>> Jeniffer: Hey there, I'm Jennifer Thompson and today we have a special treat for you. I will be doing an interview for Warwicks of La Jolla. Warwick's is one of the oldest bookstores in the nation and it is fantastic. If you have a chance to go visit, I recommend it. In fact, buy all of their books. Every book they have is good, including this one. Let's begin. Bye. You telling us a little bit about this book? >> Téa Obreht: Okay, first of all, thank you so much
for agreeing to do this. thank you so much, Warwicks, for having me back. this is such a lovely homecoming. Always. I, ah, see familiar faces and some new faces and I'm very, very delighted to be here with you all. so I wrote this book, this book kind of surprised me. I feel like books are always surprising me. I'm always working on something that I'm telling my publisher handing in, and then I kind of go astray and end up writing something
else. but, as per that very apt description, this book is about, mothers and daughters and ah, climate, ah, refuge. And, it follows Sil. She's an eleven year old climate refugee from a place that's referenced in the book only as back home. and she arrives to a half submerged metropolis called Island City, and her aunt Enna is the superintendent of this luxury tower called the Morningside.
and Syl and her mother, who's very reticent to talk about the past, very tight lipped about it, they move in with aunt Enna and, Sil's aunt is a great deal more, open about both Sil's heritage and the past and begins telling her folk tales from back home. And Sil uses these as a prism to try to understand the world around her and she becomes obsessed with the upstairs neighbor, Bezie Duraz, who is mysterious and lives in the penthouse with these three huge dogs that might be more than they
appear. so, ah, that's my elevator pitch and, that usually gets a laugh, that bond. >> Jeniffer: That's okay. >> Téa Obreht: but I wanted to read, just very briefly from the very beginning of the book. I was so determined to write this in total chronological order, which I've never done before. and I was like, right, no time loops this time. Just write from the beginning of the story through the end of the story.
And then I finished the first draft and realized that actually I did need a prologue because, everything is time loops. so the book actually opens with silver years after the events of the book, and she's 27 and this is where we meet her for the first time. I'll just read very briefly. An old familiar dread was waiting for me this morning. I couldn't tell where it came from. It hadn't followed me out of a dream, at least not one
I could remember. But when I got up there it was in everything the airless heat of the motel room, the halo of sunlight around the window shades, the vacant smile of the girl at the front desk when she took the key from my hand. I thought it might stay behind when I left the motel, but it hitched a ride through the desert with me just sitting there, tightening the world it knew me so well. When I got to the train station, I finally gave in and did what I knew
the feeling was after me to do. I looked up my mother. I hadnt done it in a long time because the suspense made me sick. Even though what I imagined I would read was always worse than what was actually posted. It didnt feel like the kind of morning for bad news. Quiet, unusually free of wildfire, smoke, blue and windless. The train was light, the platform mostly empty. A few passengers had drifted out of the station and were standing in the sun as they looked down the track.
The handful of others like me were clearly there to meet someone. It was the calmest I'd felt all week, so I thumbed my mother's name into the search bar. There was the brief nervousness that always stopped my breath before the forums loaded, the dread of something having changed, some new poisonous derangement. Usually there was nothing, hadn't been for years. Today was different. A new picture had been added to the Bellin case file. It was not as I always feared it would be, a police
snapshot of Mila's corpse. It was a Polaroid, taken almost 16 years before the day we arrived in island city. In the picture, my mother and I are backlit by the vanishing sun, standing side by side on Morningside street. Our suitcases aren't quite out of view. We're m smiling half heartedly, hovering just far enough away from each other to make a comfortable embrace impossible. My mother looks worn and flustered, standing there in an old dress of mine that is clearly too long for
her. I'm the tallest eleven year old you've ever seen. Gangly, shapeless. I've got my arms some of the way around my mother's shoulders and am obviously smiling just to oblige. The person behind the camera, my aunt Enna, whom I haven't yet hugged hello. I remembered the moment the picture was taken and vaguely remembered seeing the finished result pinned up on our fridge until it disappeared under months of repopulation program
leaflets. I hadn't seen it since we escaped and hadn't thought about it in years. But, here it was, after all this time, who had put it up and how the hell had they gotten hold of it? And when? Here I'd been going about my life, thinking this memory and this picture were back in the past, somewhere invulnerable to even the kinds of things I was afraid
of. And yet, for some unknown while strangers had been peering at it on their cursory journey through the handful of forms still devoted to the question of my mother's criminality, it didn't take me long to feel dizzy enough to faint. When the vendor walked by, I got a bottle of water from him and drank the whole thing in one tilt. Then it got worse. In the background of the photo, way up the sloping street behind us, I recognized the unmistakable form of Bezie
Duraz. She was just starting up the hill, and her three dogs, rangy silhouettes, black as the gaps between stars, were out ahead of her. Whatever I remembered of this photo, Bezie Duraz certainly wasn't part of it. Neither were the dogs. How funny, I thought. Here I'd had a very different, very specific memory of the first time I saw her. And all the while this picture had been out there, confirming an entirely incompatible truth.
