Host you suggest jodi picoult that Justice Kavanaugh should read your newest book a spark of light. Why is that . Bank is probably one of the most balanced looks at abortion rights and womens reproductive rights that i have found. I worked really hard to make it balanced and i think it would allow him to see other peoples points of view with compassion and empathy and protect roe v wade a little longer. Host you say all points of your represented. House so . So in my book government one a man comes in with a gun and starts shooting and he takes the rest hostage. One of them is the daughter of the hostage negotiator. They all believe Different Things and all points of you are accurately represented. Host how do you storyboard a story like that . That is a question there is a twist to this book is that it is told in reverse. You first see the standoff and every chapter goes back one hour in time until the very end you learn what brought all of these people to the clinic at that moment. That was much harder than i anticipated i wrote a 48 page outline because i had to write it chronologically in reverse but also following the story line ten diverse characters. But in this case there was so much going on and it was so complex and i had to map it out. The magic is in the editing i took little post its and marked up the whole book by character the night edited in reverse ten times following each thread and then headed entirely going forward. How much time in jackson mississippi . I waited balance between jackson and alabama to one alabama and the doctor said that he performs abortions because of his religion. He said who will provide for these women if not me so now he goes all over the United States performing abortions and invited me to shadow. Host why do you feel its important to say you have not had an abortion . Its the truth. If i had it would have taught me to speak about it. One of the saddest facts was interviewing 151 women have terminated and less than 25 wanted to be acknowledged to use initials or anonymous in the decades since they still have not told parents or partners or friends or employees. They kept it to themselves and to be completely honest when i was listening to the kavanaugh hearings i was thinking of these women. What they dont tell the story and narrative is put upon them of blame and shame. To me that is the most resonant message to get rid of that stigma that they are living under they have to normalize one out of four women well terminate a pregnancy and putting a face to that is important and the way to take the narrative back. Host you observed actual abortions . I did. We shouldnt talk about it as a euphemism. You may not feel it is a person but interrupting a life process. We should acknowledge what is being done during a termination. He invited me to observe a five weekend a week and 15 week abortion. It was a privilege to be there with women who let me interview them before and after and watch during. The five weekend a week took less than three minutes. The product of conception was no more shocking if you blow your nose. Fifteen week took seven minutes next among the mucous very very tiny and humanlike a small hand. That was shocking to see. That she had three children under the age of four and could barely afford to feed them. She had a fourth she could not so does that make for a very good mother or bad mother . Host you are prochoice. I am. Host how did you find jeanines voice . She is a prolife protester outside the clinic that she has put on a disguise pretending to be a patient to secretly taping the workers to Say Something incriminated. She really does exist every Abortion Provider has had multiple women who are protesters on their table having an abortion or their daughter then they go out the next day to protest. So that voices prolife. So i went in there with misconceptions assuming we must be very zealots or evangelical they were funny and smart and interesting. We had great ever on conversations but disagreed where life begins it hammered home we have more in common than not in common with them. But they come from a place of deep compassion and conviction they dont want to be seen antiwar men are prochoice wants to be cast to use abortion as Birth Control. Thats not true either. So there are misconceptions on both sides. Host its a topical story but in a page turner how do you find that balance . I dont know and ive been doing it for a long time. I like the concept of the novel to educate about social justice because when i wrote the book i read countless institute studies about abortion statistics. Most people dont do that on a daily basis when you pick up a book to be entertained that will whisk you away for a few hours if i do my job right you think hard about a topic otherwise you might not have approached and in that way fiction is so sneaky it gets peoples minds to crack right open. Host one. 2 million abortions happened in the fifties prior to roe v wade. Yes every reason to believe it overturned we will continue to have abortions they just wont be safe and women are endangered its important to recognize 97 percent of the work planned parenthood and other clinics do has nothing to do with abortion thats why its federally funded. It is cancer screenings contraception, std and women and poverty use the clinics to get the healthcare only 3 percent of the business is abortion it is the only part that finds itself federal funding does not cover abortions if you get when you have to pay for it if you defund planned parenthood literally all they can do is abortion care that is not what protesters mean they think they stop abortions but really they dont. Host are Abortion Services profitable . Nobody is in it to make a living but they pay for themselves and cover their cost because there are no federal funds already allocated to that so basically what you wind up doing to get rid of federal funding you get rid of all healthcare. Host we were chatting in the studio talking about your tour in england and some of the questions man wed ask you. I didnt get that many questions from men in america that multiple man wed ask did you talk to the man helping to make these decisions . The answer was no actually. I never spoke specifically to men i was interviewing the woman at the clinic but in the course of my interview i did asked the them. The vast majority did tell their partners they were pregnant or considering an abortion if not it was because of rape or incest or the man already left the scene. Even when man were supportive when they drove the woman to the clinic or went in with her were paid for it the women felt very alone and isolated they you dont understand it stopping to me. Me they shouldnt do this but all books of yours that i have read try to find that character that you identify with i did in all of them i way off . [laughter] it is a really interesting character in many ways the future of america could be in the post roe v wade world a girl who has run out of options to have a judicial waiver so she does have to tell her parents and something happens with the judging cannot be there that day. And when they reschedule this past the legal limit in mississippi. And then to have a medication abortion. In many states where we see personhood statutes one is coming up on the ballot on tuesday in alabama when he trying to facilitate your own abortion you could be charge for murder. I dont see that but all of is a 70 yearold woman. [laughter] she is at the clinic obviously not to get an abortion. And then to point out not just for abortion care. But i love olive and is the heart of the books i will take that as a compliment. If i could be anyone it would be the Abortion Provider doctor ward. Host i want to show the cover i asked some people what they think of the cover what do you think . I think its beautiful. Those womens faces are caught among the colors. And then the pastel colors we would consider more feminine because it is about womens reproductive health. If i was walking past that book in an airport unless i was familiar would not stop to pick it up. I would argue it isnt