Episode 16: Featured Event with Julia Phillips

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, novelists Julia Phillips and Boo Trundle celebrate the publication of Phillips’s latest novel Bear, recorded at an in-store event with Watchung Booksellers.

Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she grew up in Montclair and now lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Julia's work has been translated into twenty-six languages. She has written for The New York Times, ​The Atlantic, and The Paris Review and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program. She is also on the board of the Crime Victims Treatment Center, a nonprofit that helps people heal from violence.

Boo Trundle is the author of The Daughter Ship (2023). A writer, artist, and performer, her work has appeared across various platforms and publications, including The Brooklyn Rail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and NPR’s The Moth. She has released three albums of original music with Big Deal Records. She lives in New Jersey.

Resources:

1000 words newsletter subscription 

The Revenant 

The Bear (TV series)

Bear by Marian Engle

Legends of the Fall

Subreddit on Poverty Finance 

Subreddit on San Juan 

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

Register for Upcoming Events.

The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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Transcript

Marni: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Watchung Bookseller's Podcast, I'm Marni and I'm here with Kathryn. Hi Kathryn. Hey Marni. Whatcha reading? 

Kathryn: Well, I am just about to head out on vacation and I am old school and I like a good travel book. We are going to Amsterdam and then to Paris and I am reading travel books.

Kathryn: I need a Rick Steves in my hand. Amazing. At all times. Amazing. Used to be Lonely Planet, moved on to Rick Steves. He's the best. Who doesn't love 

Marni: Rick Steves? I don't know. Crazy people. I am reading, based on your recommendation, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Like Kathryn said, it sucks you in, those first few pages.

Marni: It's a family drama, takes place in present day Ireland, and it's fantastic, so definitely recommend it. 

Kathryn: Cool, we'll have to have a little Irish book club. Yeah, for sure. Like a lot of Irish writers. Yeah, 

Marni: we should do it in Ireland. That's an even better plan. I have a Rick Steves at home. Sounds great. To take along with us.

Marni: Ah, boy. So the next couple of weeks, a bunch of people on our staff are going to be on vacation. So instead of our usual thematic discussions, we're going to air some of our amazing events that we had recently. So if you didn't get a chance to come, you can take a listen here and get a taste of what our events are all about if you've not been.

Kathryn: Yeah, this week we're featuring an event we had about a month ago. So With Julia Phillips and Boo Trundle for the launch of Julia's latest novel, Bear. I mentioned reading this book in an earlier episode and weeks later, I'm still thinking about it. It's still my favorite handself. of the summer. And it's an Andy Next pick and a Watchung Booksellers July Book of the Month.

Kathryn: So we were especially excited to launch her book in our store and to share 

Marni: this conversation with you. Julia Phillips is the author of the best selling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year.

Marni: A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, she grew up in Montclair and now lives with her family in Brooklyn. Julia's work has been translated into 26 languages. She has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Paris Review, and teaches at Randolph College MFA program. She's also on the board of Crime Victims Treatment Center, a non profit that helps people heal from violence.

Kathryn: And with her is Boo Trundle, the author of The Daughtership, which released last summer. A writer, artist, and performer, her work has appeared across various platforms and publications, including the Brooklyn Rail, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and NPR's The Moth. She has released three albums of original music with big deal records 

Marni: and she lives in New Jersey.

Marni: Enjoy the conversation and we'll be back after to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

Julia: A line that was not in my bio was that I read pieces of the Daughtership while Boo was writing it. And the line that was not in your bio was that you read pieces of this book while I was writing it because we're in a writing group. So it's very, very exciting for me to get to be here with you, and to get to be here with all of you.

Julia: I grew up in Montclair. I'm sure my New Jersey family is sitting in the back there saying, She lives in Brooklyn with her family! Excuse 

me! 

Julia: What are we, chopped liver? But, I'm so happy to be here. I have to say, I have not yet been to a high school reunion. For one, like, avoided reason or another, but I do feel that this is it.

This is the reunion. 

Julia: This reunion of my dreams. And I'm really, really happy to be here with you. I'm going to read just a couple minutes, a couple pages from this book, and then I don't want to wait one second longer to talk with Boo. So this is my second book fair. It is about, you'll never guess, It's about a bear, but really it's about two sisters who live on this beautiful island called San Juan Island off the coast of Washington state.

Julia: And they live in this gorgeous place that's a tourist destination, but they are born and raised there. They're having trouble making ends meet and they don't love their lives. They're waiting for the day their lives are going to change. And then one day their lives do when this animal shows up at their door.

Julia: So the section I'm going to read from the book is from that moment. They woke the next day to a bear at the door. When the sisters were young, very young, they loved living on San Juan. Summers, the girls would go over to Lime Kiln and pass entire days on the bluffs watching for whales. Spotting them was like catching shooting stars.

Julia: You couldn't focus on any one spot. You had to let your gaze go wide. Elena was especially good at it. She would jostle Sam's elbow and say, Humpback. The tourists next to them outfitted with binoculars. Gasped, leaning close to try to learn her secrets, Elena points out the pods. Humpbacks, gray whales, mankeys, porpoises rolling and leaping in the surf.

