BONUS EPISODE: Barbara Kingsolver on why life gets better with every passing decade

[Music] hello and welcome to this very special bonus episode of the shift the podcast that aims to tell the No Holds bar truth about being a woman Post 40 created and hosted by me writer and broadcaster Sam Baker I'm delighted to welcome a very special guest the award-winning author of 10 bestselling novels Barbara King Sila now every so often a book comes along that you want to press into the hands of everybody you meet for me demon Copperhead is one of those books it's a reimagining of the Dickens classic David Copperfield translated the Appalachian Mountains in the midst of the opioid crisis it's funny it's Furious and its hero demon is a character you will never ever forget I'm not the only one who thinks so earlier this year Barbara was awarded a pulit Sur priz and it's also shortlisted for the women's prize for fiction she's been shortlisted for that three times before and one for her novel The Lacuna but she may have won It Again by the time you hear this who knows so it feels really wonderful to get to be this age this place doing what I love so much and connecting with people in a way that 11-year-old Barbara never never imagined in her Wildest Dreams earlier this month while she was on tour Barbara foolishly let me into her edin hotel room to tell me how growing up weird bookish and poor shaped her and how she discovered she was a so-called hillbilly we also discussed being an introvert and an extrovert World finding love Second Time Around not winning the jackpot and the mothering department and why life gets better with every decade that passes as inside if you're a packing nerd Barbara shares her killer Packing Tips and I've got to say if you ever wanted to do a 3-we holiday with just a carryon Barbara is your woman you were brilliant there was so much love in the room it's a long time since I've been to a book event accept the festival and there's been a queue up the road waiting to come in you must have got used to that over the last week but how's that feel one doesn't get used to it I mean it's funny cuz my life is divided into such very different parts my work life for 98% of my working life I'm alone completely alone in a room with my my thoughts with the people you know and the stories inside my head and I like Solitude obviously just as well yeah I mean I think most novelists are introverted because that's you know that's where we live that's our that's our our place and so then for the other two% of your working life to be Thrust out into the world and meeting so many people and seeing my work has really become a part of their lives and you know in a really often a really important way and they want to let me know that it's um it's a shock it's really it's a real shock to the system and hard in some ways to to meet that expectation to absorb all of that emotion and and gratitude and also like pain you know I mean people are telling me your book was medicine for some some great ache in my life you know just to be present to all that is very hard work and it's a completely different kind of work uh than what I usually do and when it's all done I feel so thankful that I got to do it because it reminds me that you know now I'm going back into that quiet place but I'm not really alone in that room this is a huge conversation I'm having and it just it's a good thing for me to take that back into the room both the the love sort of the room rewarding sense of it that yes I am doing this for good reason and also the responsibility of it that people do need what I'm doing it's good to feel valued isn't it after that intense period with all those people kind of like wanting a piece of you a bit do you get introvert burnout every day because that's what it what it means to be an introvert is not that you dislike people at all it's that being with people people requires energy it t it takes it's draining it takes energy from you and um yeah it's it is physical and psychic work to be with people no matter who they are even my own family you know if I'm at a family reunion there comes a point where I have to go find a quiet place and put a pillow over my head so that's book tour I go out and I meet my public and then I really do have to go back to a hotel room and put those pillows over my head I just need to cocoon because it is such intense exposure and I have to recover every day uh in order to be ready to go and do it again sometimes I have to cocoon twice a day no I get that totally I think it took me a long time to understand that if you're an introvert being around people like you say even people you love it takes it out of you whereas if you're an extrovert being around people puts it in exactly that's it's as simple as that and it's it's hard to explain it without sounding mean um but it's just how we're made it's how we're born and it cannot change I was that shy kid growing up who always sat at the back of the classroom and never spoke and always felt like that was wrong of me I was you know I was the wrong kind of person because that's how people talk they say Barbara needs to bring herself out of her shell Barbara needs to you know it's a it's like a failure to be shy uh to be that person who just watches would rather watch than participate um there's a wonderful book called quiet by Susan Kane you know it brilliant my daughter my older daughter Camille we're all introverts and