always a function of the cover. With that huge gender bias and that would never be a checkbook to have a cartoon cover or the disembodied part on it somewhere that is too high brow. We do you know there is intense gender discrimination in publishing because of one group that has actually done the numbers count every year they crunch numbers to see how many female authors are reviewed by traditional outlets and how many women are actually reviewers. And a have expanded. Now they look at people of color and disabilities and non binary authors and they start to see how white and male driven publishing is. Womens fiction category. Also someone called a womens fictiocall the womensfiction ao with what is between the cover then what is between the authors legs. And i offer as an example of that my book small great things which is about racism in america but doesnt have a single case and one best romance novel. [inaudible] it makes me fear for the romance future of poland. After cohost could you were quoted in 2013 saying i dont mind the term chicklette. I dont have integrated, but people assume i do because i happened to have a vagina. Guest i guest im sorry if youre picking up my book for chicklette but by definition its supposed to be something with humor in it. When i write a book about the holocaust that would necessarily be my first choice for a chicklette book. I love fiction and genre fiction. I read widely and i think there is a place for that for all kinds of genre fiction. There was a. Years ago. There was a huge uproar because they took with the women of the novelists page. If you want to have a subcategory, i am all for that. Host was there a process to make sure they get feature as well . Guest nobody consulted me but you make them a subset. Host do you have any idea how many of your readers are women . Guest i was tired of being called a womens fiction author that i tracked it and i can pull you 50 of my mail comes from men and they often write and say im sure im the only man reading your books because youve been conditioned and i always say no, resecure your masculinity. I hear from many men. Women read it and take away Different Things from my novels. I would urge men watching this s program, go to your bookshelf and see, do you read a female author for every male authored you read and i bet you will find you dont end up maybe that is something you should change. Host why all the references to astronomy though a spark of life . Guest i guess the thing that stayed with me is the idea when we see light from a star you are looking into the past and this is a book about time in many ways. It was chronologically backward. Its about what brings people to believe things they believe about controversial topics in ad is that something that we find is our own personal experience, and when the hostage negotiator, he is a single dad and this is what they bond over is a little stars and going to look at stars. For me it felt like the perfect metaphor for this particular book. Host where did the title come from . Guest the title has a great story it was in the original title. My publisher didnt like the original and for about a month host are you going to tell us what it was . Guest moment of conception. It wasnt necessarily about where life begins as much as where bullies begin tha but they felt that was too clinical, so for a month we went back and forth and they tried to give the other titles and i hated them so one day my amazing editor called me and had been on a flight and read somethingrab something at t magazine about a study that had been done by some scientists in the midwest and it was about the moment sperm fertilize an egg under a highpowered microscope you can see a flash of light and its actually the zinc inside of the egg giving away. Whats great about it is that they have ascertained that the bigger the spark, the more healthy the embryo is and you can imagine how thats going to have unbelievable ramifications for people who do in vitro because you only have a certain number of embryos and who knows which one is going to faint, the healthiest ones are the biggest spark of life, but im thinking about that and thinking about my fictional doctor whos modeled after Willie Parker a devout christian and thinks about the universe beginning with light, then there was light, and reading this biological essay about the spark of life that happens at the fertilization moment between a sperm and egg, and i thought i can make this work absolutely. Host are you a big seller with your 25, 26 bestselling books that you can determine what the title of your book is and what the cover looks like . Guest i always get cover input. They show me and ask what do i think of it and i told them if i like it or dont like it. That wasnt the original cover for a spark of light. The original one looked a lot more like small great things. I liked the cover but i didnt want people confusing the two, so our amazing art director came back with that and it caught my eye and i loved it. Host speaking of small great things, that is the next one we are going to talk about. What does that represent . Guest when i look at the cover i think of those colored chips artists use, and if you look at the covers, there are spots where color is missing. Theres something not quite right about the color. Theres definitely an absence. Small great things about racism in america and metaphorically to me, that was such a beautiful illustration of what i was trying to talk about. Host and again, or you kennedy. Guest that book looks at its based off of a reallife incident that happened in flint, michigan. An africanamerican nurse with 25 Years Experience in the labor and delivery ward delivered a babbaby and that the father saie didnt want her or anyone who looked like her to touch his kid and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. The incident they put a postit note and the babies file saying no africanamerican person can touch this baby. A bunch of personnel came together and sued, i hope that they got a great payout. But what if she was the only one along with the debut and something went wrong and she wound up being brought up on charges of murder and what if she was defended by a white public defender who like me, like many of my friends would never consider herself to be a racist. What if i could tell the story anin her voice and the voice ofa white supremacist and the voice of the public defender and they begin to unpack her own feelings about race. Toomey, small great things is meant to say over eyes a little lighter. Its easy for white people to point of a white supremacist and is a thats a racist. Its harder for white people to point to themselves than t and y the same thing. And get race is about prejudice and if you are white in america, you hold all the power of. Although it is easier for us to kind of see the headwinds of racism and to know if you are a person of color your life might be a little harder, its difficult for white people to acknowledge the challenge of racism and the fact that there are benefits that come to us because we happen to be born like this. And that is something that is on white people to learn and fix. Ultimately that is why i wrote this book and the audience i was hoping for. Host a quote from kennedy who became jeffersons lawyer in the. Quantico id wanted to live like ruth david, just for an afternoon, but not if it meant i would be in danger. Guest right. One of the things i get asked a lot is people will read the book you say i this rocks my world and i need to do better. I certainly learned when i wrote about it i live my life differently as a result of writing the book. One of the things i talk about is making yourself an easy and putting yourself in a situation where this isnt the predominant color in the room and most people havent had that experience. If they do, it makes them feel a little on edge. And thats okay. That actually means you are learning something if you feel that uneasy. Its part of many things you can do if you want to be actively antiracist. Another good thing to do is to learn the