Julia: Gorgeous orcas with their dorsal fins sharp as blades. The girls playgrounds were the stacks of driftwood on the beach. Deer peered at them from the hills. The sisters hid behind bleach logs and called out to each other. They dangled seaweed, salt smelling from their fingertips. They stacked sticks to make shelters and crouched inside.

Julia: Did they know then how little their family had and how precarious the grip on that little bit was? They had no idea. Each evening their mother came home from the salon exhausted, stinking of solvents. Sometimes she would cough, but the girls didn't know yet, none of them knew, that the chemicals she inhaled were growing granulomas in her lungs, causing her lymph nodes to swell, narrowing her arteries.

Julia: Their mother made them scrambled eggs or buttered noodles for dinner. She poured vegetables onto their plates. Canned peas, canned beets, canned corn. They told her what they'd seen on the island that day, and she oohed and aahed, making them proud as young queens. Their power went out some days in winter.

Julia: Elena rubbed their mother's shoulders in front of the TV. The sisters crouched on the forest floor of their property, studying mushrooms, telling each other stories. They were heroines. They made magic. They were the girls at the center of a fairy tale. And they, along with their mother, would live in such bliss all their days.

Julia: This was not a fairy tale. They were not faced with this beast on their step. Brave. Sam woke up to the shock of a door slamming and Elena's scream. Hearing the tunnel. Sam knew immediately, horribly, that Elena had found their mother dead. Sam had been bracing for that moment for years, but still it knocked her heart out of her chest.

Julia: She couldn't breathe, couldn't think. She tumbled out of bed, hit the floor with both feet, and ran. Elena was in the front hall shaking. Sam was shaking too, by then coursing with dread and adrenaline, trying to prepare for whatever it was they would have to do. Their mother. Their anchor. Where is she? Sam said.

Julia: There's a bear. From behind her bedroom door, their mother was calling. Elena? Sam couldn't adjust. A fucking bear! Elena said. Oh my god! She pressed her hands to her face, covered her eyes, her trembling fingers stretched under her hairline, threading under the blonde strands. It's right outside! Their mother's door opened.

Julia: She was repeating their names. Sam said, There's a what? There's a bear! Elena took her hands down. What do we do? What do we Sam didn't understand. Her rational mind hadn't woken up yet, so the situation seemed incomplete, incomprehensible. She wanted to sit on the floor and have someone explain it to her, but Alina was hysterical.

Julia: Turning to face their mother, Sam said, Everything's okay. What happened, their mother asked. She's hurt? Her fists were pressed to her chest. The collar of her shirt was low enough to expose the top of her catheter. Her sternum, pale and ridged with bone. Everything's fine, right? Sam looked to Elena, who kept shaking, turned back to their mother.

Julia: We're fine, Elena just got a fright. Their mother didn't understand either. What happened? She got scared, something outside. There's a bear outside, Elena said. A what? exclaimed their mother. No, we're going to take care of it, Sam said. To their mother, but to Elena too, and to herself, because she did need assurance.

Julia: She couldn't clear the awful vision of their mother found stiff in bed, their mother gone from them. She went over to hold their mother's thin arm. It was cool, but not cold. Not yet. Don't worry, we'll call the police. Animal control, their mother said. Animal control, Sam agreed. She squeezed their mother's arm, and their mother squeezed back, pulling Sam's hand toward her for a second, showing Sam she was still here.

Julia: Sam said, Go rest. As soon as my mother was back in her room, Sam said quick, What are you talking about, a bear?

Boo: That was a wonderful excerpt. Um, I think that was such a great excerpt for lots of reasons. I was looking around the room and even from that paragraph, I saw people like,

Boo: This is the sort of, uh, natural fear of the wild and the situation where there's something wild outside of a very Domestic, private space. What I'm assuming most people haven't read the book, so, no spoilers, you know, it's gonna, you have to be careful, because it's a very suspenseful book. And I think also part of the reason it was such a great paragraph for you to read, or part for you to read, is that It's so well written, the language and the sentences all the way down, you know, to the very basic sentence level is so beautiful, and at the same time, it's very suspenseful, and I really felt that in what you read, and also you laid out a lot of the elements of the book that I think we'll talk about tonight, so the first one, and I also saw Julia speak on Tuesday night, which was cheating a little bit, I felt like I was reading cookbooks, because I did get some ideas there.

Boo: I think I got ideas just from hearing you when you got excited talking about something. And you seemed super excited talking about the fairytale element, so I thought we would start with that. Just explain your relationship to the fairytale and the fairytale that's really at play in this book. 

Julia: Yeah, so this book is contemporary and it's meant to be totally realistic.

Julia: Everything that happens in the book is on the extreme end of possible, but it's also It's still possible. It's improbable, I guess, but still possible. But it takes its elements from a very magical source, which is this Grimm's Fairytale called Snow White and Rose Red that I was obsessed with as a kid. I loved Grimm's Fairytales as a kid and I had this kind of big blue book that I would lug around with me everywhere.

Julia: And, uh, and Drop in the Bath, and then we get all ripply, and, you know, I'm, I'm, this poor abused book. But it could, it could take it, because it, these are all stories that had stood the test of time, and I think could probably use a, a Drop in the Bath or two. And there was a story in there called Snow White and Rose Red, that was about these two sisters who live in a little house with their mother.

