Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible> you are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org. I'm Josh Webber
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Radio. I will be talking to Lizzie Davis, a translator from Spanish to English and editor at coffee house press. Her recent projects include translations of works by a PLR for I lay on my door, Daniela Tara zona and Alena muddle, and her co translation of Medallia's last Mata vs. With Thomas Bon status forthcoming from Pushkin press. She has received fellowships from the OMI international arts center and the Brad loaf translator's conference in support of her translations, all this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio. And then the second part of our show, I will be talking with Sarah Stone. It about her novel fishing. This was an exclamation point filled with hilarity and heartbreak. Fishing eases us into unsuspected depths as it approaches the central question
Speaker 0 00:01:23 Slightly scared by the heart, not the remote
Speaker 1 00:01:27 As an American writer and editor based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I am so delighted to welcome the wonderful Lizzie Davis to the station. Lizzie, can you hear us?
Speaker 2 00:01:39 Yes, I can I, Annie? Hi,
Speaker 1 00:01:42 It's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 2 00:01:45 It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 00:01:47 Well, I'm so excited to have you here to talk about, uh, ornamental. So just to start us off. So ornamental is a translation coming to us from Columbia and, uh, Lizzie. I was wondering if you could start us off by, uh, reading a passage,
Speaker 2 00:02:04 Ah, midlife, midlife. Great. Okay, here I go. With the distribution of the new product now underway lab has returned to focusing on its legal activities. We've also been contracted to produce generic drugs for the government's mandatory health plan. So the administrators and lawyers to negotiate state bureaucracy are the ones whose noses are now to the grindstone. The machines and facilities on the other hand are automated to such a degree that they hardly require personnel to attend to them. The enormous lab corridors are perpetually empty. The only sound that distant hum of factory equipment, I missed the women, the nurses, the staff, we subcontracted for the evaluations. The space is too big or too small, a number to fill it. And the fact that there's now just a handful of us only accentuates the, I have so much spare time that I spend whole afternoons roaming, the forest and the company of the dog.
Speaker 2 00:03:07 Today, we got, as far as the electric fences, where the property runs up against a pair of enormous greenhouses they're elegant box shaped structures, rectangular skins of translucent plastic stretched over frames of metal and wood. The Savannah is full of constructions. Like these. You can see them from the window of any approaching plane. My fondness for greenhouses is something I inherited from my father, the cultivated flowers, and like showing me where he made his fortune. Maybe a greenhouse is where I had my first impression of beauty, uniformed women, masked and gloved, manipulating orchids first into cellophane packs. And then wouldn't crate come to think of it. I can't recall seeing the face of a single one of those workers. I only remember naked eyes above masks, the gloved hands, the scissors, the movements synchronized as if in some kind of ritual, nothing could be further from the idea of industriousness my father. So fiercely defended apart from the sweat on the worker's brow. If I could, I would cross the electric fence. Now I would go inside the greenhouse, do the translucent plastic. I Intuit the movements of bodies.
Speaker 1 00:04:22 That was amazing. Thank you so much for reading that to us. Uh, what I really love about your trans, uh, both your translation, Andrew reading. I was noticing as you're reading that you kind of bring the same quality to both. You bring a level of intimacy to a world and displaying of the emotional depths of a world where it just feels so physically present. And that's something that I love about your writing. You're translating and you're reading.
Speaker 2 00:04:52 Thank you. So rents and AIDS,
Speaker 1 00:04:54 Uh, well, it's really fun to have you on the show, especially since this is now one of many translations you've done. Could you let us know how translation became a part of your life and what kinds of experiences you've had as a translator from Spanish to English?
Speaker 2 00:05:12 Yeah, well, yeah, let's see. I guess I had always been really interested in languages and in reading and writing and it turned out for me that translation was kind of the perfect combination of those interests. I like to say that I started translating cause I wanted to be a writer, but I hated the terror of the blank page. Kind of allows me to do all the parts of writing that I love most really work on the level of detail and level of each individual word and rhythm and sound and, and, you know, avoid actually coming up with ideas.
