't sure how to join that world.
[23:36]I didn't really know any writers.
[23:38]I decided to subscribe to a few literary magazines, which
[23:41]at the time came in the mail to you and to read them.
[23:45]And that was my way of contributing to the arts,
[23:48]you might say, some gesture to the world.
[23:50]There was a well-known artist I met in Los Angeles
[23:54]who said to me something that haunted me and stayed with me.
[23:56]He said, never trust anyone who's jealous
[23:59]for the successes of his friends or her friends.
[24:02]And I think being big-hearted is the way to go.
[24:08]But decide who you are, look up the Pomodoro technique,
[24:13]maybe, and belong to the world immediately.
[24:16]And then it's a long road that will be your own.
[24:19]That's amazing.
[24:20]So inspiring.
[24:22]What a story, both your own story and above the salt.
[24:25]Congratulations.
[24:27]And it's just a pleasure to talk to you.
[24:29]Well, this was such a pleasure.
[24:31]And I've been looking forward to it so, so much.
[24:33]And thank you again for just champion authors and books
[24:38]and writers, because it does make a difference.
[24:40]So thank you.
[24:42]You're welcome.
[24:43]Thank you so much.
[24:44]Hope to see you again soon.
[24:45]OK, you bet.
[24:46]OK, bye, Kat, bye, bye, bye.
[24:49]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[24:51]Have Time to Read Books.
[24:52]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans,
[24:56]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:58]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[25:00]and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:02]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[25:04]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[25:07]for the Sound Editing.
[25:08]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[25:10]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.