difference between equal and equitable. Equal means the same, equitable means fair. If you have a student in her class and your teacher and she was blind, would you giv but yoe test as everyone else, of course not. You did a test with the same information. Thats what i mean. We need to figure out that in life because of systemic and institutional racism, people are starting at different points. So we have to make sure in whatever line of work we are in that everyone has a fair chance to get to the finish line. Thats what equitable means. Things like that, talking to people around you. The role of the white ally is to talk to people who look like us and to say the aware of the fact that you have privileges that families of color arent going to have. How are you going to take advantage of that privilege if you are a mom and have a second grader can go to your Childs School and say what are you teaching about africanamerican history, just slavery or some inventors and some role models that also happened to be black . Even better if you are a white parent asking that stuff. No matter where you are in your life you can find a way to be actively antiracist. Host was it tough for you, jodi picoult, to give some semblance of sympathy deterred and brick . Guest its hard to find anything likable about White Supremacists and hes the only character i pretend where at the end of writing a section i would have to go downstairs and take a shower because i felt dirty and it was so, it felt too easy for me to be able to slip into his patterns of speech and i hated myself for that. It made me so uncomfortable, but ultimately, i think it is very rare that you find someone as a fillin is 100 evil. I dont think anyone is 100 good and i dont think anyone is 100 evil. I do have thoughts about politics but we wont go into that right now. In my fiction, people are balanced and diverse multishades of gray and i needed sympathy for him and ultimately, he is a dad who lost his baby. Any parent would feel empathy for the. Any parent could understand how hard that is, no matter what you think of his disgusting beliefs, you understand he might be grieving the loss of a child. Ive heard from many people who read the book and said that it was so hard for them to realize that they felt sympathy for him. Theres another scene where he proposes him and its a very romantic comedy moment and people said how dare he have a romance, like as if the people that are reprehensible in their beliefs dont follow above. Of course they do. And that was really critical to me to recognize that as a reader, you are going to feel it has and say maybe i do have something in common but thats also important because he has a change of beliefs by the end of the novel and you should be able to believe that someone who is morally reprehensible can find a way out into the light. Host all your books or nearly all have a little at the end. Is that they keep us interested guest to keep you or me interested. I dont know why it is i started putting a little twist at the end but i guess maybe i started to get known for its end now im not going to do one just to wait and see. I dont know, i like doing it because it provides me the ability to really lay a paper trail. I think anyone can throw a twist into the end of the book but its a sucker punch unless youve threaded it through very carefully. And i like doing that. I feel like that makes me a better offer. Host so, is this character based on a real person . Guest he is based on two former white supremacist assignment as part of the research. Theres onthere is one man nameo grew up in orange county, california. He was in a pretty privileged family and ram of a very violent gang of White Supremacists. One night he and his friends beat up a man and left him bleeding on the code expecting him to die. Years later he got out of the movement and wound up working at a center in la and had wrote the rabbi and apology note and you know, the rabbi wrote him back and said why dont you come work for me and he did. He started giving talks every day. One day he was in the cafeteria and a tour guide was coming through and he recognized this man and its the guy that he had beaten up and left for dead. They spend months in conversation. There was understanding and forgiveness and now they are very good friends. The other man i spoke with his guy named frankie that used to be the head of a way to come assist growth in philly. He was sent to jail and realized he had more in common with the black kids in the jail than the white kids. They would talk about the food on the outside and the girls they missed. He got out of jail and began working for a jewish man and he had all the worst misconceptions because he was a white supremacist. The night before his contract was up, his boss called him into his office and he thought here it comes hes going to cheat me out of my money. But instead he said youve done such an exemplary job, id like to pay you double. He began to wonder how many exceptions to the rule does there have to be before the rules have to change. So many of the characteristics came from the lives of both of these men. Host liberal use of the nword in this book. Is that the decision you made early . Guest it have to be because it was turkss voice and that is what made me need to shower. Host good afternoon and welcome to book tv on cspan2 and or monthly program. Bestselling author jodi picoult. This is the whole month of fiction and we are on month alone in. If you would like to call and talk with our guest, heres how to do it. We will put the numbers up on the screen 202748800 and east and central timthe central timee 202 7488201 if you live in and out and pacific time zones. We will also scroll through our social media sites. Just remember booktv is the place to reach us on twitter, facebook. If you have a question or a comment he would lik you would. If you are a reader of jodi picoult are just being introduced to her. Give her 1026 books i think it is. As every one of them a bestseller . Guest not by any means. I was a slow roast grill. I didnt have that overnight oprah moment for anything. I started off very humbly. My first book had 3500 copies printed. And i think what happened was people who read my books told their friends you should read this and they told their friends and it grew very organically. It wasnt until i think it was after my sisters keeper. The Second Glance i think i first got onto the bestseller list by a south. Host how quickly was my sisters keeper and option for a movie . Guest it took a while and it wasnt a pleasant experience. Host is the movie accurate to the . Guest you havent seen the movie, dont. I actually, when the book was optioned, i had said the only thing important to me is they keep the ending because it has a monstrous twist at the end, and ultimately i noticed for the buck and people that i can tell you it happens just read it so we can talk about it. That is in fact a producer had gotten it. And they went to hire a cast and asked me if i would talk to them and i said yes. I said that the ending is really important to me. He read the book and said im not going to change the ending. If anyone does i will tell you why and i will tell you myself. I worked with him for a year and a half. He would ask me questions about characters. I saw a script that looks like the buck and one day i got an email from a fan that worked at a casting agency and he said did you know they changed the ending of the movie that i called nick and he wouldnt take my call. I went to the movie set and he threw me off. I went to the head of New Line Cinema and i said you were going to lose money on this because i have some pretty eager and ardent fans who are rock stars and they are not going to want to see this movie. He said we know what we are doing. He made the notebook for us and sure enough they lost money, my fans are upset. And ultimately the great irony is that money is what speaks in hollywood. I was able to say you are going to lose money and now as a result of the experience ive had more Creative Control on future projects. Host did