Julia: And, uh, Bear comes, and they invite him in, And it was very confusing to me as a kid. He would come in, he would sleep every night on the floor, and the girls would sort of roll around with him, and put their hands in his fur, and as a kid I didn't, I didn't know the word perverse, but I felt the energy of perversity.

Julia: I thought, what is happening here? And I thought, I found that so compelling. And the arc of that story to me doesn't cohere really or make sense. There's a dwarf and there's treasure and there's enchantment and there are princes that they marry at the end and it It didn't really make sense, but those elements of the sisters and that animal compelled me over and over and over again.

Julia: When I was a kid, I would try to rewrite it, and then this was sort of my big bite of the apple. When I came to this book, I really wanted to connect to what I had first loved about writing, what I had first loved about storytelling, and the story that had stuck with me for so long. And so, these are the sisters, these, this is the bear, there's their mother, but the story that I tried to make out of it was one that That made more sense to me or felt more, like it captured that energy in a way that, I don't know, cohered with my life or made sense of my own experience or funneled it into a different shape.

Boo: So that's very cool. I remember, I mean, I also had the luxury of being in a writing group with Julia, so I remember when you started the story and I wanted to mention there's, I looked in the acknowledgments and you acknowledged, thank you to 1, 000 Words of Summer. So, can you explain what that is and why, and I imagine, is that when you started there?

Boo: Is that how it got started, or? I 

Julia: don't think so. No, I think it had started before then, but it was always a big push part of it. It would always be a moment. So, 1000 Words of Summer is, this is a perfect, It's a really nice place to talk about it, I feel like, in a bookstore. Indeed, I think there's, probably not in this store, probably in the other store, A Thousand Words of Summer book on the shelf.

Julia: It's this project by Jamie Attenberg, who's an incredible novelist and memoirist, and literary citizen. And she has this email campaign called A Thousand Words of Summer, where for two weeks every June, she does this huge push, where she says, okay, you're going to write a thousand words every day for two weeks.

Julia: Which, I don't know what folks, Daily lives are like, maybe there is some like lawyers or copywriters in the audience saying like a thousand words Please like that's that's a single 15 minute burst for me But I would say for me a thousand words is quite a lot. I don't know. Oh, yeah And it's a big push to write a thousand words and it's so inspiring to have these emails coming in saying you could do it You could do it and then it gives you a fifth of a manuscript I thought 

Boo: maybe it had fallen down from the skies, the bear book, on your head a little bit.

Boo: Like it just, I thought that the, it sounds like it was like sort of percolating in your consciousness since you were a child. But I remember when you started writing this book and you were just on fire. And you said the other night, you know, the story just came to you and you just were writing, writing, writing.

Boo: Somebody was talking, um, asked a question the other night about the chapter lengths. Because the chapters. Some of them are very short, some of them are just one sentence. Can you talk about that and how, to me, that says a lot about, about just the urgency and the ease with which the story came to you.

Julia: Yeah, absolutely. I think all of these, I mean, when Custom Words of Summer was very much part of this too, exactly as you said, this kind of push to get the story out, but the story was already coming out so much. You know what the thing was that determined the shape of this? I wanted to be It's funny, I think being at Montclair makes me think about the kid that I was, and the teenager I was.

Julia: And I really wanted to be a good Paired with wanting to write, and wanting to write stories always for me, was wanting to be good at it. And wanting people to be like, wow, I'm impressed.

Julia: And those desires were really coupled, and it was hard for, I really wanted to have it published, I really wanted that book for people to like it, and then by extension, like me, you know, it was all sort of tied up with affirmation and validation in ways that were really gratifying when the affirmation and validation came, and really And I think after my first book came out, it was hard.

Julia: I wanted to be even better. I was like, well, now I got told that I'm good. So now I have to be even better. And there was so much pressure on myself. 

Boo: They call it the sophomore slump. A known Right. Ailing ailments like the second. Okay. When you have a success with something. I mean, your first book was nominated for the National Book Award and it was a bestseller and there was a lot of pressure for the next book to be.

Julia: I, I felt a lot of pressure, at least that. 

Boo: Right. 

Julia: But I think I felt the pressure even before it came out. I think I like Mm-Hmm. I think I, I always felt not always. But for a long time had been giving myself that pressure and when I started this project it was after a tough time professionally and creatively and personally like in great part due to that pressure that I put on myself and Can we talk 

Boo: about that a little bit?

Boo: We should talk about it. 

Because it's 

Boo: really quite a story And it's, I mean, I like I asked her before if we could talk about it because it's something that's been so inspiring to me Can I, you want me to tell it? No, in brief. In brief, so When she sold Bear, and if I might get, I might get it wrong, um, I mean when she sold this Bear and Earth it was a more, it was a two book deal, and then when she submitted her second book to the editor, what happened?

Boo: So it was a finished manuscript, it wasn't Bear. It was her second book, and it was a different book. And she submitted it to the editor, like here it is, delivering my novel, and what happened? 

Julia: And they said it's not, it's not gonna work, it's not gonna be a publishable book. And I said Okay, yeah. I was crying.