it's inherited it's genetic you are born this way if you have introverted parents you will be an introvert is Stephen an introvert because I just bumped into Stephen leaving your hotel room and he seemed very he's an extrovert yeah very like very he's and it's such a good marriage because you know if I were married to someone like me we would never go out he gets me out you know and I say no no and then I'm glad I did you know it's a really good balance in our relationship but back to that book Camille my daughter Camille read it and then she handed it to me and said Mom read this it's about us and it will help you forgive yourself that was like the simplest way to put it and she was so right it was so helpful to understand this isn't something I'm doing this is who I am and your whole lifelong it's not going to change and American culture especially I think is very anti- introvert the business model is get everybody in a room and brainstorm and even you know businesses are set yeah hustle businesses are set up that way and problem solving uh you know think tanks are set up that way and we quiet people have a whole different way of working well I've worked worked it out I have a job where I get to sit in and that's my way of problem solving is to you know write a novel but um another thing that I learned from that book is that introversion as we were saying that it really just has to do with whether you gain energy from being around people or you lose energy you have to give energy to the project of being with people that will never change but shyness can be changed and I used to be shy and now obviously I'm not being unshy is something you can learn like playing the piano or playing tennis you learn it with practice and I've had a lot of practice at speaking you know to large halls and and really opening myself to people you being in a weird way fairly intimate with large groups of people because I've practiced it I've learned how to do it and so people see that and they say oh no you can't you're not introverted um but that's different you can be an introverted public speaker the difference is what you do afterwards yeah the bed the pillows over the head yeah that's that's I totally get that totally I mean you're talking about when you were a little girl you know at school and like not speaking up enough um I'd like to talk about your childhood because your childhood is so integral to demon to ahead isn't it it's so yeah there's your Appalachian yeah there's more of me in Demon than most people would probably imagine I could write that character because I have been bullied I was a kid in school who didn't fit in didn't have the right clothes it was a peculiar situation we only wore hand-me-downs the town kids who's well is a Tiny Town 1500 people in my town but even at that there was a class to iction between the town kids whose parents you know owned the grocery store or the drug store whatever and the rural kids who rode the bus and got to school with mud on our shoes it was just a very clear class distinction and there was no dating across that line really seriously it was rare even for there to be friendships across those lines so I was one of the country kids and I was shy and I was weird I was bookish I liked studying and learning stuff in a culture that really didn't value that especially for boys but even for girls being the teacher's pet being the smart one did not make you popular I didn't fit in so I did get bullied quite a lot and with that other girls girl the meanest sheesh in yeah like starting in fifth sixth grade just they made sure I knew I what a mess I was yeah I was that kid at school too no friends standing on the edge of the playground you know how old's fifth or sixth grade yeah you're like 11 11 12 yeah that's when it that's when it really starts to happen just just puberty is when girls start getting really like socially Adept at you know letting each other know who's in and who's out it's a primate thing I mean monkeys do it too it's part of it is it's part of our development that's especially for females to just really learn a lot about social capital and kind of forming your alliances to give you power and Advantage I didn't understand that at that time but now I do that's the trouble as a biologist I can see what was going on yeah that doesn't help when you're like 11 does it what was your puberty experience like scary because I didn't well I had a mother who didn't tell me anything anything at all we just she just wouldn't talk about stuff like that so I went to my brother for information he was 2 years older and bless his heart I mean he did his best but he didn't know anything either he was he was yeah I'm still very close to my brother my brother has been my lifelong best friend and we survived together we negotiated we lived out in the country we didn't have Playmates you know that I we were a mile from any other family with kids our age so we were each other's companion in playing in the woods collecting pets you know we would catch animals and figure out how to keep them in the house and um read we would just take on projects together like we we just used the materials at hand we had an encyclopedia britanica you know that whole shelf of books was in the house who knows where it came from it's crazy isn't it at that kind of time so many people had those yeah bought them on the doorstep or picked them up yeah where did they come from yeah but who