you have any control . Guest i dont think fans realize this but most writers do not. If you have Creative Control that is an anomaly. Normally they say we dont need that. Thank you very much we will go to another author is willing to take the money and run but its a little bit like giving up the baby for adoption to try to make an educated choice and hope that you are doing the best you can but you cannot call every day and they did you hear this. Host small great things has been optioned. How much do they have . Guest i hope that we will have a little bit more and we will see. Its in its early days yet. We know that a Spielberg Company auctioned it. Viola davis and Julia Roberts are attached and i cant think of better casting so im delighted so far. Host when i read ruth jefferson, i agreed viola i read viola davis. We will talk about other books of jodi picoult has written. Before we get into the first call, have her books often more topical over the years . Guest its funny ive tried to look at the trajectory of my career, and i actually think that its sort of stands where my brain is at any given time. If you look at the beginning of my career is about mothers and daughters but i was closer in age to the daughter then i was to the mother. Then i had a baby. Id gotten married and had a baby right after, right before my first book was published i had my first child and my second book was about motherhood and how incredibly difficult it is because it really shocked me how hard that was. Then i got into marriage and relationships and whether they were 5050. And then i had all my kids and a wide span of years where all of my books are about host how many children . Guest three. All the terrifying things that can happen to your kids from sexual abuse to kidnapping to suicide, all these things. Then my kids grew up and got to the point they were pretty selfsufficient, and i think i began to take a step back and look at i would say bigger issues that sort of make me sit up at night and worry. Things like the nature of good and evil, things like racism in small great things, what it means to grieve and lose someone. Reproductive rights and spark of life. Host co my sisters keeper, you preface it with as the mother of a child that had over ten surgeries host it grew out of two different places. I had written Second Glance which was about the eugenics project in america which very few people know about. In several states we modeled the program that were used for his final solution and one of the things i learned, one of these crazy throwaway fact is the original Eugenics Society was to bring harvard to new york and when they folded, the group that took over as the human genome project anproject and that seemt too close for comfort. Id happened to read when i was researching eugenics a story of what they called modern eugenics which was the story of a family in colorado. They were the first family to create a donor sibling to help their daughter molly at the time had the disease. She was supposed to die by age two and was hanging on by a thread and age three they designed a sibling for her could provide a stem cell transplant fofor unbuckle cord blood and se went into remission and all those great. I knew that was a different topic. And i started to think a lot about this. I was thinking in particular, you know, molly and her brother when i met them were five and eight. They were little kids. But what would happen to a donor sibling in the teenage years when its all about who am i coming am i here just because of my sister, do i have anything on my own, i wanted to explore that and that grew into my sisters keeper but i had independent of a child that had multiple surgeries. My middle son had a benign tumor that grows inside your ear towards your brain and if it hits your brain it will kill you. The traditional way to remove it is to take down the ear canal and leave the child deaths in that year. My husband and i chose a different approach that would require more surgeries overall might preserve a little hearing. It turned out he had it in both ears an and workers less than ne children that had that because at the end of all of this though he had marginal hearing in his right ear and was profoundly deaf in his left ear and went on to become a talented singer. It was like the best success story. But i remember very well that was like giving all those surgeries, ten surgeries and three week construction, how hard it was to keep the family balanced because one child clearly have to take precedence at the moment. And as parents we like to say we love our chosen equally but the truth is sometimes circumstances arise that make you have to direct your attention towards one of your children at what we mean is the hope that we are able to be there for all of our children when they need us the most. Thats why i wound up writing a point of view for sarah. Host a quote from my sisters keeper. Weve all got our scripts down pat. Cage plays the martyr. I am at a lost cause, you are the peacemaker. A lot of familial relationships. Guest and that makes sense because i was watching my own kids grow up and i mean i find my sisters keeper also fascinating on many levels. I know its taught in ethics courses at medical school and for Nursing School and it really is something to consider because we tend to think parents can make the best decisions for their children medically but what if you have children with competing medical interests. When it comes to medical ethics, we know that a patient at what is happening to a patient may wind up with an ethics committee. A donor isnt considered a patient so they wouldnt necessarily convene an ethics committee. And it can be a weird and slippery slope, choosing an embryo that has six matching proteins to help cure cancer is different than choosing a child that has brown hair or a childs female. You just begin to wonder how to we begin tcanwe begin to monitod keep it from spiraling out of control. So it was fun for me to write the book because its one of these examples where science has almost outstripped morality and ethics in every now and then we get to the point that happens. Host but here from the callers. Raron and nicole hill, new york. The afternoon. You are on with author jodi picoult. Caller good afternoon. Wonderful hearing you, jodi picoult. Thank you very much. Its like you are such an impressive personality and person and you should interview your self. [laughter] if he were running for office, if you were in my district i would vote for you. But i also want to say im an unusual older white male whose done Different Things but i always grew up reading and i still maintained that habit. I regretfully havent read many of your books. I think i stumbled into one or two along the way but after seeing the show today, im going to seek out and try to correct that and i just wanted to mention a couple of people ive been reading that our women. [inaudible] i like her stuff. I just got done reading in perfect birds, which i found great. And jeanette walls who was recommended by my niece. We have kind of a familial bond gender book club obviously, so we give books back and forth to each other. What an incredible i read both of them. An impressive stories. I think now in the midst of the need to movement and in the face of what is being phased, it is even more important for voices of reason and different points of view such as yours and the characters you create host we are going to leave it there. Thank you for calling in today. Jodi picoult, any reaction . Guest its lovely. He picked some great female writers, excellent books. And antigenic are excellent writers. I also pleased that he mentioned politics, because ive been on a book tour for a spark of light for six straight weeks and at every single stop i was asked to run for office, so if i didnt have that happen on cspan2. Honestly, he pointed out something really important which is he does have a non gender book club with his niece which is great and fantastic. It isnt just a matter of reading when and if you are a man. You should be broadening your bookshelf