Julia: Y'all cried some. But she was not wrong. It wasn't, it wasn't, I didn't really understand. I knew with that project that there were problems that I wasn't able to get past at that time. In great part because I was like, it's gotta be so good, it's gotta be an excellent work of art, you know, this has gotta be like better than anything I've ever done, more ambitious than So it was really sort of tight, the tension, and it really wasn't working.

Julia: And then when she said no, I spent about a year saying like, but don't you really mean yes? And it turns out it's not super compelling to people when they say no. They aren't convinced by me then saying, but maybe yes. And then, and then it turned out to be great. Because I thought, I don't know how to write in a way that other people approve of.

Julia: I don't know how to do that and I thought maybe I feel like I'd spent many years trying to figure that out and then when my first book came out I thought oh maybe I figured it out like maybe this is how I get the approval and then I tried to do it even more and it didn't work so I was like okay well I'm sort of liberated so yeah so I 

Boo: thought okay I'll Just do what I like to do.

Boo: Just go really crazy and write a book about a bear. What you said is like a love triangle between a bear and a person. Yeah, that's how I would 

Julia: tell people about what I was working on. Yeah, something really wild. Something that was really fun. And something that while I was working on it, it was like full of joy.

Julia: And the book is not always full of joy. The book has a lot of darkness in it. Like, some bitterness in it and some sadness, but also it has a lot of, I think, ecstasy and awe and wildness and free feeling of the chasing of the weird and weirdness weird. And I wasn't letting myself get that weird before and I loved it and it was like, so that yeah so chapters are weird different lengths and people do weird things.

Julia: It goes in directions that surprised me that I wouldn't have let myself go. And it's fun. It was fun to do. And I think you guys heard the one sentence chapter that they will, the next day, they'll bear on the door, but it was just fun to do. And when I think about it, it's fun. While I was working on it, I read it, a section that I was working on somewhere.

Julia: And afterwards, someone said to you, You keep laughing while you're reading it. But it's like, not a funny part, but it was actually the same part. They said, you keep laughing. I was like, yeah, it makes me laugh. It makes me feel joyous to tell this story about these girls and this bear. 

Boo: Well, it was very magical, and I think that magic, I felt it when you were working on the book as well, because I would hear reports on how it was going, and there was this incredible, and momentum and it seems like a very simple, I think that's something that goes on in this book that's a simple idea, but there's nothing simple about it.

Boo: And it kind of expands from a simple idea and because it's so simple, it has the ability to get extremely wide ranging around the bear. Like you said, there's, There's two girls in a house with their sick mother, and there's a bear out there. And it's a simple idea, but it goes so, because of it, it goes to so many places.

Boo: So in a way, hearing you talk about it, I'm getting feedback, so I'm just bringing the mic down. You guys can still hear me, right? When you talk about that you were trying, almost like, it almost sounds like you were trying too hard on that second manuscript. Yes. Because this is sort of simple, a simple concept.

Julia: Yes. 

Boo: It gave you freedom to be more complicated. Yes. This is just a little description of the, um, 

Julia: I just have to say, I, I love Bhu Chandal so much, and one of the many, many things I love about her, I love her for who she is, but also for what she does, and right here, if you, if anyone can see this, There are like multicolored index cards and like pieces printed out and taped and there's a collage thing happening that if you've ever seen her art This is the tip of the iceberg.

Julia: I can't really think 

Boo: without Elmer's glue. That's probably a childhood thing. So, I can't read without glasses either. This is descriptive writing in the book. The air stank like meat, musk, hair. A primal stink. The stink was all around, still, smelling like stomach acid and gaping bodies, like wet fur and an unwashed mouth.

Boo: Sour and rotten. Copper and earth. There's quite a bit of bare feces in the book. And, um, uh, and just bare smell. And I had written disgust, like in the margins once. Cause it is, there is this sort of psychosexual vibe going on. And One of the Sisters is, It's really into the bear and one of the scissors is not, and obviously this is the one who's not into the bear.

Boo: So I just was curious about that, you know, about the physicality of the bear. And since we're talking about your writing process, like, how'd you do it? Like, 

did you 

Boo: just, how did you get into the bear so quickly? So 

Julia: deeply. I listened to a lot of podcasts of survivors of bear attacks. Really? . That is not the answer.

Julia: I, 

yeah, and there a lot of podcasts. There 

Julia: are some, there certain, really a podcast there. Every topic. Honestly, there is. There really is. There really is memoir, A memoir by a woman who survived a bear attack actually on Kka, which is a place where I set the first book, which is pretty incredible in the eye of the.

Julia: So the surviving bear attacks aspect of it is really, among many other things, far down on the list of the ways you could describe surviving a bear attack, really useful for writing about what it's like to be close to a bear. Because people talk a lot about what it smells like and how the breath feels and like, you know, obviously if you have like a bear biting you, you, experience a physical, you have a physical reaction to that bear and you, you, it's very memorable.

Julia: So it was a very, very helpful research tool to think, I had no idea that I'd been pretty close to bears, too close to bears before, but never close enough to smell one. And That smell is like, across the board, people talk about how disgusting bears smell. I never would have, I mean, I've never thought about it.

Julia: Hopefully we never have an opportunity to test it. 