knows but that was all of knowledge in one place so we made a deal where we would read them all I started at a and he started at Z and we worked towards the middle and we figured by the time we got to M and N between us we would know everything yeah so that's that's the kind of stuff we did we tried reading the Bible together we were not a particularly churchy family but it was a chur churchy culture and place and we didn't really know much about the Bible so we thought oh we should read this and so we read it aloud to each other and I mean for little kids I was probably nine and he was 11 it's horrifying I mean it's people you know like men sleeping with their daughters are using them as you know we figured this out using them as bargaining tools and you know a lot of slaying with jawbones of asses it was horrifying we did we thought we're not getting the point of this this is this I think we're gonna may you were maybe we were well Old Testament is pretty Fierce and naturally that's where you're going to start but um we were also already little scientists so you know this whole thing of the whole world created in seven days that's baloney you know we just didn't buy it so yeah that was our that was our attempt to become uh churched and it failed badly so you were a little scientist but you were also really good at music weren't you uhhuh and now you are a global bestselling writer so how how did the little scientist make that Journey well how long you go I yeah I still feel like I'm the same me I've always been I'm just a lot less shy but I'm interested in the same things I just was always interested in everything I suppose wanting to read the entire encyclopedia branica at age 11 pretty much sums it up I music was music was just because of culture I come from a place where people make music a place in time it's not so true now uh and that's sad I think kids grow up now because they have such easy access to to music that even you know country kids get their music from their phones and they feel like you have to be a professional to do it but appalachin culture it's a culture of makers it's a really resourceful culture so you know women make quilts and they make food and they make clothes and people make their own music and it was really common you know for people to get together and play music that was something that happened in my childhood and um I just played an instrument we had had a band at school and I played the clarinet and I played the piano we had a piano at home and I begged to learn from a really early age I just wanted to own that piano own it you know like with my hands and so yeah I started taking piano lessons from Miss Edith the lady in the town who the elderly lady in the town who taught me everything wrong and um but you know at least I learned to read music and the basics and then uh somehow there was a like a substitute the deficits in the school system were just were vast we just really had so few resources in the school but there were several times when some substitute would come in from the city for like a week and they would always find me one of them was math she said wow you're in seventh grade and I think you're really smart but your your math is like third grade level can to help here and of course I was really embarrassed and I said well sure I wasn't different from anyone in the class but somehow she picked me out and she gave me these texts and she like gave me a little bit of special help and Bam I figured out algebra and um a similar thing happened with music it was this music teacher who I don't know how just singled me out and said come upstairs up in the attic of this old creaky school there was a piano and she said play some things for me and then she said I'll never forget this she said you are almost ruined Beyond repair but I think I can fix you I can save you and um oh wow and I felt so as shamed but also so excited I was like okay save me somebody coming to fix me she yeah I mean technically I was doing everything wrong that was uh seventh grade and so she started coming for a period of time that she had giving me lessons and I got so much better and I got so much intense pleasure from this that she persuaded my mom I mean this was a great kindness from my mom who usually didn't have time for very much but she drove me to Lexington a city an hour away to a good teacher and you know that was what got me through high school as a lonely Misfit kid I just threw myself into piano and I met other people my first boyfriend was also Pian piano player you know I would be in these groups of kids who were accomplished at something who didn't have to hide their intelligence or their passion or their you know or their um skills and that was really that did save me so I got to I got to college on a music scholarship but really I just wanted to get to college and I wanted to take classes and everything I was that kid who wants to major in everything anthropology wow I could just I could go on with that forever or you know evolutionary biology yes um I I loved my literature class classes maybe I got to take two but pretty early on I switched over from music which was not going to be a practical major to the Practical major of biology cuz I figured I'm going to have to have a job when this is all done it's not going to be concept p it absolutely is not no I I you know I knew that and I you know through all this I loved reading and writing so much but that's