no matter who you are. Thats one of the things i challenge people to do with small great things. How many offers of color are you reading . Theres so many authors of color out there. If you are reading voice is different from who you are, you will never broaden your mind. That is the beauty of reading and how we extend ourselves by hearing from people who are different if both lived lives different from a. Host i was going to ask i think that he beat us to the punch. Then you pick it up. But that narrative will keep going the matter is boots you are wearing some my pen sure some may have more room or some could be soft and comfortable. To me thats what its like to write in a different voice. But as you pointed out with a controversial subject is everybodys point of view. I have a different opinion. Host you share it on social media. Is not my job to tell you what to think my opinion is no better or worse than yours. Will ask you to look at every point of you. And to decide why your opinion what is what it is i will make sure in any book you will hear every one side. Ultimately one of the beauties of the firstperson narrative is you can give multiple points of view very easily everybody is speaking with conviction to get their point across. Have you ever cried because a character has died . I cry all the time in a right. Somebody says they are devastated im with these characters for nine months you can imagine how attached i get they are very real to me. I was just reading a book from the early 20th centuries with the white angle one anglosaxon interestingly enough when Stan Churchill who was one of the proponents. And what i thought was incredible that white people have all the power. And as the most powerful man in the world. And in terms of ron numbers there is more white People Living in poverty than any other group actually i remember the incident from your book. So dont you think this isnt quite as simple as you make it out to be . That power is situational and relative. Host we got your point. My take on that very often we hear we are in a post racial world. Brock obama was president. And media and startup like oprah there is a transcendence to lose that sense of color because the White Community to say that Asian Americans have the highest educational level is not actually necessarily true. To say that poverty exist is 100 percent true there is poverty in the White Community and its devastating but if you have a black homeless man and a white homeless man on the street the white homeless man will get more donations than the black homeless man. That is proven. To be situational but we have one president or a media superstar who is a black woman for my nextdoor neighbor is Asian American and to get into Ten Ivy League colleges. The overarching scheme is to assess to make racism and on the whole like healthcare or education or jobs and housing and prisons are still balanced in favor of white people and against people of color there are many studies that have been done to support this. We are conditioned to believe it is hard work we did well on sats its all very true but parents who stayed at home to read you Nursery Rhymes and thats something you could do before you go to bed you didnt have parents working two or three jobs just to pay the rent when you back it up like that you can see those are advantages that people of color dont yes there are always exceptions to the rule. But they are definitely the ones and power. You studied creative writing and princeton. And masters from harvard have you use a light on utilize that . In concorde Public School schools, massachusetts and i loved it i love teaching eighth grade. Two of my kids her teachers one teaches in california the other in massachusetts. I still work with kids in my hometown and i love the age and still a teacher my classroom is just really big. Host the next call comes from new york. Caller good afternoon. I have to say after glenns call i would like to take a shower but i want to delay your program. I love what you said. Im a white male and mail should read more female writers. I would like to mention one who happens to be black and female she is my favorite writer she rode a book called the summer prints she is amazing you should check her out. I love you said about white people having to educate other white people and it seems like an uphill battle with who we have in the white house if you have ultimate power for a day what would you do to change things . The only way to balance out what happened in the past to let let americans and indians have the only vote for 300 years thank you so much i cant wait to read your new book. Thank you. Thats a lot of power for one day. I have not heard of that author. I will check her out. I love to find authors i dont know yet. That is exciting. For one day i would ask anything that i do is not overturned. I do believe two ways we could overhaul the systems in particular with systemic racism i would overturn Citizens United first of all that would bring politics back to the Grassroots Level and make sure that Voter Suppression is wiped out to get rid of gerrymandering and redistricting for one particular party and have mandatory and free advanced education it doesnt have to be college we could have trade learning people said in their own echo chamber and are told what to think. Critical have been on thinking happens that collegiate level with a variety of opinions to balance them with your old will not her own belief and then move forward and thats what we need more of instead of being told what to think and what are blatant lies and we need people to sit back and draw their own conclusions and move forward. Host do you have any conservative friends politically . Most of my friends are not politically conservative. I have fiscally conservative friends which i admire. They are socially progressive and morally progressive. Circumstances in my own life or somebody as opposed to gay marriage. Host in a spark of light you say paul and aaron who are they. The prolife couple that i spoke with and they are great we got to them through a wonderful woman across the street from me. And said they happen to be prolife to have terrific conversations and its interesting to hear the point of view and to push as hard as i could. So what would happen if god for bid your daughter wound up 13 years old and pregnant. What would happen . He thought about it and very thoughtfully said i hope she would talk to her parents, and our priest and i hope she would make the right choice. They said that say interesting word that you used. Is great to have that respectful conversation one of the coolest thing is to be part of a podcast two is an evangelical woman from texas who has a large following and one of the things i talked about is if you recognize nobody wants to have an abortion reducing the rate would make everyone happy that how do we do that if we dont talk about roe v wade . The easiest way is dont get pregnant. Contraception. In america our teen birth rate is 13 per thousand and seven france it is seven per 1000 in canada it is six per thousand the difference is widely acceptable sexual education courses in schools and Birth Control. People in america are vocal prolife are also anti contraception. That fascinates me but if you tell me you are the voice of the unborn here given this fetus a voice i understand where you come from. Contraception there is no baby yet. Thats the whole point youre not talking about the unborn anti contract one contraception now you control womens sexuality. I have a problem with that. Regular clientele said you have given me so much to think about and one set i am catholic and prolife i dont believe in contraception. I would love to talk to you about this. We went back and forth with six or seven emails but the terrific discussion. She sent me an excerpt from the vatican quarterly and it was from an excerpt from the study from an institution doing reproductive rights numbercrunching even though contraception increases abortion rates did not fall. Ive never seen a study like that i look it up and i read the