Speaker 2 00:05:50 I think of it as a form of writing within constraints and as a really close form of reading. So I guess you asked what experiences it's brought me. I guess I took a translation workshop in college and that's where I really got my start. And the books that I ended up choosing was the book of poems. I chose it almost by accident, um, by the Spanish poet, you know, finally Amador. And it just so happened that she was coming to Providence to read the next year. And so we met and it was all very serendipitous and wonderful, and she was extremely supportive of my translation work. And so we've gotten to collaborate on three other collections of her poetry and I've gotten to go and visit her in Spain and spend time with her. And I feel really lucky that that has been one of the results of being a translator, just getting to form those relationships, getting to live in the mind of another and really inhabit the world of another. And the people that I've gotten to work with have been such warm and wonderful people. So those are really special relationships that I hope will be around for my entire life.
Speaker 1 00:07:02 That's so beautiful. I know you've mostly, uh, you, I at least think of you. Um, first and foremost, as a poetry translator, is this the first novel that you've translated?
Speaker 2 00:07:14 Yes. Let me think. I have accumulated many unpublished translated projects as one does
Speaker 1 00:07:22 I'm just over here, pigeonholing you poetry only.
Speaker 2 00:07:27 That sounds sounds about right. I think this is definitely the first novel that I've translated in full. So that was very exciting. Definitely as, yeah, primarily a translator of poetry. There were definitely some challenges with that presented, which is why I love translation. It's always a challenge. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:48 For ornamental, you were translating for Juan Cardenas and um, I was just wondering out of curiosity, um, what was your relationship like, um, with Kwan as you translated this work, if any,
Speaker 2 00:08:04 I'm really glad you asked, because I love telling this story. I met Juan really luckily and kind of randomly at the <inaudible> it's a book fair in Columbia. It was there in 2017. I'm on behalf of coffee house and all of these things tried to support my arrival and my flight was rerouted by a hurricane. I showed up, I was late, I was disoriented. I was lost. And I just remember this other group of more seasoned editors telling me, don't worry. One will help you get wherever you need to go. Yes. We happened to meet at the hotel where we were both staying. And I remember him asking who we published at coffee house. Then I told him about some of our recent translations. And he said, you guys publish all my friends? Sorry. I thought that was promising start. And the next day I found some of his books at the fair and read them. And by the time I was back in Minneapolis, I was really eager to try to translate something of his and I was anxiously preparing a sample and hoping that we could do ornamental at coffee house. And he's just an exceptional person has been really wonderful to work with. So yeah, another stroke of great fortune. I think
Speaker 1 00:09:22 That's cool. I love that he kind of guided you into your experience in Columbia. And then he also was able to bring that bring a creative direction and a tuck coffee house. And I also, like, I think that ornamental in many ways is a quintessential coffee house book in a lot of the best ways
Speaker 2 00:09:41 That makes me happy.
Speaker 1 00:09:43 Very it's very introspective without being Naval, gazey it twists and turns the way worldview is working in ways that make you ponder structures in society. Yeah, just a, just a nice, a nice, say any little novella that makes you think in some of the best ways.
Speaker 2 00:10:03 Oh, thank you. That's very pleasing to hear.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 Um, so this is something that I always get curious about when I'm reading a translated work. Um, there were some words in the book, um, like guac heroes or disco take a, um, that you left untranslated. Um, how did you decide which book, which words to leave untranslated in the book versus which words to fully bring over?
Speaker 2 00:10:28 That is a great question. And I guess I will start by saying that one thing I really love about translation is that it often can allow for an expansion of the possibilities of the target language or the language that you're translating into. So there might be certain grammatical structures or syntactic rules or other linguistic patterns that you get to carry over that normally wouldn't exist in Spanish, like long sentences for one Spanish is more forgiving of long sentences then than English. So in English translation will sometimes be stretched by that. And all of that is to say that I think leaving words, untranslated is kind of another way of stretching the possibilities of English. I like to do that. If a word meaning can be easily glossed or seems clear from context. Yeah. And I do think, although there are some translators who might hate me for saying, I do think that some words are kind of impossible to translate just because of the entire constellation of cultural significance that they carry. Um, and I, one of them in their ornamental that I left and translated with <inaudible>, which maybe could have been translated as riff Raff or something like that. But riffraff has a whole other set of cultural and historical connotations in English that just didn't seem yeah. In <inaudible>. So yeah, it's a kind of an admission of failure almost.