Some stranger whose name I did not know and face I would never see had held all of us together in the palm of their hand. Bessie, my mother, me, even Enna. Off screen, the only person absent from the scene, fittingly enough, was Mila, of course. Also fittingly enough, she was the only person the people commenting on the picture really cared about. They couldn't put any of it together. The furthest they could get with it was,
isn't this the woman from the Bellin case? Which earned them a smattering of replies from strangers. For the first time in years, I thought about adding my two cent. What harm would it do to chime in to write something like, you don't have the first clue? There were plenty of anonymous comments. Nothing would set mine apart, nothing would point back to
me. But then the loudspeaker crackled to life, announcing the coming train, and I xed out of the forum, stood, and went forward with my little sign. Thank you. >> Jeniffer: That opening for me was so incredible to read, and I had never read any of your books, so this was such a treat to open to this, and I want to start at the beginning, you did something that was so palpable, in that first. Those first words, those moments when you wake up, like in a weird hotel room and the
light around the window, I felt that. That feeling of dread, that feeling of, like there's something not right. This darkness that's tugging at you. And to create that feeling just drew me in. So, well done. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Jeniffer: So I wanted to ask you about this. Well, actually, I'm gonna hold this question. It's about memory. First, I want to ask you, where did you get the idea to write this book?
>> Téa Obreht: from several different places kind of all at once. M and so I'll try to answer that question as succinctly as possible. I feel like I'm still sort of learning how to talk about the book. And part of that is trying to figure out a succinct way to answer this question. so my husband and I met and lived in New York for eight years. it's the longest I'd lived anywhere. And, we began to leave it, and then when the pandemic hit, we left it full time, kind of in a hurry,
as most people did. and. Or, I mean, most people who left. Not most people. Most people did not leave in New York. I think you can find many of them still live there. succinct is going great. So, I had wanted to write about urban living in, particular in a metropolis like New York. I'd grown up in cities all my life, but one of the things that has happened to me continuously is an inability to write
about a place when I'm living in it. So the moment we got to Wyoming, I was like, yeah, God, New York. there had been. I had struggled for a long time with the feeling that I didn't quite know the city very well, even though I'd lived there for a long time. kind of because I'm an immigrant. I've lived here now for 23 years, but I still feel sort of like a stranger in a strange land, which I think is quite common for immigrants. And, there is the sense that you don't
quite know all of it. You can't quite get all the way into a place. and so I always felt like I did not know the city very well. And people, you moved to New York, people are always telling you, like, you missed its heyday. Like, its heyday was in the seventies or the eighties, and, like, so you'll never really know it. So that really contributes to it. But there were a lot of these sort of small moments that I realized after we left really belonged to me.
Like the experience of having a developer tear down part of the jewish seminary on our street and build an enormous luxury tower. or like the experience of seeing this tiny elderly woman, in the street one day, walking three huge rottweilers on a chain, sort of like in the middle of the sunset, just walking them. and I realized that that was my New York.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. >> Téa Obreht: and I tried to put them together first into a short story, and the first image that popped out at me was this mother and daughter walking hand in hand, down a dark street towards a building that was half lit. and in the street was water, which was clearly the tide. and so everything came from that image. >> Jeniffer: A vision. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah, a vision. Like, it always. I feel like it always
starts with a bit of a vision for me. Just a moment that I want to ask questions about. >> Jeniffer: And you just keep exploring. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Jeniffer: And what I loved so much about this book, too, is it was so clearly in New York, in Manhattan, and I could. Could just picture it. I felt like I was really in Manhattan, and I was experiencing this post apocalyptic, you know, climate change had really sunken the lower east side
and taken over, and I was so there. What I loved most about it, and we'll still get back to memory, by the way, I haven't forgotten that. yes. What I loved most about it was it was from the perspective of this young girl. Right? So we get to see it through her eyes and her world, which was so apocalyptic. Like, there's no food, there's not enough for anyone. Like, the living conditions are so difficult. Did you know from the very beginning that it was her story?
>> Téa Obreht: I knew from the very beginning that it was, the story of a person young enough to not be able to assess the world accurately or quote unquote accurately. >> Jeniffer: which is what I really love the most about it, is, like, I started to figure out that, oh, it's because she's so young that we're seeing it this way.
>> Téa Obreht: I think it, she's sort of. She's at that age where she's, you know, her mother is the center of her world, but her mother isn't giving her a lot of stories, and she isn't giving her a lot of context. And so Sil is trying very hard throughout the book to build her own context for what, you know, for what this new society is that she's come to, for what the past is made of. and what's truth and what's fiction
and, you know, what's exaggeration. And, she kind of settles on this notion, as a result of her aunt's storytelling, that only she sees certain aspects of the world for what they really are, which is like a very eleven year old thing to be. But I think it's also a kind of wishful thinking, on the part of people who arrive in new places that they've brought with them the mechanism to understand where they've come. >> Téa Obreht: so, yeah, well, and it just.
>> Jeniffer: Felt like everyone must be living in these terrible conditions. And then very slowly we start to realize, oh, no, it's just her family, it's the immigrant, it's the refugee, and there are people who have plenty, their dogs have more than she has. And the way that that unfolded was just brilliant. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. >> Jeniffer: The whole book I found to be really brilliant.
So I want to get back to memory, though, because I had so many experiences that felt so personal in this book. Of course it is. It's coming from your head, so it's very personal. But this idea of having this memory that's yours, and then you start to realize, my memory is wrong. So those feelings for this, you know, she's older, but there's a couple times in the book where she realizes that she's wrong and her memory is wrong. Talk to us about where this, where this comes from for you.