Boo: Alright, well here's another question. Like, you had said something about how in the 1970s, There was like a slightly pornographic book about a woman who has a relationship with a bear. And even right now, there's a show called Bear, and you know, there's, like you said, there's like a TikTok thing going around about bears.

Boo: Like, what do you think the sort of, is it because every now and then there are bears in the neighborhood? I mean, why, why are these, and like the Revenant, uh, one of my favorite movies, there's a huge bear. We're like, yeah, I'm just making a Brad Pitt, but it's, he kills a bear in one of his famous movies. He does.

Boo: Legends of the Fall, I think, there's like a big grizzly bear, so you think it's just, what is it, is it like an American, well I guess not, because it's from Kamchatka, it was where the memoir, 

Julia: like what, do 

Boo: you think the bear has some kind of symbolic meaning beyond, you know, 

Julia: I think it has lots of symbolic meanings, although I can't, I know it's bear week right now and I know all of you are miss, well, no, I mean, I'm not that optimistic.

Julia: Oh, for you, okay. For me, I'm very deep on bears. For the show, The Bear, which I know all of you are like skipping your, your marathon with the bear because it's really late at night. 

Boo: It's like a bear conflict. Yeah. Bear, 

be bear. And a debate. Oh, in terms of bears. 

Julia: But I, I have ideas about that, but I don't know how across the board there, I don't know how reflective they are.

Julia: I think in a lot of our lives. We, especially in this, in, let's say right here, right now, the people who are in this room, us, we are very safe and we have made ourselves very secure. It's very unlikely that we're going to get attacked by a bear into the face. And so if we do, if we are finding situations where we're in sort of that sort of visceral, natural danger, shall I say, it's because we're seeking it out, we're seeking out a threat.

Julia: And I think there is a part of us that does. Seek it out sometimes. I think there is a part of us that loves an apex predator. I have to, like, for anyone who has lived through a dating app era, there's a lot of people on there who are posing with tigers, you know? This is like a very, um, a set. We're holding big fish, I guess.

Julia: But it's, it's like a very established genre. Like, here I am a baby lion, or people go gorilla trekking. People go, I don't know, they want to feed wolves. Like, we've manufactured a situation where we're on top of the food chain. And so we have like an awe and a thrill of, for a moment, feeling like prey again.

Julia: For thinking like, there's the predator, the predator is in front of me, and I'm so small. And this reversal of how I usually think of myself or the situation I usually find myself in is a throw. Is an ecstatic throw. Talking about ecstatic thrills. You mentioned the um, 1970 Canadian novel Bear by Marion Engel.

Julia: Oh, it's also called Bear? I mean, why beat around the bush? Honestly, which happens a lot in the, oh my god, I can't put, sorry. My niece and nephew are here and I just made a pretty dirty joke, so I'm not gonna, I'm gonna move on. Are they 

Boo: on tour with you? Because they were there. You guys are awesome. They were there Tuesday night and she was also in person.

Julia: That's true. Well, there's, there's a lot of pretty pornographic bare sets in that, in that book. And so I would, I would bring them. You don't have to buy this book. You can track it down. Um, it's from like Europa Edition, you know, it's sort of a small publisher now. If, if when you read this you think, I'm loving this psychosexual dynamic, but I could really use more compare 

sex.

Julia: Do I have a book recommendation for you? But in that book, it's very explicitly, yes, very explicitly, but very clearly and very beautifully, I would say, about liberation from the human world. That, that this main character is saying, Like my whole life, I have compromised myself based on other people's expectations, based on what I'm supposed to do, based on how I'm supposed to be.

Julia: I have been restrained. I have been good. I have tried hard and now I'm just going to do whatever I want. And this relationship with this animal is allowing me access to this sort of natural wild within, which I think is beautiful, a beautiful thing to be inspired by, although I don't think. I feel pretty sure I would not recommend her method for that.

Boo: Don't try this at home. Don't try that at home. Or 

Julia: in 

Boo: the woods. 

Julia: Don't try it 

Boo: anywhere. That's really unrealistic. 

Julia: Maybe that's part of our attraction, that we want to access that wild feeling. Not that we want to feel like prey, but that we want to feel like a fellow predator maybe, or we want to feel like a fellow animal in some way.

Boo: Well, let's, let's use that as a segue to talk about Elena and Sam because that is definitely at play with these are the two sisters, Elena and Sam, and, um, there is this comfort and safety inside their home, but also a sense, a real sense of oppression. They're very much trapped, not just in their house, but in their life.

Boo: And really the bear almost represents, at least for one of the sisters, A magical, I mean, I think I, I pulled one of my excerpts, I'll just read this. Elena was right. What was going on here was exceptional. A fairy tale creature stepping out of the trees. Elena herself was special. Their whole family was not like any of the neighbors they'd known.

Boo: It made a certain fundamental sense that different things, things that could not be related to by others, would happen to them. So can you talk about that a little bit, that you think? Sense of not just well, there's that why they're special and why this would happen to them 

Julia: Yeah, so the dynamic between Sam and Alina is intense for for a lot of different reasons They are sisters who are really close in age and who have been living at home with their mom for a long time a lot longer than they Anticipated because their mom has been sick for a long time.