Speaker 1 00:11:59 It's it's, for me, it's an opportunity. It's something I love when reading a translated book is that that's an opportunity to then open up my phone or my computer, and then dig into looking up that word and not only finding out what it means, but finding out what it's associated with. And that kind of increases the depth of the picture that I'm getting from reading the book. And in that I think that it's really fun to see what gets untranslated, because then that's the thing where I need the extra deep dive to give me the most vibrant picture
Speaker 2 00:12:35 That also makes you the most responsible reader of translations of all time, right? You're the person who actually goes to the trouble of the words. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:12:49 That that said as, as, as I am dating someone who translates, I will sometimes just ask him like, what, what is, what does this mean? And in what context, that's probably doesn't make me the ideal reader, but that probably makes me the best equipped reader. So kind of digging more into the meat of the book. So the main vocal character in this book is the doctor who works on the magical mystery pharmaceutical, that forms kind of the central course of this book. For those of you who are listening and heard magical mystery pharmaceutical and your ears kind of perked up. Um, yes, this is very intriguing, very interesting, very, I mean the pharmaceutical industry kind of is ceaselessly topical in the United States, but great book to look up and read kind of digging more into the meat of the book and the way that it looks at people relative to products and other things.
Speaker 1 00:13:51 Um, the doctor describes his wife's art as ornamental, but he also seems to treat female patients and test subjects for the pharmaceutical that he's working on and companions like, uh, subject number four, one of the subjects that, um, is testing the pharmaceutical. Um, he treats them as ornamental in not letting them speak for themselves, something that I noticed over and over in the book. Um, and I was just wondering, um, in what ways did this book to you feel like it was about kind of, uh, a gendered assumption of men treating women and their work, their bodies, their achievements as ornamental?
Speaker 2 00:14:36 That's such a great question. Thank you. I think that this book is about men's treatment of women in so many ways and you know, not just men, but a very specific, very privileged kind of man. Um, I remember translating the opening sentence and, you know, the doctors describing this study participants and he caused them look had, I stayed as classes in petty orders, which is so judgmental. It's not class. They have a high, it's not classical Kodak. You know, I translate that as women from the inferior classes and early on in the editing process, um, the editor who I was working with asked does this degree of judgment really present in the original. And that's something that I thought throughout as I was transplanting is this degree, it sets a high degree of judgment to be translating a really important question. And I'll never forget the way that Juan responded to it.
Speaker 2 00:15:31 When I asked him, he said, the narrator is a privileged Derrick, let's just let him sound that way. And it's true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the narrative is the privilege check and that's very clear in his treatment of women. And, um, Juan has described the book as an attempt to think through the violence that is constantly exerted against women and how women's bodies are received. He has a quote from him, all of the hardship of capitalism. And I think the narrator becomes a vehicle for thinking through that, but the joke is on the narrator in the end, because it has subject number four is a hundred times smarter than him and not just smarter, but really in possession of an emotional intelligence that he and his wife don't have. So, and does their lives in the end?
Speaker 1 00:16:20 Yeah. Yeah. Um, just to dig a little bit deeper into the doctor, um, something that I found really fascinating in the book was, um, that over halfway through the doctor kind of detailed his father's, um, kind of gender biases and gender preconceptions, and really dug into his father's extreme dislike of anything that had to do with, um, affects considered feminine or nurturing to the point of even forbidding his son from having pets. And it kind of felt to me like the doctor probably perceived of himself as being far less sexist from his father, or even not sexist compared to his father, not realizing that he had just internalized a similar sexism in a very different way, like not seeing women as equals, but rather as companions and test subjects. Um, instead of like co-collaborators, how would you say the gender politics of the doctor lives differ from the ones he thinks he possesses?
Speaker 2 00:17:24 Great and horrifying question. Um, I think he thinks that he's thinking about gender politics. He thinks that he's maybe even above gender politics or he thinks that the market is a testing ground for his politics. And there's this horrifying moment where he's talking about the way his drag exclusively affects women and how that makes him a feminist. So I think he has these huge delusions of grandeur, which make him look ridiculous and really show a real disconnect with the realities of his city and his society. But sent me this question. I was thinking about this moment where he says, my drag knows no class distinctions. It affects a certain kind of democracy attainable via consumption. It's feminist egalitarian. My art is for everyone. And, you know, in the end, that's the exact opposite of what happens. Things escalate into a full on drug war in a matter of weeks. So yeah, you're, I think you're absolutely right that his, he just seems to believe that he's a feminist when reality hits wreaking havoc on his city with this drug.