>> Téa Obreht: That's a great, that's a great question. I think it comes from, you know, this sort of. So much of the book is about storytelling and kind of the way people decide to frame things for themselves. And Sil
is very invested. Like, her whole vision of her childhood, I think, is very centered, around a particular way of looking at these moments, a particular way of looking at her mother, of looking at, the, the journey that they've taken together and the parts of the journey that they weren't able to take together because there's a thing that happens about halfway well, two thirds of the way through the book that rifts them. That's, all I'll say, well done.
and so this, this feeling of, you know, I think it's a very destabilizing feeling and it's probably one that we all share. Right. This, this idea of I, I thought I knew something and I kind of reinforced it for myself. Maybe. Maybe it's a story that you've heard. I've certainly had this experience where, like a parent or a family member tells you a story about something that you did not attend, like, that you didn't witness, and then suddenly you were forming this memory about it.
And this is definitely how it happened. Right. And then evidence search surfaces from some other participant, or even in my case, occasionally this has happened where the person who was telling you the story initially is just like, oh, no, no, no. It actually went like this, and she's, like, changed it around on me. Now what? M so just the instability of memory and how, invested we are in sort of trying to keep it, like, a very tight hold on it. But actually, m it's very ephemeral. It's all
very ephemeral. And reality is kind of ephemeral, and even rules in this world and in our world are ephemeral, right? Like, this is a world in which people aren't really supposed to eat meat, and yet it turns out in the book that, like, quite a lot of people eat meat all the time. They avail themselves of it because they can. And, so I think, yeah, I think that's sort of all dovetailed in the book. >> Jeniffer: One of the other things I really loved about it was
mother, who, by the way, doesn't have a name. Did I miss her name? She doesn't have a name. >> Téa Obreht: She doesn't have a name. >> Jeniffer: Was there a reason for this that we didn't get a name for her? >> Téa Obreht: I think it's that sill sort of just sees her as mother. >> Jeniffer: So that's it. Through her eyes. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Jeniffer: So when you're writing a, coming of age story for adults, and your character is eleven, was it difficult to write smart?
Smartly. Right. But keep that naivety and that sense of wonder, that childlike wonder. Did you have to, like, check yourself sometimes and not go too much into making it sound too adults? >> Téa Obreht: I actually had to check myself first. in the first draft, I actually did write chronologically from start to finish.
and everything that in the first draft was very messy, but all the sort of moving parts of the book emerged in it, which was a huge surprise, and which is one of the first signs for me that something is working. but that draft sneered at sil a lot, kind of because I was trying to navigate that space between a very young person's vision of the world and give the reader a bit of room to feel out the reality and be able to. To suss it out in their
own time, in their own context. and the result was that she was, you know, she was overly precocious and she was sort of overly anxious about all these things. And it was very obvious. And the book didn't take a very kind lens to her. But then I found that what it was actually missing was the prologue. M and this cast of an older person looking back
quite generously on themselves. And I think it was that this idea of, like, being able to look back at yourself when you were young and be like, you might have been mistaken, but you weren't foolish. Like, it makes total sense that this is what you thought and maybe you weren't mistaken at all. Right.
And so I think in many ways people have been, there's been some discussion here and there about, like, whether the book is ya because it features a protagonist of this age, but I don't think it is because it looks, ah, through this older lens, very kindly on a young person who is also interested in their relationship with their parent, and interested in sort of understanding their parent better. >> Jeniffer: Absolutely not. Ya.
No, I never thought it was a ya. And I thought, oh, it's so well done that we really do. She is so naive and she is eleven, and we love her so much. Her relationship with her mother, I think. I mean, I know that you had a baby, you were just having a baby when you wrote this book, weren't yet in a relationship, and your daughter's too. Right. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Jeniffer: So, I mean, but what I found so incredible was, so the mother is trying to protect the daughter by
not giving her information. So what this does is it confuses the daughter and makes her want to protect the mom. >> Téa Obreht: Right. >> Jeniffer: So they're in this relationship where they're not sharing enough information. They're hiding things from each other to protect each other. Talk to us more about where this comes from for you. >> Téa Obreht: This comes from very close to the bone.
I found, I don't know if it was a result of, my particular family and the particular circumstances under which we left the former Yugoslavia, or the sort of cultural shape of families in the balkans. >> Jeniffer: May I ask how old you were when you left? >> Téa Obreht: I was seven when we left. >> Jeniffer: Okay. >> Téa Obreht: and twelve when we came to the states. Like twelve and a half. >> Jeniffer: So very similar to sill turns. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. so. And don't think that
didn't occur to me afterwards. I was like, oh, that's close. but there was this sense, you know, of the war was happening. people were getting dispatches from home that were horrific. And the idea was like, just don't let her know all the things that are happening. But of course, and I think the book is very much, about this, too. Adults don't do a stellar job of hiding things from kids. Right. Of like, managing their own stress in like, particularly horrific situations. Right.
Like, And it was noticeable to me that my grandmother had an actual nervous breakdown because she didn't know if people that she loved were alive or dead under shelling in moster, you know. and I think that effort to protect, Yeah. That sort of circularity that you're talking about, I think it came from a very surprisingly personal place. because that dynamic of sort of. I just don't want you to be stressed by this is very much the circumstance under which I grew up.
>> Téa Obreht: No. >> Jeniffer: Experience. Fantastic. There's so much magic too, and fantasy in this book, which I think is one of the reasons why I love it so much. It's so well done and you're so generous to the reader. She gives us so much opportunity to make our own decisions about what happens and what's true and what's not true. Talk to us about the m mythology and some of the lore that creeps into this book. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you. Thank you.
>> Jeniffer: Well, it doesn't creep in. It's a big character. >> Téa Obreht: And then it kind of creeps and grows. No, you're right. Like creeping. I think it kind of, I think the extent to which it kind of, I see it. It's funny that you said creeping because I do it visualize it as like a vine that's, that's growing inside the book all the time. Like it sort of starts with a big moment at the beginning, and then it kind of, its tendrils wrap around everything.