Julia: And so they All made the decision together to be her caretakers. She has needed increased caretaking over time. And that has continued. It's been longer and it's been harder and it's become more and more necessary over time than they ever anticipated. And I think Sam in particular is, she's a really intense personality.

Julia: She's fiercely loyal. She has really high expectations of how people should behave. She like, is so dedicated to her family and the people that she decides to be dedicated to. Thank you. I don't know if any of us in this room are this way, or if you've had friends who are this way, but I think when you carry really, really high expectations, you get very disappointed.

Julia: You get, you can be really disappointed by the way that people are, or the way that people let you down, or in a friendship, or in a family relationship, you think, like, well, I do this for you, like, Why aren't you gonna do this for me? You're not doing Didn't we have this sort of commonly understood, didn't even need to be spoken, agreement that we'll be there for each other in this certain way, but you're not there for me?

Julia: And it can feel devastated, I think, over and over again. I think Sam has really been, for a long time, feeling that mismatch between what she expects and how the world is. And it's, it's really worn her down. And so what I think when she talks about how her family is not like any others that she's known, She's talking about that feeling of, uh, safety and love and loyalty, but she's also talking about her disappointment and how the world has been.

Julia: That, that she thinks, like, well, we are together, we are here for each other, and other people just, like, get to go do whatever they want. Other people leave their parents and go out and get other jobs and have more opportunities and, and get off this island, and we haven't been able to. And I think she really feels the crush of, of that.

Julia: Her sister has peers and friends and, and, but she has sort of chosen to be more isolated and, and I think because of that, see less commonality between her and other people. I really loved writing their dynamic because both of them, both the sisters have these great desires. Both of them want relief from, or an escape from their situation.

Julia: But Sam finds that escape in fantasy. Sam says, like, in the future it's going to be different. And Elena, who loves this bear, I don't want to wait for the future, and I don't want to fantasize. I want to feel something better right now. I want to feel something good now. I, myself, am very prone to fantasies about the future, and I also like There's a good 

Boo: trait in a writer.

Julia: Well, it can be devastating sometimes because you lose track of the present, 

Boo: but Well, I always think, I always think Julia. I mean, Julia, I think you're very good at manifesting your Fantasies, you know, like, because, in a way, like, a fantasy is a form of positive thinking. I mean, you know, like, you're just good at thinking about what you want to happen, and then lo and behold, it often does.

Boo: But I guess you're saying it doesn't always. It certainly doesn't 

Julia: always, but 

Boo: I 

Julia: will say, I, if a bear shows up in anyone's backyard tonight, I'm not very happy to be given credit. You do want credit, okay. No, I, I think, also, that, uh, It's been hard for Sam, I think. Like, the stronger the fantasy has grown, the more horrible the present seems, in contrast.

Julia: And so then she's like, retreating to fantasy all the time. 

Boo: And like, in that situation, something's got to give or something's got to break, and so it's almost a miracle that this bear shows up to, for better or for worse, to break through the stagnation or the sort of trap that they're in. Um, and so I wanted to talk about it a little bit, too.

Boo: Like, again, I was at this event on Tuesday night, and I really had a An issue with something that the interviewer asked. Well, he, he said that, he was talking about like novelists as liars. You know, that there's like a lot of lying that goes on and you're so charming. You're like, yes, yes, yes, I'm lying. 

But, um, 

Boo: I don't think so.

Boo: I mean, to me, it's a little bit of fantasy and a little bit of research and a lot of imagination. But, you know, like, for example, let's talk about Sam's job. So Sam works on a ferry in the San Juan Islands. So tell me about the research you did for that and how you made it so convincing because I would have thought you worked on a fairy, you know, and I don't think you're lying to, to write about a character who works on the fairy so well that I think you worked on the fairy, but I, I just, in a craft sense, it's so convincing and it's so beautifully rendered.

Boo: How'd you do it? 

Julia: I love the compliment of this question, and I also love the picture of you in the back of the room on Tuesday, just like 

Boo: Well, I don't think 

Julia: novels 

Boo: are liars. I mean, I've always had a problem with that, like, you know, I might elaborate on something when I tell a story, but I'm not lying, even if it's like 80 percent not true.

Boo: I'm just making it into a good story. 

Julia: Let me think about that. I, I 

Boo: Yeah, so 

Julia: Sam works in, 

Boo: well all of it, the San Juan Islands, like all of it, it's so convincing and so beautifully described, just like Disappearing Earth, just incredible descriptions, the setting feels so real and alive. 

Julia: It's a podcast. No, it's not a podcast.

Julia: I went to San Juan, I, I've read a lot of, I always really like to read memoirs by people who have experienced some aspect of the situation I'm writing about. So like, memoirs of having a chronically ill parent, for example, or a caretaker. I had no idea that was part of your process. Um, and it's like, I feel like it's very robust.

Julia: Here's one that I'll try and do that's a big part of the process. Reading Reddit forums. Well, I knew about that. So like people who live on the San Juans and who are born and raised in the San Juans, for example, I want to be qualified in that way. Reddit, this website, this online forum has everything on it for better or for worse.