Speaker 1 00:18:36 Yeah. And it's very funny to hear him say that, um, the drug is egalitarian and that it affects all classes equally while at the same time he conceives of the women that he works with as very inferior, like literally the inferior class, um, and also that the money that the drug would cost is in itself, um, an expense. Um, but just to touch on your little reference to the ending. So I don't want to spoil the book Sunday because everyone everyone's got to go get on this themselves and have the, have the full ride, but in a very literal sense, the doctor's wife who is very sick in the beginning gets the last laugh. As in an actual laugh in your experience, did this book feel like a victory for the women who populate it or do you think it was just kind of a full descent into chaos or like a crack open that doesn't really lead to a full resolution?
Speaker 2 00:19:29 Yes. Uh, I feel this may deter potential readers, but I have to say the book definitely does not feel like a victory for the women who populate it, but it also doesn't feel like a victory for anyone it has been described as very dystopic. Um, but one question that description, because he feels like he's just writing about the realities of present day life in Columbia. Uh, and those realities do yield to this full descent into chaos. That definitely sounds about right to me. So I think it's, it's uncomfortable to read, um, because we don't have to really reach very far into our own experiences to imagine similar scenarios, but I, I think that's kind of what makes it so frightening that it depicts something that's so close to our own reality. Um, yeah, unfortunately I wouldn't call it a victory for anyone. I hope we can say differently about our own reality though.
Speaker 1 00:20:34 Well, I don't, yeah. I don't necessarily think this is going to be anyone's beach read for the summer, but I also think that people shouldn't necessarily go to the beach during the summer. What with, well, with everything that's going on here in this, well, Lizzie, we gotta, we gotta wrap here and, um, cut to commercial, but it was so amazing to have you on the show. Um, I really appreciate you joining us and I'm so excited to, um, share your book with the KFI community in the world. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:21:05 And it's been such a pleasure and an honor, and I look forward to talking again.
Speaker 1 00:21:10 I'll see you again soon. Take care. Bye bye.
Speaker 3 00:21:16 <inaudible> welcome to right on
Speaker 1 00:21:32 And thank you for being so patient with all our, uh, our method ups here today. Uh, would you like to start with,
Speaker 3 00:21:41 Um, sure. I think I'll read just a few of the first pages that show the beginning of like the credits to the show and how that happens as you would like a masterpiece theater at the beginning of, um, any public radio public television show. Okay, great. Um, my character's name is rant. This is her first time, uh, hosting anything, a float somewhere in ran subconscious is the notion that she and her boat share equal billing on the show have supposing viewers might tune in to see Penelope because she would, the camera certainly loves Penelope it's point of view. Now above the speed boat with a masterpiece theater, pace of a bloated mosquito, it scares her bow sprit, a six inch stainless steel mermaid with little jutting breast digitally edited to Barbie smoothness for the public television viewing audience. The mosquito cam passes magically through the windshield and over the Birch wood steering console to trial over the contents of Rand's open tackle locks where compartments separate lowers from Rockolas and spinners from rubbery rainbow colored worms that look disturbingly edible, despite the hooks jointed lures with names like red leopard jiggly gyms and little Toadies are laid end to end in another compartment, bottles of nail Polish gleam and PEPs.
Speaker 3 00:23:14 The light ran occasionally does her toenails during the boring waits between takes passing whispers in the dark, maybe Mac could be an underwriter. The ratings aren't that good ran from, are they the camera pans across Sperry leaders and schools, a 50 pound test then swaps up from the tackle box to skim the depth finder display and the stations logo moving across the screen like a stoned PAC man action nearly stops over an open cooler with product placement items. There's a bag of dark chocolate promises, half hidden by ice cubes. They'll marketing reports. Their targeted demographic can identify even a partial dove logo upside down, or even backwards rant cringes at the product peddling, but national public television is just doing what it must to stay. Afloat funding is always a battle, but right now the sort of politicians her father votes for would love nothing more than to see big bird clucked and roasted in the smoldering ruins of Downton Abbey. Moving along the view, hovers above the hand, embroidered bench cushions, one posing the question, not fish. Another features his and hers rulers, his short by six inches. Rand's favorite cushion has a cross stitch portrait of Mae West wearing an orange may West. And I can read a little bit more later, but that's, that's just the introduction to the show. That's what viewers see when, when they tune in,
Speaker 4 00:24:58 Gives the feeling both of fishing shows and TV. So thanks for your reading. Now, I, uh, would like you to give us just a brief, no spoiler description of what the book's about.