>> Jeniffer: there's a well, and I'm gonna interrupt you. >> Téa Obreht: No, please. >> Jeniffer: The way you did it is so perfect because it's just a story that's told. And then throughout, you're like, oh, I'm starting. Oh. You know. And you're calling back to this story that's now taking a bigger place on the stage. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you. Thank you. >> Jeniffer: I interrupted you. I'm so sorry. >> Téa Obreht: No, this is lovely. No, no, no. I believe
that conversations, we interrupt each other to be like. And also, no, it's a, I have a two year old. I interrupt people all the time. so the main folk tale in the middle of this story is the myth of the vila. the vila is a figure of slavic mythology and folklore. she's a nymph of, woodlands, rivers, mountains. she's the kind of spirit of, the divine feminine in nature. She's a powerful entity, but she's fickle. she's not exactly malevolent, but she's out for herself.
and in slavic mythology, she often stands in opposition to sort of the abrahamic efforts of the new kingdom, of the Slavs. Right. so she's there to represent nature. She speaks for the trees. and, aunt Anna tells sil a story about this. This entity. and I think everything that sil does, and every way that she begins to interpret the world comes from this newfound myth. Right. Because she has had no
other stories before that. And so this is kind of a foundational story for her, for understanding her past. >> Jeniffer: Well, her culture. She's given so much all at once, from having no history to suddenly this, like, richness. And it's. The storytelling of Aunt Enna is such a beautiful part of the story, and she's such a lovely character. In fact, I just forgot what I was going to ask because I was getting excited about Aunt Anna. Oh, I remember place, the sense of place
in this book. So you do something that I found very interesting. You never name anything, but I know exactly where we are, you know, and we're talking about climate crisis in the future. We're talking about wildfires and flooding. And no matter where we were in the story, I could picture it in my mind. And their home and their language is ours, so you never say in our. Whatever the language is, it isn't a language. And then we say
in ours. It was very personal, but again, it was generosity to the reader in some ways. Was that intentional, to let them bring bare immigrant experience to the story? Was that your purpose, or. >> Téa Obreht: It really was. And it's sort of. I. One of the reasons that I write fiction, is that I love making things up. I love the freedom of invention, and I think it enables me. I'm useless at nonfiction because I will often come to sort of points in a
nonfiction narrative and be like, well, that doesn't. That's boring, or, like, that doesn't serve the story. so I often find myself inventing place, like, basing settings very closely on something real, but then kind of, you know, putting it adjacent to that reality and being like, well, you know, that neighborhood is a little bit different, you know. and I think in the case of this book, that invention allowed me to kind of lean as much as I could because,
like, every immigrant experience is obviously very different. But there are some universalities to being a stranger in a strange land, you know, to being. To entering a culture that is not legible to you and struggling to do so and entering a setting that is not legible to you and trying to discover it and make it your own and see which parts of it can be made to belong to you. there is a universality to that experience, kind of no matter who you are and
kind of no matter where you go. Right. Like, you don't just have to end up in the us, for that to be the case. And, so, yeah, I think that it tilted toward that kind of naturally, on its own. And it felt right. >> Jeniffer: Nice. Nice. Well, it felt right to me, too. And again, like, I could picture it. Everything I imagined was because I was adding to the story, my experiences. And so for someone else, you're going to see a different place in your
mind's eye. And so that was really beautiful. Even home. You know where home was. I have my idea of where it was. And you all will have your own idea. Let's talk about sil just a little bit more. I feel like I could sit here and talk to you for hours. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you. I'm having the most wonderful time. Please, let's talk for hours. I love it. >> Jeniffer: So sil has a technique, a calming technique that she
uses. Do you want to talk about that or do you think it's giving away too much? >> Téa Obreht: Syl does have a calming technique. there's, well, there's a couple of. There's a couple of things that still does that are also very personal. in this mode, of protecting her mother, she has developed a habit of leaving out talismans, that are intended to create a kind of, circle of protection around the person she loves the most. And of course, her mother doesn't know about this,
and she doesn't quite. She spends a lot of the book not knowing how to invite her mother into her own knowledge and her own experience of the world. >> Jeniffer: But she wants to. She wants to. She's just afraid. >> Téa Obreht: Exactly. Yeah. >> Jeniffer: Ah, being rejected. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah, totally, totally. And, being rejected kind of wholesale, you know, like, for the person that she is. So, she, you know, she starts out when she arrives in island City. She's sort of
very determined that she's not going to do this protection business anymore. She left that all behind in the last place. They were paraiso. And she's, she's just not doing it anymore. But, like, very quickly, she begins to get that kind of, urge, that compulsion, one might even say to organized talismans. And she counts them one, two, three. And, it's a calming device for her. you know, if she were as far into her mental health journey as I am, perhaps she would.
She would know to call it a grounding technique. But alas, she does not have that vocabulary, which is also part of the journey of the book. so, yeah, that's what she does. And she believes that she sort of has this power, and not just this power, but this obligation, and I think it exudes a tremendous burden on her. >> Jeniffer: Absolutely. >> Téa Obreht: That she can't share with anyone. >> Jeniffer: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I want to talk a little bit about you and your writing.