Julia: And so there are communities of people who flow for this poverty finance. There's a subreddit called Poverty Finance that was specifically about people. It's like a, there's a personal finance, Subreddit group where people post their personal finance questions and then for people who are like, well, I'm you know in the red here I have serious debt and this is not going your like personal finance advice is not going to be relevant To me because you're going to say oh, you know Save a little bit every month.

Julia: Like, well, I can't save everything a little bit every month. So, so folks talking back and forth about their experience there. Also folks talking back and forth about their experience like living on the San Juans, living on the San Juans year round. What that's like. It was sort of the tourists 

Boo: versus the people who live there year round, that tension between.

Julia: Yeah, and just like what you do in the off season and, you know, read a memoir by a woman. It's just so lovely. When I went to San Juan myself, they had a whole section in their library that was just like that. San Juan authors. And I just took everything. You know, a self published memoir by a woman who lives there who was like, here's my year in my home and my cat's having kittens.

Julia: And I was like, give me more! I couldn't get enough. That's totally fascinating. But I don't know, I see what you're saying about the feeling of the word lie, but it's certainly, it's, It's made up. It's fiction. It's fiction, I guess. It's fiction. 

Boo: Well, you know how I am. I just also feel that by, also because I know you.

Boo: And so, I had a feeling when I was reading Bear that I was getting to know you better. 

Yeah. 

Boo: Even though it's Sam and Elena, it's that, you know, I still felt like there was a part of you that comes through. So, there is a truth, there's a truth to it. And also, I also do believe still that people have to be, Have the freedom to make up stories about things they haven't experienced and it can't all be memoir I mean in the fact that you were resourcing memoir 

to 

Boo: create this very believable fiction is just really kind of a beautiful use of resources and Especially read I know read it read it's a problem for Julia.

Boo: She'll have to stop They can really pull you in and it's so fascinating because people Are anonymous there. So just say these things that you know, even people that you in your own life We don't talk about finances very often openly so that you can go somewhere and just really be honest And I'm sure those reddits especially the finance ones people probably feel free to be more honest than they would at a cocktail party Yes.

Boo: Yes. 

Yes, and there's 

Boo: no there's not There's no gatekeeper. It's just very unfiltered. I think we should probably go to a Q& A. Yeah. Okay. 

Well, my question is, of course, I've read it, just heard what you're saying, but it's totally different than The Superior Earth, which is people might be interested in the frustration writers have of what I'm going to write about next.

Oh my god, and this sounds so different from The Superior Earth, which is an unusual book. So, where, and of course there's a third book there you talked about that didn't work. Uh, what's it like, how can you explain it to non writers? What do you go through? 

Julia: Like, like where the 

The idea comes from. Where the 

Julia: idea comes from.

Julia: I, there's a really brilliant writer called, named Christine Scott, who's a short story writer and has written novels before, and she said once that It really resonated with me when I heard her say it. She was like, you only have like two things that you write about, and then you just write about those forever.

Julia: So she was like, so I always write about mothers, and that's all I write about. And no matter what I do, I'm still the one writing about them. 

And I thought, 

Julia: yeah, me too. Not about mothers. Mom, sorry. I feel that what I want to write about is about women and about, uh, danger. Like the feeling of threat or being endangered.

Julia: And about survival, like what survival looks like and how it happens. And so in structure and in setting, and I don't know, in scope, maybe. This is a very different book than Disappearing Earth was. It also feels to me to be totally the same. It feels like it's about the same things. It has a similar sense of, um, isolation.

Julia: And it's like the flip side of the coin. How do we say? To myself, when I'm talking to myself in the shower about, um, That Disparity Rife, I think the message was that connection can save us, community can save us. And I think this book, the message is disconnection destroys us. So, it's the same thing for me, just a different angle.

Julia: And, um, What I worked on before and what I'm working on now, it all comes back to those over and over and over again. Hi, Julia. 

So, on this question of how the novels are the same and yet different, I'm really interested in what the sisters, what the engine and the driver of sisters in both these books is.

you. Because, of course, in Disappearing Earth they're separated. And here they are confined. Yeah. Could you talk about that? Yeah. 

Julia: So the sisters in Disappearing Earth were also really pivotal characters, were offstage a lot of the book, but they're much younger. They're 11 and nine. And I think though they're influenced.

Julia: I think the biggest difference in that story was very much, you know, like, I'm a sister. Um, I have a sibling. I don't have a sister. I have a brother. Sadly, no.

Boo: I'll give you a hug for that. 

Julia: I have a very, very wonderful brother. And who's just the best. In the spirit of, you know, 80 percent of it is untrue, like the dynamic in that book, the sisters, you know, like give each other a very hard time. They are annoying each other a lot, but they really love each other and are trying to take care of each other.

Julia: Especially the older sister trying to take care of the younger sister. That is like very directly sourced from the relationship that I have with my brother, like the relationship that we had in childhood. He was, would give me a hard time, but was always. It took really seriously his role to be the older sibling and watch out for me and make sure that, that things were going to be okay.

Julia: For me, that was such a beautiful and fundamental part, especially of childhood, and I wanted these kids on the page to experience that. The, the sisters in this book are older, they're in their late 20s, and they have a, that sibling, older sister, younger sister dynamic. But they also have, I think, a dynamic of, of old friends.