Speaker 3 00:25:14 Well, ran doll, um, is the first, she's an accidental host of the first all women's fishing television show on public television. Um, and she's coming from the pro fishing circuit, which is a very misogynistic, um, all male world and she's grown up in it. So she doesn't realize how bad it is until she gets out of it. Um, and then suddenly she's in this very PC world of, of public radio, um, which has been a lot of fun to make fun of a little bit, um, our public television, I should say. And, um, she has some challenges. So she's got this new job. Um, she's got some Joan does at home and it's just got a very interesting mother who is a life passages, doula. I think she calls herself. And what she does is parades menopausal rich women and to ritual hotspots, um, to celebrate the ceasing of the Menzies and that her grandmother was a Sinatra era chef, and she's got lots of her own stories. And so it's the, it's these three women in this family, mostly it's ringing out of course, but, um, it's, it's their feminism in a way, um, how they've dealt in the world and ran sort of coming into our own, um, in the footsteps of these two really strong women.
Speaker 4 00:26:50 Now there are, uh, many topics that you could wrap around the story, but you do use fishing. And so I'm wondering what you love about fishing and why you chose that for your, uh, subject matter. Um,
Speaker 3 00:27:05 I oftentimes choose a subject matter that I'm not an expert in, because one of the things that I really love is researching and learning about these different worlds. So to learn about fishing and fly fishing, I took some flight time courses. Um, I went fishing, of course we fished when we were growing up, it was in our family. I wanted to learn a little bit about the male end of it and the pro fishing circuit. And so I went to a couple attorneys and I went to some of these home and boat shows, um, just to learn what that was like. So fishing to me, it seems like this is something that men have been doing for a really long time. And women are just catching on. This is such a great thing to do to get out and just really stand in a river or sit in a boat and do nothing. And how often do women get to do that?
Speaker 4 00:28:08 Very seldom really. I watched some of those fishing shows and they were very, I mean, they were almost funny. They were so kind of good old boy kind of thing, but I'm wondering if you watch some of their shows and also if there are any shows that feature women out there that you know about,
Speaker 3 00:28:27 Um, there are, um, one in New Zealand called addicted to fishing, and I think there are a few in the U S that are put out by Southern, um, Southern television stations. I don't know of any in Minnesota. I don't think there's that many. And that was one thing that interested me about this as a topic, um, was something that hadn't been done or known very much about. And yes, I believe grew up lots of these fishing programs and they, so male there's so much, Oh, I thought how different would it be if women got in a boat, right? Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:29:12 It wouldn't be, I watched the one, the one that I watched, it was really funny because there was all these big Hawk and good old boys, you know what I'm going to, you know, do this fishing thing and I'm going to win. And then the winner of that particular tournament was this little stick of a guy. You know, he was very small and very delicate and he's the one who caught the most, you know, pounded small mouth bass or whatever they were going for. So it was it's amusing. They'll kill us, but they're also, you know, I grew up with sufficient to, we crabbed actually more than we fished, but, um, it is a very peaceful kind of a thing when you get away from the tournaments and stuff. And you'd just go out there in the boat and get up real early in the morning and, and, uh, it's all quiet and beautiful. Um, do you fish now, do you like doing it now or,
Speaker 3 00:30:00 Um, I'm going to do some fly fishing and when I go back to New Zealand, I'll do some ocean fishing as well. I don't get too much of a chance. I will get up to a Lake this summer and get some fishing in at my sister's cabin. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:30:17 Now I read your, uh, your memoir to, uh, um, um, shelter, shelter. That's it about your,
Speaker 3 00:30:27 The grid in the mostly magnetic North,
Speaker 4 00:30:29 Right. There you go. Did, uh, did, do you still have that land or have you given that up?