>> Téa Obreht: Okay. >> Jeniffer: Unless there's something else you want to talk about. The book. >> Téa Obreht: No, no, no. This is. This is great. >> Jeniffer: It's just so good, though. I just love it so much. I can't wait for your next book. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you so much. This is so lovely. Thank you. What a lovely. Thank you very much. You're being very generous to me. I really appreciate it. >> Jeniffer: While I was reading the book, I was like, oh, she must know
how incredibly brilliant this book is. You're very kind, and you're either incredibly humble or I. You don't realize just how brilliant it is. >> Téa Obreht: I felt. I think I navigated. >> Jeniffer: Did you feel magic? >> Téa Obreht: I felt. I felt, yes, I felt certain things about it that felt. I think you can hit a place in your writing where you're like, this is real. This is coming from some real place, you know?
you become a conduit for something that is working under the surface, and you find you stumble through trial and for me, trial and error, into the correct mechanism of delivery to invite somebody else into it. And you can feel when that happens. And I felt it at points in this book, and that made me feel like I was doing something right. >> Jeniffer: Nice. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you. >> Jeniffer: That is so cool. So I'm m gonna tell you, I actually tracked the beats. >> Téa Obreht: Okay.
>> Jeniffer: Because they were so well done. I started writing them down this page. Oh, this happens. And the stakes are here. And then, you know, all of the things that I felt were the beats in the book. So when you were writing it, you just said you would be maybe going down a wrong path and you'd be like, mmm m. And then you have to back up, and then you hit the beat and you know it. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Jeniffer: Does it happen in the rewrite or do you get the beats?
Okay, talk to us about how, you know, you have the right beats. >> Téa Obreht: Everything. >> Jeniffer: The right pacing. >> Téa Obreht: Everything happens for me in the. In the rewrite. So for this one, I used to be the kind of writer who would write very, very slowly and meticulously, like the. You know, and if I didn't have the sentence right, I wouldn't move on from it. And then it would just be, like, weeks and weeks and weeks. >> Jeniffer: That sounds like a paragraph.
>> Téa Obreht: It was really, you know, it was a long, long journey into hell. and. But, the thing I discovered, and I, you know, I did this as, like, a fledgling, like, a hatchling writer, because I didn't realize, like, oh, my girl. Like, all that's going in the trash. Like, you have perfect sentences. Like, it doesn't. That's not gonna be there. >> Jeniffer: and then they become your darlings, and you have a really hard time killing them.
>> Téa Obreht: Yeah, it's really true. It's really true. And you're sort of like, I'll put that. And I'll never feel this way about a sentence again. And it's true. So, as I've grown as a writer, I've learned to adopt the very messy first draft. It is a lifesaver for me. And so the beats of this book, I think I said it earlier, and I apologize if I'm repeating myself, but the beats of this book, sort of arrived in the correct order, and I was
like, amazing. I have event. There's a moth. Oh, no. I have the correct events. They're in the right order, but I have absolutely no idea of the emotional condition or the relationships between the participants in these events. Like, I have no clue. and that's always my journey in the second draft. So, like, the generative stuff gets out of the way. I hate the generative phase. We're done now we have something to shape. That's great. and then I sort of.
Then the part of trial and error comes, and it's sort of trying to find, is this the right voice? what is the psychological condition of the person experiencing these events? That, to me, is paramount, and that, to me, is the thing that most explicitly belongs to the form of prose and poetry in nonfiction. Right. Like, writing itself enables you to enter another person's consciousness and to inhabit, to wear that person like a suit. And that sounds manic.
and that's the real. It's not just that it's a red apple. It's a red apple seen by a person in a particular emotional state, and that makes it a beautiful red apple, or, you know, a blighted red apple, or, you know, or an inconvenient red apple. That lens of self and consciousness is everything. And for me, that happens in the second draft. And, is the place where I can sort of be like, oh, whoops. Went way too far down the wrong path.
Gotta get back to the crossroads where it was right and kind of back up and do it again. >> Jeniffer: And so many people give up because they don't feel that yet. I'm a writer, at least I'm trying to be. And there are those moments where I've got the perfect sentences, but I'm like, yeah, it's missing something. And it's so easy to give up on the characters and walk away from it and feel like this isn't working. When do you know it's working? >> Téa Obreht: That's a great question.
when you. I don't know how to. I don't know how to. When you. When it, when it doesn't feel like writing, when it feels like it is just like, it is just. It crosses that barrier. Sorry, that barrier of illusion for you, and you're just like, right. It is this, For me, it's a feeling, for other people, you know, like, I know many writers who will sort of read their work aloud and it's not real until it hits a particular kind of
rhythm in the ear. I write at a library, so I can't read aloud when I'm just sitting there muttering to myself. so, yeah, it's a different thing for different people, but many m writers have shared with me, and I'm sure that you must have had this experience at times when it's working for you, that it's just like. You just know. I know it sounds. I know it sounds. I know how that sounds. But you just know. >> Jeniffer: You just know.
>> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Jeniffer: And there's this excitement. >> Téa Obreht: Yes. >> Jeniffer: It's incredible. >> Téa Obreht: There's an electricity to it that's like. >> Jeniffer: Absolutely. >> Téa Obreht: And for me, it comes with like a. Sorry. >> Jeniffer: Yeah. Say it again. >> Téa Obreht: Like love. >> Jeniffer: It is like love.