entire study and what i learned the next two lines in the paragraph said this is because at the time families are making decisions to have fewer children so we saw the numbers we didnt expect to see paragraph a few months as be expected we start to rise of contraception there was a decline of abortion rates. So i sent her the whole study and said were you aware this was the rest of the study . She said no i never would have imagined they would cherry pick. We had a great conversation that was completely respectful. We were not yelling. We allowed the other to see what we wouldnt have seen. Asked her if it would bother her to have priest or a man who were celibate making decisions for her healthcare. I see it like that no priest never makes the decision. My husband and i decide. Natural Family Planning is my choice. Then i can get on board with that. Host where and how are you raised . [laughter] long island i live in one of the developments that cropped up in the sixties or seventies. It was a storybook development. My dad worked on wall street my mom in a Nursery School. I had a very boring upbringing. My parents are phenomenally phenomenal and happily married. I have a little brother and i like him i didnt have any english that they needed to be a writer. Instead of writing what i knew i would write about what i wanted to learn. Host did you stay in long island . I went to princeton as a college and that i never went back in and wall street for three months until the stock market crashed i check my severance and moved to boston as a textbook editor, i taught creative writing, a masters in education, and that agency, married, pregnant, taugt eighth grade english and i kept writing after that. I was writing the whole time and then i left my teaching job because i was about ready to have a baby she wound up selling my book and that was right after my son was born. Represent ladies where are you . Caller thank you for taking my call. Ive had a lot of exposure and whenever i go to church and telling me how we are not supposed to have any control over our conception its like a herd of cattle and it is very disgusting. I wonder what you have to say about that. [laughter] thank you. If we had free and accessible contraception we would deftly see a decline from multiple studies and from the Current Administration to funnel money in that direction but i think that there will be extenuating circumstances through a terminated pregnancy but every now and then it just doesnt work there is 2 percent of that 4 percent and that is a reason that i think we need to ensure there are reproductive choices for women but if you are against abortion and you want less of them a good place to start would be to make Birth Control by the accessible maybe now you can see that women representing us now. Caller thank you for having me on your my absolute favorite author on the show. Thank you. Education can take many different forms and you dont have to be in school to get an education were to continue the education what i love about the research that i do which is extensive is i can go back to school it is the love of learning that makes me want to continue because im constantly finding out things i dont know. Thats the best part of the writing process. I am not a lawyer. I dont play one on tv i gave birth to a child who now in his second year of law school. [laughter] but i learned things about the legal system that surprised me. You can get a fair trial in america but only if you communicate a certain way and that is the genesis of house rules where asked burgers syndrome child who was literal will not behave the way you would expect in a courtroom. Or plain truth about the amish. Our system of justice is individuality and winning. We want to be the best and brightest. The amish are 180 degrees away from americans think its much more important to be part of a group than the individual. They will go to great pains not to stand out. If a bishop says sister and we need you to speak to the congregation and you say and then you say is of course because that is still better and then to defend yourself to be passionate about something so imagine that you are a normal american attorney with an amish girl and to say anything to confess because thats how her culture treats her. But i remember thinking in a court of law i to testify against my husband and id be more likely to put the way my husband and my child so often if i write something legal its because ive learned something so crazy i feel the need to tell all of you about it. I thought it would be racism because i tried and failed about 25 years. It wasnt until i realized i wasnt writing the book to the people of color. I have no right to do that. Culture appropriation is real. If i write a book about a black persons experience as a black person but i can to the White American and thats different. And it involved me to work very hard and closely with ten women of color who share their lives with me and allow me to put it into the character. Host the next call is whitney. Caller first of all im a huge fan and every in every book you have written. What book to accuse the longest to write and what is the hardes hardest . The same and it is small great things. The reason it take me so long to write was because every day i would be in my office typing and something would happen in the news of a racially charged incident isaiah have to get that in somewhere i could have kept that in forever but i had to stop at some point to say this is my cut off i will finish the book. It took a long time because of that but because i had so much to learn and work on myself. I had to unpack my bias i went into the project thinking im a nice person. Im not prejudiced. I learned a lot about this on myself. We dont talk about racism because i dont have to. I went to Racial Justice workshops and left in tears every night listening to people of color who are telling stories that were benign of eyeliner is only on white models but had trouble putting it on her face and she was sobbing telling the story or an africanamerican woman shed always put on a mask to be the kind a black woman other people can handle. If you are person of color always on a tight rope thats what i didnt realize until i heard all the stories. A completely changed who i am, how i see the world and how i live my life. Host what was the most emotionally wrenching . They all are. Host you said you cry a lot. My sisters keeper was really hard because i was visiting parents with children who were dying. Thats right in my research. I went to Sloan Kettering and i watch the kids there having prom dancing with iv poles. There is so much that is so heartbreaking. And then thes kids completely engaged and in the moment and talking to me and then the minute they walk outside they broke down. A woman who had a child with cancer who had seen another scan her childs chest and fell to her knees because she said the tumor has come back and he said no, that is your daughters heart. Host atlanta good afternoon. Caller. Im glad to get through. Hello. I was here when you came down to spelman to do research but if you recall what happened whenever infamous snowstorms but you got through. [laughter] we laugh at that storm. My question has to at the Publishing Industry and thats one of the spaces where they had a hard time. So my question is with the small great things how do you use your power to rectify that circumstance . Who would you consider. Just a second who do you consider your complex your comparable . We cannot let you go. Tell us about yourself meeting spelman in atlanta how did you get to be part of the group . They wanted some of us to come in for the lunch they were having or Something Like that and she was talking was invited by our president at the time. I was on it because i am a fan and the reader of your books i am a fan of her books. Host thank you. Was that a snowstorm that we roll our eyes . I still have ptsd from that snowstorm. It was half an inch but you dont understand my husband was traveling with me we actually had a car. We pulled out of the airport going