Speaker 3 00:30:35 No, I'm a road came through and so we'd lost it. So that is no more relying on the kindness mothers and I viral cabins and half sick cabins. I get to the lakes.
Speaker 4 00:30:54 That's, I'm curious now it says in the back of your book, so I'm not revealing anything that you live now in, down by the Mississippi river, in the, uh, converted flour mill, and that's kind of an urban existence and you're, you, you have a dichotomy there of urban and outdoors, the country living, and I'm wondering how you cope, isn't the right word, but you, you know what I mean? I wonder how you, you bring those two together in a way that fits for you.
Speaker 3 00:31:22 You know, there, there is a balance. Um, I live right directly on the Mississippi river and when I look out my bedroom window and I've taken videos of this, because it's such a great little vignette, there are guys down below. Um, I live on one of those channels, um, in Pillsbury feel the old flour mill. And we looked down into this channel and there's fly fishermen down there. So I've taken video of just these fly fishermen. And then I pull up and I pan out and there's all of downtown Minneapolis behind them is just the coolest thing. But also I live in this really green area. I can get out and walk a bike path and be by the water. I can hear the water at night when I'm in my bedroom. So for me, this is kind of a happy, it's a happy medium. I'm just to be around water. You know, I much prefer to be on Lake superior or on an ocean, but this is what I can, you know, what I could afford.
Speaker 4 00:32:34 Well, it's beautiful down there. I used to live down there too. So I know, I know what you mean. Uh, walking across the stone arch bridge is a pretty nice thing to do too. Well, talk about, let's get back to the book. You talked about dot. You talked about Bernadette, but you haven't really mentioned big Rick yet, and he's a pretty overarching character in the book, but don't you talk a little bit about?
Speaker 3 00:32:55 Well, big Rick is the reason that ran, um, got into sport fishing. Um, and this is her father and he's had some, uh, addiction issues and continues to do so he essentially took, ran out on the circuit after her little brother was born prematurely. And so she almost became, Oh, what's the word I'm looking for the mascot for all of these, you know, middle-aged guys, she's this little tiny girl. And so she grows up in it and she and her father are at odds quite often. And he had a fishing show of his own. He's a professional on the circuit and has been out of it for awhile. He's retired now. And he keeps now falling off of the wagon and directly into ranch career path because he thinks that he can direct her. Somehow. In fact, it's probably living vicariously through her.
Speaker 4 00:33:56 The other relationship that I'm really interested in, it's the sweetest relationship in the book of all, which is rail's relationship with dot her grandmother. Uh, I want to share some about that as well.
Speaker 3 00:34:10 I love the character of God. I loved writing her. She's a little bit like my own grandmother who was pretty feisty. And I wanted to have this connection between ran and dot. It is the most important relationship in her life and is her confidant. She's really the only person that ran can be a hundred percent totally honest with because she has two difficult parents. She's the only family member that, that ran really trusts as well and right, and gets her and she gets stopped. And doc has this really interesting background as well. And, um, you know, there is a feminist theme that runs through, um, this trilogy. And I don't know if I've mentioned that, but it is a trilogy. Um, and this is the first book in it. And doc does continue on into, into the other two books in a different way in, in sort of a, you know, backstory sort of way, but she's special to Rianne. And I think Ryanne learns quite a bit from her and, and they're tight, you know, they love each other. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:35:21 Yeah. It's a beautiful, it's a, it's a really well done relationship writing wise too. It's it's not, you know, you managed to make it very special without being syrupy or overdone, you know, it's just tight, you know, it's really tight. Um, uh, why
Speaker 3 00:35:38 Don't you go ahead and read. We had a second reading picked up C let's see what we have here. Um, meet Missy Fox. This is, so this is one of our guests and ran and another female character in the series. Cassie. They manipulate the show to the point where they can get on some of their own fringe guests. So this is just a short bit. This is an interview in the boat. All the interviews take place in the boat, meet Missy Fox. Wow. What I caught Missy is standing in the stern grinning ear to ear while holding an eight pound walleye trophy size at 30 inches. It's longer than mrs. Torso. She hoists at higher for the camera, turning it this way and that to show the angles. I can't believe this. I've never caught a fish. Ran is laughing. Talk about beginner's luck. Given her profession, Missy is not at all.