>> Téa Obreht: Yeah, it is like love. Yeah. It is that kind of sensation of, >> Téa Obreht: Crossing an intellectual barrier and being like this is something that is beyond me. Like, I'm not actually a participant in this anymore. It just is. It exists by itself. >> Jeniffer: Absolutely, yeah. You write in a library exclusively? >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. Well, I live in a very small condo, with a very loud, very, involved two year old,
toddler. And, she has necessitated my move to the library for writing purposes. So. Yeah, I work at the Teton county library. I have my chair. If my chair is occupied, I get very distressed. >> Jeniffer: Yes, yes. >> Téa Obreht: And I sort of glare at them. >> Jeniffer: Excuse me, this is my chair. >> Téa Obreht: Sort of sitting kind of uncomfortably close for a long time. yeah. >> Jeniffer: I was working on a novel once, and there was this Little Coffee
shop down the, like two blocks from my house. And every day I would go down and I would sit in the same chair and I would write for 2 hours and I'd go home, and if someone was sitting in my chair, I would literally stand and wait for them to leave. The coffee shop closed and I never finished the novel. >> Téa Obreht: Oh, my God. >> Jeniffer: That's all on me. I get that. But that happened. >> Téa Obreht: No, but it's a real thing because there's actually.
I do think that your Writing Environment serves as a kind of portal. Right? >> Jeniffer: Totally. >> Téa Obreht: You place yourself in this physical situation that enables you to remove yourself from your body and go into this space where you are just dealing with words and you're kind of uninhabited and uninhibited, you know, both. And it does take a really particular. You have to feel a certain way
in this world. It's kind of like the matrix, right? Like, you have to be safe and in that seat and there has to be someone looking out for you in order for you to go and, like, navigate safely through the matrix. And it's true, like, if you. If your environment is changed. I mean, I know people who can write anywhere, but I'm not one of those people. And the vast majority of writers I know are not
those people. They, like, have to have these very particular conditions for that departure from the south. >> Téa Obreht: I'm so sorry that the coffee shop closed and took your novel from you. That is that. >> Jeniffer: I'll get back to it. I'm going to find the right coffee shop. >> Téa Obreht: Yes. Maybe what you're looking for is a library. >> Jeniffer: You know what? You may be right. I like this. I think it's time to open up questions to our lovely audience.
>> Téa Obreht: You. >> Speaker C: In the second round, it's a two part question. How long do you typically work on a book? And how hard is it to let go of all those characters? >> Jeniffer: When you're done, do you mind repeating the question? This is going to be on a podcast, by the way, so I will. >> Téa Obreht: Totally repeat the question. so the question was, how long do I typically work on a book and then how hard is it to let
go of the characters once it's done? I have found that my sort of cycle for a book is typically around three years. that's been the case sort of once I find the right material, that's its lifespan. Somehow I don't know how because the three books that I've written are pretty different in length. One is like 450 pages, one is like 350. And this one is, you know, I think it. It's like 270. So, it is. And one, like, involved, like, a tremendous amount of research. And one,
you know, and two didn't. And so, so. But somehow it all boils down to three years. and I wonder if that's sort of. I do believe that the act of writing a book changes fundamentally the person that you are. Like, you're one person going in and you're like another person coming out because you've gone through this process of dealing with these characters, navigating language, interrogating the emotional and psychological experiences that led you
to down this path of narrative. and so I wonder if, for me, that's the cycle, right? Like, by the time three years, and it's like, I'm done with it. you know, for someone like Donna tartt, that cycle is ten years. And, like. And it's, really interesting because I've spoken to lots of writing, not to donna tark, but, I've spoken to lots of writers who have very short cycle, about a year and a half,
and writers who are like, it's eight. It's eight every time. But there's real consistency in it from book to book. And that's an interesting phenomenon, I think. and then characters are. It's a very emotional thing to give up the book and sort of send it out and be like, I guess this is goodbye. Now you are something else. yeah, it's a very emotional experience. And I definitely feel. I feel sort of a slump the end of. At the end of it, I do
become, like, a little depressed. And in particular, for my second book, inland, which I wrote, I felt that book, I was with those characters still when I had to let them go. and that was a hard one. That was a really hard one. yes. Hi. And then we'll go to mark. Yeah. >> Speaker C: From listening to you talk about how you write and what you're writing about, and from an interview that I read with you, I think when inland came out, kind of feel
like. You almost feel like these books take on a life of their own and they actually become an entity and they start to show you where, you know, which direction you're supposed to go. Have I interpreted that correctly? You feel that about your books? >> Téa Obreht: I do. and the question was, do I feel that the books become kind of an independent entity as they're being written? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you work on a book and then it starts to work on you.
and I think that that's the case also with books that I read. Right. Like, a book comes into your life, at the right time, sometimes at the wrong time, and it can have this completely mind altering effect on you. and then you don't revisit it for, like, ten years, and, like, you come back as a different person and you have this interaction with it again. whether writing or reading, it's a deeply interactive experience.
>> Speaker C: I just recently reread the tiger's wife, and the first time I read it, when it first came out, I had had a horrible, horrible accident and had a terrible surgery while I was reading it. >> Jeniffer: Oh, my God. >> Speaker C: So I was sort of seeing it, I think, through a lens of trauma. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Speaker C: Physical trauma, a lot of pain. And it was very different when I read it just a couple of months ago. I enjoyed it a lot more.
>> Téa Obreht: Amazing. I'm so glad to hear I see you here in. Ok. >> Speaker C: But it, seemed to resonate with me in a very different way. >> Jeniffer: Yeah. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. And I think, you know, the only issue with that is that you can never really revisit a book that you've written. Right? Like, you only write it the one time. >> Jeniffer: Right.