just the writing was very private I just I just wrote poems and stories that I didn't show to anybody but that compulsion to just keep learning new things and follow every new thing down you know Down The Long alley to Enlightenment that's being a novelist I I mean I finally found the perfect job for me yeah yeah yeah no totally it's that moment isn't it when as a lonely kid a kid who has to pretend not to be clever when you don't have to pretend anymore when you meet other people and you you don't have to be quiet at the back of the class because that you'll be told off by the teacher if you're quiet at the back of the class but you'll be told off by the other kids if you say you know the answer right exactly exactly yeah that pretty much sums up my entire School experience it was miserable actually I was now looking back well I was a very unhappy kid and you know probably depressed but you know nobody had time to notice stuff like that but the remedy for me was reading I just would disappear into books because that gave me access to other lives when you got to college in Indiana on a scholarship did you feel like I've arrived I've found my people or did you meet a whole new type of adversity yes and yes I mean yeah initially I mean I was I was thinking my people are out there I was thinking you know college I mean that's why I worked so hard to get to go to college because almost nobody did and I was really on my own I mean now and even then probably in other schools there were counselors who would help you sign up for the tests I had to figure all that out for myself and drive myself to take the SATs and stuff but I really really wanted to go thinking I would find my tribe so it was so disappointing that once I got there I was being ridiculed again this time for being a hillbilly and that I never thought about being a hillbilly or you know a Kian until I went to college and everybody laughed at the way I said certain words well all words and my friends gave me a this thing it was like a hooer passport that allowed a limited number of Kian to cross the river into Indiana you know just you know and I laugh but that's so mean um but they didn't think it was mean because so rude yeah right but it was so standard to laugh at Hillbillies that I just thought okay I I really I really am a joke I mean I just kind of accepted it uh and tried to pass I tried to you know I started changing my addiction and started trying to be a more Cosmopolitan person whatever I thought that was yeah whatever the heck that meant which you know meant something I imagined from from books I'd read and I was academically completely lost because you know I'd had such poor schooling I didn't have you know I was a good writer because I had read so many books I knew how to do that but I didn't know the proper way to do footnotes in a term paper and all that so I had to be that that same kid who read the encyclopedia I just I've always been an autodidact and I just kicked into high gear and spent a lot of time in the library quietly catching up and I mean the main thing I learned in college was how to teach myself what I whatever it is I'm missing and that too is the skill of a novelist and I think the good thing about that of always having been taught most things that I know I taught myself is that I have probably a ludicrous amount of confidence when I go into a subject I just think oh well I don't know anything about you know I'm going to create you know a character who's a who teaches political science I don't know anything about that but I can learn all about you know I can when you write a novel you have to know everything that your characters know you can't just write and then he said something very clever about economics you have to know what he said and it has to be right because somebody reading you will know if you're wrong and they will tell you so yeah so well yeah so well so uh you know when I step back and look at it I think that's so audacious that I think that I can just learn everything I need to know to create these you know these novels about real things in the world with with people who know a lot of real things but I just know I can do it um so and I did I did in time uh I mean for the happy ending I found good friends in college I found the kind of friends who you stay up with all night talking about toy be or you know you know or politics or history or or chower or whatever you know I just I found those good friends and I felt for the first time like someone who belonged to a group well you went to college and then you did that kind of young person thing didn't you of traveling and ended up in Tucson what was it that made you go back to Appalachia well you had not been that happy as a child right yeah I thought I'm getting out of here and then once I did I thought oh nobody thinks that's a good place to be and um you know and I I loved my Adventures I still do I love to travel I love to see the world I loved you know moving around Europe owning nothing more than what would fit in my backpack and doing these you know handt mouth jobs just to learn language I love I love languages I loved learning French I learned Greek I learned Spanish so I love those experiences and then I had to come back to the States at some point because I was living in France and it was getting very difficult that was in the late end of the 70s it was getting hard to keep a work permit things were starting to change