Julia: This is the section that we're in. Like, the old friends who love each other so much, have been through so much together, know each other, they think in some ways better than anyone. Like, I know you so far back, and also don't know each other. Don't know each other in the present, maybe, or haven't checked in with each other, or haven't They live together, they see each other every single day, they talk every single day.

Julia: Their paths have diverged in ways that they haven't noticed, and it doesn't mean they've changed. They don't love each other or that they're not completely dedicated to each other, but how they see each other has, they're not aligned anymore in the way that they once were, which I think happens with siblings too, but the, I thought about best, best friendship when I was working on this and, and the expectations and the loyalties and the sadnesses of best friendship.

Julia: And so, so that was a, the well I was trying to go down in here. 

Hi Julia. Um, so you said earlier that this book kind of like dumped from your head onto the page. But can you talk about what the most difficult part of it was for you? Either like the craft aspect or like just the process of like getting it to your editor and anything difficult, please.

Boo: Please tell us you suffered. Sorry.

Julia: The difficult part, the difficult part of this book was Before it, before it started. The difficult part of this book was so much of the dynamic of this book was like some of the worst times of my life. And specifically, they, I don't know if anyone else had like a pretty eventful, rough 2020. I don't know if anything happened to anyone then.

Julia: Um, but I had, I, we had a little, And then I had my first kid in June 2020, and the one two punch of those things was just like a nap. Like, I felt like I was living in hell.

Julia: It was like, it was, it was isolation, pandemic isolation, plus postpartum anxiety, plus I was afraid to go outside. I was so far from a person that I recognized as myself. From a life that I thought I would ever live. And I also couldn't see as time went by and other people around me started to like, get back to normal.

Julia: I was not back to normal. And I was like, I, I don't even know how to get back to normal. Normal feels so inaccessible to me. I cannot even imagine how to get there. And that feeling, uh, I was desperate and I was, and it was coming out in my writing. I had not started this project yet. I was just like. I was so afraid all the time.

Julia: It was horrible. It was just a horrible, horrible, horrible time, which professionally culminated in this book getting passed on. But like, that was the, that sucked real bad, but that was like the least of it in a way. You know what I mean? That was, that was a setback. Everything else was like, devastating.

Julia: Every other part of my life was, I was just like, I'm having such a hard time. So there's the challenging part. This was like an angel. This, I started writing it, it just flowed. It just was Fantastic. Through total happenstance, I had a new editor who was just like, I'm all on board. It was incredible. I wrote the first draft.

Julia: I turned it or maybe the second draft into him. He said, I love it so much. You're just going to have to take two thirds of it, throw it out and write a new version. And I 

just said, 

Julia: yay. I mean, like at that point, that just the, that's the feeling that things were flowing and that I liked what I was doing was so novel.

Julia: That, like, who, who cares? You know what I mean? It felt, it felt wonderful in comparison to how it had felt before. I don't think I'll ever have a writing experience like that again. And, and if you want me to tell you challenging writing experiences from other projects, I'll tell you a thousand. And if you want me to tell you challenging writing experiences from the next project, I absolutely will.

Julia: But this was just like, this, this um, It's kind of front loaded all the challenge into the prep section. 

Boo: I like that. I saw it. It's true. You're definitely not lying. I saw it. I mean, imagine being pregnant during the pandemic and having to go to the doctor, like, with a mask and your husband couldn't even be there for the birth, right?

Boo: He couldn't be there for the birth. He couldn't be there for the appointments. That's the work. I mean, just total isolation at that last step. It was, I saw it, yeah, it looked horrible. 

Julia: I also want to say, like, in this last moment, how incredibly, incredibly grateful I am. The idea that we all, I mean, I know all of us, like, have very, very different experiences these past few years, challenges in different ways, pandemic and not pandemic, like, we have been through so much and the idea that we get to be together is just phenomenal.

Julia: It's so nice. It's so nice to be here. Thank you both.

Marni: Thanks again to Julia and Boo for this in store event. Listeners, you can find their books and all of the books they mentioned in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com. 

Kathryn: We are currently firming up our fall calendar, but mark down Tuesday, September 10th for the launch of Ian Fraser's newest book of essays, Paradise Bronx.

Kathryn: He'll be in conversation with his New Yorker colleague DT Maxx. And on Saturday, September 14th. We're hosting a signing event with Laura Dave, best selling author of The Last Thing He Told Me. She's launching her latest novel, The Night We Lost Him, and if you get tickets through us, you can get your copy before it even releases.

Marni: You can find out more about all of our upcoming events in our newsletter, show notes, and blog. and at watchungbooksellers. com. The Watchung Booksellers podcast is produced by Kathryn Council and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, New Jersey. The show is edited by Kathryn Council and Brie Testa.

Marni: Special thanks to Timmy Kaleni and Derek Mathias. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Art and design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff. Thank you to the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids Room for all their hard work and love of books.

Kathryn: And thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please like, follow, and share it. You can follow us on social media at Watchung Booksellers, and if you have any questions or ideas, you can reach us at wbpodcast at watchungbooksellers. com. We'll 

Marni: see you next time. Until then, for the love of books, keep reading!