>> Téa Obreht: And you can't have that relationship with it again. And I have a very difficult time revisiting my books a couple of years on because it feels. I feel like I can't get back in touch with them. You know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like the end of a breakup where you're just like, oh, right. We're not supposed to, like, hug or anything. We're just supposed to be like, hello, we're having coffee. Like, it's a totally different dynamic shift.
so, yeah, thank you for sharing that with me. >> Jeniffer: Yeah. >> Téa Obreht: So, Kim Stanley Robinson also wrote a book set in a submerged New York, and typical of him, it's much more politics and sociology. What do you think are the advantages for a writer? To set a story in a familiar setting that is set a little bit askew? That's a great question. the question was, what are the advantages to a writer? >> Téa Obreht: what are the advantages of setting a story in a familiar
setting? But the sort of setting elements are, ah, a little bit askew. Oh, my gosh. There are so there. There are many, you know, I, think, you know, it. I think there's a great trust to be placed in the reader when you're. When you're sort of inventing a world that's like adjacent. and as you were saying, you know, you bring, you trust the reader to bring their own stuff to the narrative.
and one of the advantages that I found to writing this particular book from an eleven year old's point of view was that she didn't understand the world anyway. And so the things that I was very interested in writing about, like systems that are failing in this particular world, I didn't want to write about one great apocalyptic event that wipes out everything and we sort
of have to start society over. I wanted to write about an accumulation of bureaucratic incompetencies and just like a general slide into, into mundane horrors. >> Jeniffer: Yeah. >> Téa Obreht: because that is, you know, there are several apocalypses going on in the world at any given moment and many of them have that at their heart, you know. And so I wanted the strangeness of it and for lack of a better word, the dystopian nature of it, to be visible to sil but not
legible to her. She's trying to figure out, you know, what is this system? What is this repopulation program that I'm really part of? You know, like where is the food? How does this function? but she doesn't really, the reader doesn't really need access to the particulars of it because still doesn't have access to the particulars of it. And frankly I barely understand how our society functions even in the everyday. So, so yeah, I think there was a great advantage to sort of
those things being kind of opaque. I'm very interested in the work that people do when, when they world build to great detail. Right. you know, you can, like I love tolkien. Like I love that there's. That he made up languages and that he felt that he needed to do that work to access the world and that not only did he need to do the work, but he wanted the reader to have access to it
too. That's amazing. but in the context of an eleven year old navigating that part of her life in a new society, it felt like that should be removed. >> Téa Obreht: And I'm not sure that I answered your question mark, but I hope I answered part of it. Pretty open ended question. >> Jeniffer: Yeah. >> Téa Obreht: Fantastic. Thank you. Just like my media training prepared me for us. Yes, thank you.
>> Speaker C: So I wanted to follow up on your idea that you can never go back to the book that you've written, but you wrote this as a short story in the Decameron tale from the New York Times. And I read it recently because of this talk, and I was completely fascinated because the essence of the story is there. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah. >> Speaker C: But it's also not. It is very different. So when you were approached to write that short story, were you already thinking
about writing the novel? And so I'll just sort of write this out and we'll see what happens. Or did the short story bring into a novel that you were interested in writing? >> Téa Obreht: That's a great question, and thank you so much for it. The question was, in light of my comment that one cannot revisit, one's work, being pointed out that I actually wrote this as a short story. No, you're right. as a short story first, and then, that it became a novel. And sort of asking about the
trajectory for that. So I actually. So I had these ideas in my mind as part of what would become a novel. And when the Decameron project came, this is something that the, New York Times magazine did sort of, as an homage to the original Decameron, which was like, well, you know, in Renaissance Italy, they sat around, and during the plague times, they told stories and put it into a compendium. People are nodding. They know. So, I kind of. They came, they said, will
you write something that captures the mood of this moment? And I had these ideas swirling around in my head as part of a novel, and I hadn't sat down to write them yet. And I thought, I'm going to. I'm going to do this as a short story to see what's there, to see what comes out. Because I had the building, the mother and daughter, the woman and the dogs, and I was like, there's something here. and put it into the shortest possible. Shortest story form I could imagine. 1500
words. That was the limit. and it acted as a kind of a stress test. I was like, what will emerge? And the character of Mila suddenly appeared, and she came out of nowhere. And then there was this friend in the park who sort of became may. And I also recently reread the short story, and I was shocked at how different it was, because I had thought that it was interesting and the names were different, and actually the roles were different
of the girls. so that, yeah, it was a surprise to me to go back to it, and see how far I had sort of wandered into the woods. But, yeah, the intent was, let's see if there's something there. And the short story produced more questions than answers. And that, to me, is always a good sign that there's some sort of fertile ground to be had there. M thank you. >> Jeniffer: That was a great question. >> Téa Obreht: There's a hand here. the denim jacket.
>> Jeniffer: Okay. >> Speaker D: I'm so glad that we were walking by. >> Téa Obreht: Thanks for wandering in and letting us lure you in. >> Speaker D: And, you know, I just said, you know, I like this person. We're gonna come in and send the kids back to the hotel. >> Téa Obreht: Amazing. >> Speaker D: And the more you talked about the story, I think it was, you know, you mentioned this fantasy, sort of, and my husband and I like fantasy a lot. That genre. >> Téa Obreht: Amazing.
>> Speaker D: That's interesting. And then you mentioned, kind of eastern european, slavic fairies and God. >> Jeniffer: And we both looked at each other. >> Speaker D: And said, a, character from another book. And, so I'm really interested. And then my husband said, I think. >> Téa Obreht: We gotta get this book, too. >> Speaker D: I'm interested to know, like, do you have interest in reading fantasy? Or where did this come from?