Speaker 3 00:36:37 What ran had expected open faced freckled strawberry blonde hair pulled tight into a scrunchie looking closer to 20 than 40 with our compact frame. She could be a gymnast. She makes kissing motions at the fish's mouth and gives it one last admiring look before releasing it back into the dark water. On the least side of Penelope earlier, Ray Han had stopped the taping a few moments after the catch to take photos and measurements that missing might take to a taxidermist and have a graphite model made. Ran turns to the camera. That is one lucky fish, mrs. Typical prey don't get off quite that easily. Missy Fox is a bounty Hunter. She tracks down deadbeat dads for nonpayment of child support and hands down abusive. Husbands who have active warrants for arrest. Missy is casually wiping fish line from her fingers on towards sweatshirt. Well agencies.
Speaker 3 00:37:37 Don't like the term deadbeat dad, since it's not PC and PC is what they use. Noncustodial parent it's rare, but once in a blue moon, it's a mom who ducks out on children, but mostly it's men. Um, and so this is a shoe. This is just an example of the sorts of guests that ran and Cassie dig up. We have a race horse, ms. Seuss. Um, we have a woman who trains as a weightlifter. I initially by wanting, having this desire to be able to clean and jerk 185 pounds, which is the exact weight of her abusive partner. And so she becomes a champion weightlifter. And so ran is able to get these women on the boat and they tell their stories and she's quite good at it. She's surprised really surprises herself because she is not what the producers have in mind, but the audience really liked her because she's the girl next door and she's nonthreatening. And she's curious, and in this very honest way, and she's not afraid to ask questions like, well, are you happy? And just being in the water, being in a boat, sort of almost disarms these women, they always say things that even they don't expect, they get really honest. They get down to it during these interviews. And that, that was part of the fun of this book too, is finding all these interesting when you,
Speaker 4 00:39:18 Are they, some of them real women that you found or did you make them all up or a little bit of both?
Speaker 3 00:39:24 A little bit of both. Yeah. I mean, I don't ever use a real person, you know, other than a few nuggets of this and that mostly they're made up for sure. But, you know, looking into some of the more interesting careers that we might have broken into the new for them. And that was my big interest
Speaker 4 00:39:43 When he calls her the Oprah fishing or something like that.
Speaker 3 00:39:46 Oprah. And, uh, yeah, I think one of the guys at one of the shows is, is talking about his wife, likes his wife, likes the show. It's some kind of Oprah in a boat, I think that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:40:00 Your humor is great. It's very, I wouldn't call it dry, but it's subtle. It's subtle, you know, and I found myself chuckling, I didn't really get big guffaws, but I found myself chuckling through the whole book. And it was just a wonderful experience to read it. Your other books, you had one that won a Minnesota book award, right? Is that the Laurentian divide? What's that about?
Speaker 3 00:40:24 Um, Laurentian divide is the second in a trip. My Northern trilogy printed out with vacation land that, um, takes place at a, you know, an imaginary resort in Northern Minnesota. And that book is kind of a love story to the old mom and pop resorts that are disappearing, but, and the resort itself has rather a character, but that book, chronic calls the stories that the people that come and go chorus of, of this resorts life, which is like 40 years. And there are several characters in that book. There's quite a few characters in that book. It's basically a novel in short stories. And then the second in that trilogy, yes, Laurentian divide. And I took three of the characters that were in the first book and brought them through and to follow through. And that book is much more of a novel and it takes place only over a three day period.
Speaker 3 00:41:24 It's a pretty fast moving book. There's a character who's based on Dorothy. Molter only in this instance, it's a guy who was a vet and he's living on his own in an Island in something that's much like the boundary waters. But of course I don't name it. A couple of characters from town are on the verge of getting married. And it's the, it's the span of time between he doesn't show up after ice out when he's expected in town. So people are worried about them. They're thinking all of these things that could happen to him. And then this wedding is about to happen. Um, which throws kind of his disappearance throws a wrench into that. And that is the story of sissy, Pamela, who is from the third generation in the diner that her family owns. She's been there for a long time. Um, alcohol lady who was working in the mines until his retirement and his son, Pete, who was the local veterinarian, who again, he had, he himself has some issues. So that, that's the one that won the Minnesota book award. Yeah. Congratulations on that. Thank you. And I'm just starting the research on the third and that one will be called watershed, I think.