as far as that that so I had to come back to the States and I chose Tucson just on a win you know I thought I'll try out the West that sounds interesting and then I kind of got stuck there because I was at that age where life happens to you you know you get a job and then you get a a boyfriend who turns into you know your partner and then you get a house and then you get kids and so I had this life in Tucson there was you know a very good life I loved the people I met I was learning I became a politicized person they living close to the border of Mexico I just learned a whole a whole new way of understanding the the world and what you know one nation will do to another so it was a really good time for sort of growing up but it never felt like home I missed the landscape of my childhood I just achd for trees for green trees and grass and mossy creeks and ferns just that landscape and see in childhood all my happy time was spent in the woods and in the fields playing with my brother that was the joy of childhood and I think we imprint on the Landscapes of our childhood in such a way that nothing else ever looks quite right and honestly Tucson the desert as interesting and dramatic as it is felt to me like a place that didn't want me living there there's not enough water there are not enough resources there you cannot grow enough food in the desert to support the City of Tucson it increasingly felt immoral for me to stay there and I knew I had to get back to Appalachia whenever I did there was something in me that just as soon as I would see those those mountains and those forests something in me just let out its breath and I never felt at home until I was back there [Music] I couldn't go back to the little town where I was so unhappy and I would not raise my children there um but just by coincidence um by I don't know some strange twist of fate I got this Lyla Wallace fellowship and I they sent me to a little college and Appalachia emry and Henry College where I was meant to spend two weeks as a visiting writer I talked to all different classes and one of them was a class taught by Professor Steven hop and we just fell for each other in a completely platonic way I guess because you know we had a very short amount of time I didn't know if he was married he didn't know you know we didn't know anything about each other's personal lives but we just love talking about we had so many interest in common music nature biology everything and so we just started this conversation that didn't end and I went back to Tucson and we talked on the phone well we did figure out that neither of us was married and um we talked on the phone every night and for a year and then had to get married so so but he lived on this beautiful Farm in Emory Virginia which is geographically you know it's it's it's in every way the beauty of Appalachia but it's a little town that has a college so it's different from the town where I grew up there's enough diversity my kids went to school with kids of professors who had moved there from you know Atlanta or from you know England or just the presence of the college changed the culture of the school there were enough kids there who valued education that my kids wouldn't get bullied if they wanted to go to college so um it was just it was just the perfect place so yeah when I moved to Steven's Farm I knew I'd found heaven I I don't want to live anywhere else ever again is that way you still live yeah that's where we live yeah and honestly he saw how hard I was working you know I was giving the lecture every hour he said if you have a couple hours free this afternoon I live on a farm you can come out just for some Farm therapy and that was astute and I did and I mean he the house at that time he was it was you know it was what he could afford on a teacher's salary so it was you know nothing nothing extravagant it was a very rundown old 100-year-old Farmhouse but the place is beautiful it's this wooded Hollow and it has a creek running down it and it's just you know full of bird song and full of life and really I mean I fell in love with the farm so the Jane version of the story would be that I married him for his farm but it was both you got the farm too yeah but well we had to it was complicated to work out we didn't immediately move there because I had ties and Tucson that I couldn't leave so for a number of years it was hard because we thought we'd have to sell the farm and I just said that we're not going to sell the farm what whatever we have to do we will do to keep it so we rented it to a family so that we could cover the mortgage and then for some time we um lived in Tucson part of the year and then there in the summers in the little tiny cabin up in the woods behind The Farmhouse we worked it out so that we could get back there and now now that's could you imagine ever living in a city I have lived in cities and this is the kind this is the kind of City dweller I am I have a pot of tomatoes growing on my balcony and hon honestly in Tucson I lived in the city right downtown for a long time but I had to have a garden in my little postage stamp backyard and I love to visit cities but I visit them it's like my Apache raid I'll go in and I'll go to the museums and I'll go to the concerts and then I come home again it was really interesting in Demon Copperhead to write about a city from the point of view of somebody who feels really horrified and oppressed by cities because I