for miles and on the fourth our im not kidding you of being stuck on the highway people just literally got out of their cars. They just leave their cars on the highway in atlanta and leave. We actually wound up reversing we had fourwheeldrive we went the wrong way up the exit ramp and started to go down back streets where there were accidents everywhere. It was crazy. The next day we were up and we would get to spelman. Im so sorry i didnt get to meet with paper because the president at the time she were pulling kids on campus to her home so i did get to go meet with a few students that was great and next on also has become a good friend herself a wonderful africanamerican and young woman writer doing some great stuff. So yes paper i still have ptsd from that. [laughter] one of the things i do all the time when i give a talk first of all i address the white people in the audience and struck them not only on what not to do when talking about racism and notice the tailwind when he makes a racist joke and educating yourself because is not up to black people to educate white people dont say all lives matter because all lives cannot matter and tell black lives matter more. We know this from statistics. Dont say i have black friends. And i always challenge audiences to look at the bookshelf and ask yourself are you reading authors of color i have a long list of people i can easily recommend and then to broaden two different layers. I could go on and on. In this africanamerican female author who blew me away with her book last year and im grateful there are so many incredible authors of color who stories blew me away every tim time, whitehead said he had book coming out i am so excited to read the next one. And i say all the time and i maintain if you look at your bookshelf and not reading authors of color you are not only missing out on incredible stories. Host i have to do a quick commercial for book tv we have mentioned several people you can watch them in our archives. Colton whitehead, doctor parker. You can type in their name in the search function at the top of the page and you can watch the presentations do we say your last name correctly . Yes there are several different pronunciations. Thank you for taking my call. Im a big fan and also excited. Are you there . Dont listen to your tv. Caller im a mom of three and an author and a teacher and if i had a suggestion of a book i had and experience as a caseworker one of the young man i was an advocate for became a serial killer. I dont know all of your books but do you have any books around that more word you be interested in the story at all . Thank you for that question. There is something i want to say about paper. Piper asked about the public industry on Publishing Industry and she is right with the bias of people of color. The gatekeepers in the Publishing Industry are not agents of color but we need to grow that. What is more important that since i wrote small great things we have seen an explosion on writers of color who are successful but we need to see that at the adult level, more of it. We need to see it not just like the africanamerican arm of the publishing company. The disservice we do to writers of color that only people of color should be authors of color. So when in reality white people should be reading about the experiences of black people in america and vice versa. Thats what i hope the future brings not just more gatekeepers but to see integration that its a good story and make said something publishable not just going to a black imprint that now on to kathy. I dont think i have written about a serial killer. I know thats a story i would pick up necessarily. I never say never. But i do get a lot of mail and contacts from people that say i have a story i need you to write because you are intimately involved in the casework of this young man , hearing that from your point of view is be much more resonant than if i did fiction around thats why encourage people even if you dont see yourself as a writer to sit down and see what happen happens. You could hire a ghostwriter to put into book form at some point. Host what does the term 19 minutes come from . A book i wrote about School Shootings in americana. Thats how long it takes peter to go through his school and killed 20 people. Host do you identify and im putting you in his books and its completely not fair and with lifelong friends when he was little and then to be more as they diverged and lacey is peters mom. And the only reason i would say more like alex because i had done research with the judge because alex is a judge that she was telling me when she went to the Grocery Store she had to make sure she wasnt wearing her sweatpants with holes and cannot you let her kids and wasnt addressed because people see you as that judge and you always have to be the judge. That said you seem plenty of friends with holes in my sweatpants. This is more makeup i have had in my face. But that public persona bleeding into private is what i do identify with alex. Host and you do write that in the book is senator Jeanne Shaheen a friend because she has a cameo. I didnt know her when i wrote the book not in the least. We met at a fundraiser in New Hampshire that was raising money for women who were homeless with the job interviews to gather money so they could have interview suits she interviewed me on stage i dont remember how long ago it was and then my son wound up to intern for her at one point in college so our paths have crossed multiple times i respected her as a governor and as senior senator from New Hampshire im acquainted with the junior senator now. Host how much anonymity do you have . I have none Everybody Knows everyone anyway so if youre known as the author that want people to know who why am i just pull my hair back thats what makes me recognizable our next call from New Hampshire. Caller i was fascinated i watch it all opportunities on the weekends i was watching for a few minutes i was going to do some errands until used started talking about medical ethics so a subject may be that you have not written about routine neonatal circumcision one is called the elephant in the hospital which is excellent about 33 minutes and more recently americans circumcision one is a bloodstained man what the American Academy of pediatrics those involved in the movement and those who felt damage their entire lives. It is a very difficult subject to get through to the doctors. Are the only country in the modern world who routinely on routinely circumcise is infants for nonreligious reasons. Australia, canada and uk used to do it but looked at the facts and stopped. Host is this an issue you would like jodi picoult to look into as an author . I think she would be well suited to look into it. Host in your book small great things there is a circumcision seen. There is in fact. And he actually gets the plot rolling. It is actually a sign of a bigger illness. They say you should write about this i get them all the time people write constantly with ideas times i have said thats an interesting idea but for me what makes a good idea is what intersex with my life at a certain point im worried about something or thinking about something or obsessing about something or whats keeping me up at night i cant say this is what ive given a lot of thought to perhaps in the future it will be but there are other things right now keeping me up at nigh night. Host you said once i finish a book i start the next day on another. Yes. Should i give you proof . [laughter] them at the end of a sixweek book tour right now and literally the day after i finish the last event i am headed to yale to work with a paleontologist doing research for my next book. Looking at a middle kingdom coffin with the book of two ways text from the coffin on the bottom and Work Together so she can show me how to translate that literally doing that on my way home from the book tour. Host okay. Help us with the theme of the book. [laughter] its the book im working on next unlike my more recent book books, its not a big controversial issue the interior emotional book and asked