Speaker 4 00:42:45 Yeah, that sounds great. You liked trilogies then? Is that a particular formulaic or are you just kind of falling into that?
Speaker 3 00:42:53 You know, when I wrote vacation land, I just realized I wasn't done with it. I didn't intend or set out to read a trilogy, but then it kind of turned into one on its own and that with fishing, I just fell. So in love with the characters that I knew I wasn't going to be done with them. Yeah. They're great. Typically what happens? Um, I'll write a book and then I can't let go. I can't let go of the characters and maybe some of the situations. Um, and, and with Ray, I really did plan it out, um, more as a trilogy, um, knowing that I would, um, I wanted to see the arc of this woman maturing from someone who is pretty green about a lot of things to somebody by the end of it knows who she is.
Speaker 4 00:43:47 That kind of brings up a question in my mind is something I thought of a big Rick has gone to treatment several times and has fallen off the wagon. As you said, I'm curious if you think their relationship would get better or change a lot if he managed to continue his sobriety for
Speaker 3 00:44:05 Well, I'll tell you, you will find that out in reeling book, which comes out, um, a year from now, well, a year from may. So, um, next May, 2021. Um, so it's fishing and then reeling, which I've just finished and now I'm doing the edits on, and then the one after that is called leaping. Um, so that, that trilogy is pretty much all set and that is that's coming up. It's coming right along. I'm making notes now because so much has happened in the last three months that will affect book number three, that, and the effects of the five big things that are in the news right now, all of those things, global warming and, um, the black lives matter movement and COVID, and the election, all of these things, um, will have an effect on these characters,
Speaker 4 00:45:09 More to the revealed. In other words,
Speaker 3 00:45:12 Who are to be revealed, um, mostly it will be ran and Maura for guests and, and Cassie as well. She's a recurring character and her mother, of course, and, and her dad and brother,
Speaker 4 00:45:25 We have to wait a whole year for the second one. Oh, I dunno if I can wait that long. I think I'll use my, uh, my ends with your publicist to get a galley before I don't have to wait that long galley. Yes. So, um, we kind of know what's next. So how can people reach you if they want to reach you?
Speaker 3 00:45:49 Oh, I'm pretty easy to reach. Um, I'm on Twitter at Sarah <inaudible>, I'm on Facebook at Sarah Stone. It's bookshelf. Uh, I've got a website, Sarah Stone at <inaudible> dot com and, um, a lot of people actually have been reaching out to me. One thing I was doing with this book was I was, I had fishing fabric and I was making masks for, for readers, which is really fun. Um, when I have time to do that, I've been doing that. And, uh, right now I'm on blog tour and about this book and I still, I've been writing a number of blogs and they're showing up in various places and you can, you can see all of those. If you go to my Sarah stoneridge.com page, you can click I think, and get to these various blog posts. And then the last one I wrote was a few days ago called feminists. We adore, um, how readers support authors and help us write better books. Um, how to invite an author to your book club and host an author visit. Um, next week, I'll do what fictional hero ins teach us. And the explanation is 10 books, every girl and women and women should read.
Speaker 4 00:47:06 Uh, well, we're running out of time here. Um, it's really begin to talk to you. Uh, now fishing is on the shelves, right? It came out in March. Yes. So anywhere at any, at any bookstore that, uh, the PRI mail ordered them to, as long as there's
Speaker 3 00:47:28 Harder and another good option is bookshop.org. Oh, we've done a little bit of a run for its money. Um, I don't know if your, your listeners know about it, but it is a way to support local indie bookstores. A certain number of cents gets kicked back to the indie bookstores. And I think right now over three point $3 million have been raised for independent bookstores. Oh, that's great. That's bookshop.org.
Speaker 4 00:47:57 Okay. Well, thank you so much. This is, I really enjoyed the book. I highly recommend it to people fishing. It's put out by the, uh, Minnesota. Is it Minnesota historical press or Minnesota university of Minnesota, university of Minnesota, press it's available in bookstores. And, uh, thank you so much. This, I, we really enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 3 00:48:19 Thanks so much, Liz.