think well you know I think people who are born and raised in cities think that we country folk are just so missing out and and they think we all want to be in cities and I you know I can't tell you how many people have ask me how can you live out there in the middle of nowhere without the faintest clue that that is such a demeaning thing to say you know it's somewhere to you it's everything to me it's everywhere to me and plus I grow gr food and I have water and neighbors whose names I know but um really to go inside of demons little Demon's head and show people how this looks to us to those of us who are accustomed to first of all looking in the eye of every person we meet you know how that feels to be among people who just don't look at you how strange that is to be in an apartment that feels like as he calls it the Doom Castle do you know the Duke Nukem it's a video game yes yeah where you're just in this Maze and every door opens to another Maze and it's horrifying because you can't get out and he says there there was no outside anywhere because I looked because to outside to him is trees and pastures with cattle and it just felt so fake to him and scary that there was nothing but people and stuff made by people and that's I mean sorry but that's how it feels to me too and I you know I'm old enough to not to panic cuz I know how I can get out but um it's so rare to see Rural Life at all in books in film I can tell you the last movie I saw about rural people about farmers and you know genuine Farm life not fake Farm life was called minari it was uh and and I think Korean yeah and think that only got made because it was about Korean immigrants and so that was sort of like oh Korean immigrants that's interesting but we don't see Farm life or Rural Life represented in any thoughtful compassionate or even interested way and so I don't blame people for thinking we don't exist you know that our existences are nil so that's you know that's a big part of what I have to do yes how how does that feel to know that not only do a lot of people not know that you know this huge s of the country where you live not only doesn't exist but it's looked down on it's looked down on it's really bad it's been bad for my whole life and it's interesting that nearly half of the population of the US does not live in cities so it's half of the population and 2% at most of what we see in film and TV and books and and newspapers and we're all so used to that we just accept it but there's an immense amount of resentment and anger from rural people about how dismissed we are about the sort of cultural condescension towards us and I mean it's been going on my whole life this antipathy between rural and urban people but it's gotten so much worse in the last decade or 15 years I guess because I mean rural people have just gotten so fed up with a government that dis dismisses and ignores them and you know the economies of small towns are just like Beyond despair opportunities are so limited the only money going into farming is going to the giant industrial Farms not to people not to Family Farms and so people are so fed up with a government that does nothing for them they vote for the guy who says I'm on your side I'm going to blow it all up and I understand that I mean I didn't vote for him but I understand why my neighbors did they feel like he hears them so because of that everything has gotten worse because now the urban people who already looked down on the on the country people now feel like they can do it with impunity because they voted for this really horrible guy yeah in a way he legitimized what they'd been doing exactly yeah he legitimized their hatred or their contempt contempt is the right word and you know people ask me when I traveled around in the US you know because I only of course on my book tours only went to cities and people asked well what about the manga thing you know they say with their you know and I have to say let me tell you about the manga thing let me tell you how it feels to be You Know spoken of with that face you just made we're mad we're we're mad and we express it in different ways and that was not a good one because he didn't do a thing he didn't do a thing for Rural people um cares about himself do yeah yeah yeah and he doesn't represent our values and there's also this thing of you know probably much like here the people who voted for brexit even though it it caused a lot of things to fall down around your ears you don't want to say oh I messed up so you'd rather say oh it's the French people who you know it's really hard to own a mistake on that on that level but some people are owning the mistake of trump he's not going to get elected again oh fingers crossed I know I say cling wood yeah not wood do you feel like as you have got older you've got braver and more outspoken and more you know able to stand up in a book event and go that face you just made you yeah I mean what I said last night is is true I hate to disappoint people that's just in me I am a person who I mean I can disappoint people I'm perfectly capable of it but it's always hard for me to say no I'm sorry I can't come talk to your book club or you know it just I don't want to do that is that how you were brought up yeah absolutely absolutely and in a rural place in small towns and Country Places there's a sense to it when someone asks you to do something there's a reciprocity to it yeah you should help them and