the question who would you be if you are not who you are right now . What if the one who had not gotten away it has to deal with ancient egypt many people have heard of the book of the dead. And one of the content text is called the book of two ways it was actually painted on the bottom of search and confidence a beautiful representation of what looks like a video game. The first visual interpretation of an afterlife you can go by see or by land. No matter which way you go you and up in the same place at the afterlife so metaphorically that ties into what i write about. Host you meet with the yale professor some of the things you have done including watching Sylvester Stallone im really sad and gone to jail for a day visit an amish farm, weekend love spells and dna testing procedures, experiencing bone marrow transplants, ghost hunting. Death row dont forget death row. [laughter] host early on in your career why is it tough to get into these places . Your name opens doors. Its not that. Honestly i havent change the way i approach research in my 25 years i write the same letter is just now it is an email i hear you are an expert i love to shadow you or talk to you and im a very good test until somebody picks up the phone and in all the years i have been doing this only once have i had a problem connecting with someone and everybody else really likes to be an expert for a day. That is what i have discovered. Being kicked off the set were you going in pretty hot or did they just not . I did get permission to go back eventually but it was like mommy and daddy are fighting so i stayed away. [laughter] it is a pleasure. You have been a tremendous influence and inspiration. Many years i have read your books. In fact ive read at least ten books we have a similar history. By have had similar experiences and having a trauma occurred in the last ten years of my life i have been a writer but never at the level i would love to be. I know i have some wonderful opportunity to do it. But i think to myself your process. So thats my question. Truthfully, not just the quick little one line answer but how do you keep balance in your life . How do you do this . Your very well educated at princeton and i am as well but you came in and you are very disciplined it sounds like. How do you keep your balance in your life with the ability to do so many things but your focus . And timelines literally . Are you up at 4 00 a. M. . How many hours do you write a day that you feel satisfaction . Host thank you for watching and calling. First of all its not easy to be published. If it was everybody would be published. Of course things have changed since i started because now anyone can go publish something online digitally if they want to. Ia personally do not endorse selfpublishing for a lot of reasons. Its important to have the have to of a brickandmortar publisher to promote your book but then that means you need an agent. I had 100 objections from agents over 101 said i think i can represent you. I said great and she is still me agent 30 years later. Some of that is believing in yourself because publishing is set out on set up to reroute those who dont have faith in themselves. It could take years. If you thank you have something to offer and you keep submitting and eventually someone will take a second look and that is all you need. Stick with it. I dont thank you have to be welleducated, you dont have to have a masters but you do need a workshop course because you have to give yourself criticism once you do that you dont have to take a workshop course. Incredibly organized the way i structure my day whether a promotion day or research day or writing day if it is i get up, exercise and come back my husband makes me coffee i go upstairs to my office and answer fan mail for one hour and then pull up what i am writing and keep going in and stop at 4 00 oclock and continue with my other life. I am disciplined i use to write in 15 minutes snips when my kids were watching tv or napping or a Nursery School and take my computer to swim practice and right anywhere i could when they were little you can always edit a bad page but not a blank page even after my kids go to eight hours a day and now out of the house i still function the same way i sit down and write something that i can always fix later. Host is two pages good . I could have a great day writing a very emotional three page seen it takes eight hours or a great day writing 60 easy pages of a trial it really depends on what im writing people say what is your word count . I dont know. I dont even check. Host does dialogue come easy or is that tough . I like that. I can hear it its hard to explain how to create characters because i feel as though they are speaking to me and im watching a movie than if you can see i said it is successful schizophrenia. Is literally people talking in my head all the time. Research helps me what they say but their mannerisms and speech patterns is in my had fully formed. Host spending time with the department of justice tracking down not see were criminals and in botswana with other researchers, with a psychic and an Abortion Provider with multiple procedures, what is your reaction to this review from the New York Times . I know what it is. Host in her fiction we rarely encounter character logically bad parents. Instead we meet mothers and fathers who try to fail to meet the current standards of caring for children that affect the deepest concern or the therapeutic language or womens magazines but are unable to implement the adm and elaborate misfortune repeatedly conspire in her books to conspire to have new horrors. What does that mean . One of the beauties of writing fiction as i see it is taking ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to see what happens. I remember that review because it was bad parenting fiction is as strange label. Im sure you could do a deep dive that made that characteristic but others dont as well. Handle with care 2009, is Charlotte Okeefe likable . [laughter] yes she is. It is the story of wrongful birth basically a legal tactic that was pretty much invented in the United States and when a parent has a child with a profound disability to goes to court to testify if my ob gyn said i would have a profound disability i would have terminated. As a result juries pay out millions of dollars to families. Here is the interesting thing that i learned. The parent to go to court to say these things they love these kids so much. But they do not have the funds necessary to make sure their child to live the best life possible because of our healthcare system. Its a way to get money to continue to take care of their kids to give them a terrific life. Odi picoult will continue after this. Hi, im jodi picoult. [laughter] she just started to call it did was say my name. Take to. Hi, im jodi picoult. Im samantha manlier and where the article authors of off the page. A story we began writing about prince oliver trapped in a fairytale and lila, the reader from the outside who manages to get him out in the real world. What happens when you get your wish when it comes true . Can you still create happily ever after and more importantly how do you do it . I think i learned in the process that my mother is incredibly weird. [laughter] there was actually a moment when i was seriously considering pitching sammy out the window. And vice versa. You were horrible, also. We did but heads a lot but i think that meant we were producing our absolute best work at the moment which was cool. Off the page, because of that there are characters that are new to this book and dad are i guess richard to this book as well. Resume out hear the stories of tons of different people like jewel and edgar and jessamine who were kind of just sidelined characters are now suddenly in the forefront. I think actually a produced a better bus but. I think it came out funnier, tighter and twists on every freaking page. Its insane. Its very educating. It came out beautifully specialn addition of in depth. Ask month and its author brad meltzer. You for being with us. Guest thank you for having