Or then you started talking about Tolkien, which, you know, everyone loves, but do you have you read more the eastern or the slavic would you call myths and things like that fascinate us a little bit? >> Téa Obreht: So, yeah, I was wondering if you. >> Speaker D: Can tell us about your interest in fantasy or your that kind of work. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah, absolutely. So the question was about my interest in fantasy, and, I'm so glad y'all came in. Thank you so
much. you were very kind to let me lure you in through the door as you were standing outside looking at the poster. so I grew up, I grew up on a very serious diet of folklore, of slavic, myth, and, the serbian epic poems, russian mythology, the tales of Baba yaga, whom we call Babaroga, but she's sort of the same character, and her whole cycle. And Vasilissa the wise, and, like, all these characters, who were just really the backbone of my upbringing. so I grew up on that. And then when we left
Yugoslavia, we moved to. First to Cyprus and then to Egypt. And then I grew up in that tradition of mythology, which is an extraordinary. I mean, like, the myths of ancient Egypt, and then also the history of Egypt. And the way that that's metabolized is narrative. is fascinating. And I found it to dovetail really nicely with slavic mythology, because a lot of it is about these very fickle gods, and
also very fickle monsters. And, so by the time I arrived in the states and started reading fantasy, Tolkien, but also Alexander Lloyd, I don't know if people. Yeah, some people are nodding. Some people are not. The pride day the chronicles of Pride Day Narnia, was huge for me. which is interesting. And then you sort of grow up and you're like, wow, these are very, very different mythological structures, very,
different pursuits. Cs Lewis and Jenner Tolkien, that, you know, Tamora Pierce was huge for me as a kid. So, I did grow up in this cycle that was folklore straight into fantasy. and I don't know, it's a real. I don't read enough of it now. it's a real shame that the genre divide is so extreme and so sort of supported by academic structures and publishing, structures as well, that, you know, I'm
supposed to. As a person who teaches in a master of fine arts, I am often discouraged from teaching fantasy, even though it is an extremely instructive form. so, yeah, I'm just gonna comment. No, come on in. >> Speaker D: I'm a high school teacher, and I find that that is a genre that we're introducing to get more kids to read. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah, yeah. >> Speaker D: And, you know. so I don't know. And I was
wondering, where does. Where will this book fit? Would you be in the fantasy files or will it be on the. Could it be in both? You know, and how cool that it bridges both of the worlds. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you for that. I hope it would. I hope it would be in both. I think it's. I think it's sort of a straight from m for me especially. It's like a genre bending situation. and, I would be very flattered to have it, you know, cross lines that way and have people feel that way about it. Thank you.
>> Jeniffer: I think we have time for one more question. >> Téa Obreht: Thank you so much. I'm just like, answering for, like. >> Jeniffer: No, it's wonderful. I feel bad cutting all you off. I see all hands. >> Téa Obreht: Yes. Are there any camels in this book? There are no camels in this book, unfortunately. I'm sorry, but not for want of trying and not for want of love of camels, I'm actually working on. I'm working on a treatment for. There's hope that inland might still become, a series.
I'm working on a treatment right now. I hope to be knee deep in camels for. For many years to come. So thank you. I think there might be more. >> Jeniffer: Just gonna say that. >> Téa Obreht: Yeah, that was a quick one. >> Jeniffer: Yeah, totally. >> Téa Obreht: historical fiction with a touch of magical realism, which is totally my genre. I was wondering, was it hard or intimidating for you to kind of switch gears into more
of a future? It was really the question was about whether it was, given that I write that I've written mostly historical fiction in the past, was it intimidating to switch gears into a future setting? It really was, because, I feel like there is, a whole swath of writers who are working exclusively at that crossroads of sort of speculative, new weird, which is a term I recently learned. you know, not high fantasy, but kind of magically twisty.
And so, it was very intimidating to venture into that, especially because the world building in those novels can be so extraordinary. and I world built in this novel for myself to understand how to navigate it. But then I took a lot of that away because I didn't want sill to have access to it and I didn't want the reader to have access to it either. And that felt sort of, like a bit of a transgression, but it felt like a necessary one, and I'll defend
it to the death. So I think I was, you know, I did feel it felt, The storytelling felt organic, but then the sort of the genre bending felt. Felt, Yeah, I was nervous. I'm still nervous. You built a structure and then you removed it and let the stories stand up. That status. >> Jeniffer: Yeah, we got to be careful. We're going to be here all night. Okay, one more. >> Speaker C: I understand the concept of not wanting to revisit the world you've created.
How does it feel to you to be working on, a movie or series of inland because that's in contradiction to your feelings. >> Téa Obreht: that's a great, that's a great question. The question was, how do I feel about sort of revisiting inland through the prisma? I feel like it's a different beast because it's a medium that's completely foreign to me, and I'm m not navigating it with the same tools. I feel like I'm learning how to write and I'm simply in a totally different way because script
writing is different. All the stuff that you access, as a writer was just like, I'm going to set. I'm going to set the scene. I'm going to have a person's emotions come out in their mind. You have to be thinking of the actors. You have to be thinking of. You're navigating a totally different way of communicating information. >> Speaker C: Does the actor or actress look the way you intended? >> Téa Obreht: I don't know yet. It's all still in my mind. So they still do.
>> Speaker C: Did you retain that right? >> Téa Obreht: No, I don't think. I don't think anyone does. I think it's all once you send it out there, it sort of becomes its own. Its own animal. Just like the writing. >> Jeniffer: But I bet you have a picture in your mind. Exactly. Thank you, everyone, so much for coming. And thank you. >> Téa Obreht: This is such a joy. Thank you so much for your questions, and thank you all for coming, really.