there's going to come a time when they'll return the favor you know when there's this thing we do when we take somebody a a casserole they always bring the dish back with a casserole in it so that's just our tradition and I think about that all the time with these thousands thousands of requests I get people ask me all the time to do things for them you know will you you know will you blur my book will you talk to my club will you I mean it's amazing things that people want me to do for them and I always think I could bake that casserole but the dish is going to come back empty if at all if it comes back if it comes back at all this is not it's it feels wrong to me to say no so I have to recast it this is a new situation so it it has gotten easier with practice but it still will always feel wrong for me to disappoint people when they've asked something of me but when someone is cruel or unkind I don't hesitate to call them out and I think I was always that kind of person I mean once I got out of the oppression of childhood I I think it in college I I created a new persona for myself and she was very much like Angus in copper head I wore funny clothes I do too you know I had always been mocked for wearing the wrong clothes for wearing hand-me-downs then I got to college where a lot of the girls wore you know I don't know designer things even like designer you know not gowns we're just talking like what you wear to play tennis just this whole new culture of clothing that I knew I was never going to understand or afford so I went to the uh army surplus store and bought uh I just got this acquired this uniform I got a pth helmet and um this big green army coat that came down to my feet because it was cold and I got known on campus as the girl in the green pith helmet and I just like I just decided to make make a statement of I am not trying to look like you and I'm not trying to be you and whoever wants to talk to me they'll be my friends and so a little bit of that iny face you can't scare me with your cont attt I cultivated that I got it and I kind of I think have been that person ever since I don't hesitate in my work to write things that will make people uncomfortable I don't think about it it's things that make me uncomfortable too I go to the places where I think we all need to go and be a little uncomfortable and sort out you know what we might be doing wrong how we might be doing this better so I want to ask you you are 68 now how does it feel to be you know at a point in life when women a mentor have like shuffled off and be minding their own business to be like at the top of your game I mean there may be more game you there may be higher but you've just won a pool it so by the time this comes out we'll know whether or not you've won the woman's prize for the second time I don't want to win that one that would be Bad Manners to win twice anyway I think you should stuff your Southern manners on on that particular I know you're not properly Southern Midwestern manners um but how does that feel how does that feel to be at this stage in your life and to be the best you've ever been arguably it feels fantastic I feel very lucky to be healthy and especially to be lucky to be alive it seems so obvious to me that a birthday is a victory you know I mean what's the alternative to being 68 it's being dead so how great is this that I get another year uh to do what I love and the great advantage that writers have over let's say athletes fashion models actors even is that we trade in wisdom we're not thank God selling our bodies or our strength or our you know the elasticity of our skin we're selling wisdom and that only comes with age it's like exactly like scar tissue you know you you ACR it through your mistakes and your your your bad Falls and and the way that they heal so it feels really wonderful to get to be this age this place doing what I love so much and connecting with people in a way that 11-year-old Barbara never never imagined in her Wildest Dreams oh it be amazing to be able to kind of Time Machine oh just to tell her hang in there it's going to get so much better it's going to get so amazing so amazing can I just quickly ask you the questions that I always ask at the end sure what's your emotional age I think it's 68 I think it is too you're in a good place AR you yeah and it took this long to get here could you give us a book recommendation so it could be a book that you've loved your whole life or it could just be something great that you've read recently a book that that was unusual for me to read and that I loved and I think everybody should read is the ministry for the future by Kim Stanley Robinson do you know his work do you know the book um I do because my husband writes SF okay but if you don't like SF you will not have considered it not have considered it and I'm not I'm not a science fiction reader generally speaking I love urula lwin there are you know there are certainly but generally speaking I like literature that's literary and that's anchored in real things and this book really is um and it's about climate change it's set in the nearish future I really recommend it it's the first book I've read in years about climate change that left me feeling hopeful oh yeah that's why you should read it yeah wow I'm going to hun it down okay um what advice would you give younger women please worry less about what other people think of you they probably aren't thinking of you nearly as much as you are let it go how old were you do to think when you learned that yourself I've learned it a little better in a different way with each decade of life and for exactly that reason Each decade of life has gotten better brilliant is there an older woman who's inspired you or who inspires you now there are several I didn't win the jackpot in the mothering department but two two two women came into my life as mothers and meant everything to me one was my literary agent Francis golden whom I found right in the beginning it was to her that I sent my first manuscript I sent it because her entry you know in the literary Marketplace describing her agency was we do not represent any work that is sexist racist agist homophobe phobic or gratuitously violent I realize this Cuts me out of most of what's written but I can be proud of all my authors well a woman that was her entry and so I said well if there's an agent for me she is it so I sent her my manuscript she loved it she placed it she fiercely protected me fin financially ethically you know morally and even just I mean she just became my Jewish mother she took such good care of me she was the person when after I had my first child my marriage instantly fell apart there was mental illness there was you know it was just like my life fell apart I was sole supporter of of a baby trying to make a living as a writer and thinking there's no way I can get through this and she called me every single night to help me know that I was crossing to a Greener Shore that I was going to get through this and that it was worth it to leave you know leave this bad marriage and make a life for myself even if it was scary and hard financially she was so there for me when I was on book tour when I would come to New York she would bake lasagna and bring it to my hotel room she made me believe in myself as a writer and in the dark times she made me remember that a lot of other people believed in me too is she still your agent well she was and until she died she we lost her during the pandemic she was she she was in her 90s so she lived an amazingly good life but it was a terrible loss yeah and the other one was my mother-in-law I hit the Mother-in-law jackpot Stephen's mother was also a mother to me and we also lost her during the pandemic but she was the person who I mean I could ask her for advice and she would give me good Sound Advice you know without condescension she would really think think about it we could just talk about anything she sounds amazing she was everybody needs a Francis everybody needs a Francis yeah yeah and I you know I mean the simplest way I have always put it is I didn't win the lottery in the mothering department but then I did it's a package isn't it you know there are things I have terrible ankles I've broken both my legs twice oh my God each of them twice so I always say have I'm a thoroughbred trying to live a Clyde stale life so I I break easily I have this you know terrible hand thing which is why I can't sign books anymore but you know I like the brain so it's just like you get this package and um you just embrace it does your hand affect your writing flat hand is fine I can't grip like a pen or or a stamp or anything like that but I've had six surgeries on this hand to keep it functional so um flath hands are fine and so yeah so so typing is fine yeah so I'm lucky I mean computer work that matters signing books I'm sorry but that's not that important it's a nice to have it's not it's not a need to have yeah what's your superpower oh packing yeah give me it really is I mean you are here for three weeks you have done is this right a week of backtack book events and interviews you're about to go walking for a week I'm going hiking I have hiking shoes brought hiking shoes and then you've got the women's prize so you've got like L da events yeah L dah even like a formal and it's it all fits in a carry-on yeah how how have you done that well you start with shoes and you really limited you get two pair of shoes and you really have to think that through you bring laundry detergent so you can wash things in the sink and for presentable events silk you know it really compresses and it it doesn't wrinkle so so yeah there are tricks but mainly you don't need as much as you think you do that's true I couldn't believe it though when I saw you doing three weeks with a carryon that's my rule I have to fit everything in a carry-on because it's self-sufficiency I want to be able to to move through the world with nothing more than I can carry that's a good ethos um and I always always feel uncomfortable asking this question and yet you and yet you do yes and yet I do yes so how many [ __ ] do you give um half a dozen I mean there are days when I don't give one but there are a lot of things I care about as evidenced by your fantastic book Thank you thank you for letting me into your hotel room and coming on the shift I'm so in awe Barbara oh thank you thanks for doing what you do oh and I love demon so much and by it it's really really good you won't regret it and buy it for a friend thank you Barbara thank you for listening you can hear a new episode of the shift each Tuesday wherever you get your podcast if you like what you hear please do rate review and follow because it really does help other people find us if you'd like more of the shift in your life head over to the shift with samb baker. substack docomo extras and more