Libro.fm Podcast – Episode 24: “Interview with Stacey Abrams”

On today’s episode, we speak with Stacey Abrams, the writer, small business owner, politician, and voting rights activist. We cover her newest novel Rogue Justice, her work in politics, book banning, her romance writer alter-ego, and more.

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About our guest

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Audiobooks by Stacey Abrams

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Audiobooks we discussed

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Full transcription

Craig Silva:

Hi, welcome to the Libro.fm Podcast where we talk to authors, narrators, booksellers, and more. I’m Craig.

Karen Farmer:

And I’m Karen. We are so excited to share this episode with you all. In this conversation, we got to sit down in person with the absolutely awesome Stacey Abrams.

Craig Silva:

Yes, it was amazing. She had a ton of things going on, big surprise, so we were very lucky to get a half an hour of her time to sit with us in person, like you said, which was amazing and terrifying at the same time.

Karen Farmer:

I learned so much about the different types of books that she’s written and how all of that came to be. I can’t wait for other people to hear this because my mind was blown.

Craig Silva:

Yes. In the nature of can’t wait for people to hear this, why don’t I play a clip from Stacey’s newest book, and then we will roll the interview.

Karen Farmer:

Perfect. And as always, you can stay around after the interview, and we will share a little bit about what’s coming up on the podcast and what we’re currently reading and enjoying.

Narrator: Adenrele Ojo:

Arthur Keene had perished in a bus accident weeks after her ninth birthday, leaving her with a broken mother who’d crawled into alcohol, drugs, and destitution. Avery had decided that night at the pawn shop that she would never follow her mother’s spiral down. She hadn’t gone down, but her life had certainly spun sideways. Avery shifted in her seat, waiting for the proceedings to begin. She unfolded her copy of the New York Times and let her eyes scan down the front page article that cataloged the current woes of the nation and her own existence. “President Brandon Stokes removed from office aims to discredit congressional investigation. House promises impeachment vote within days. By Linda Lowenthal. Washington.” It has been four months to the day since the Stokes presidency was brought down by an explosive investigation begun by Supreme Court Associate Justice Howard Wynn, who currently lies in a coma at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

In a controversial move, Justice Wynn’s clerk, Avery Keene, 27, was designated to hold his power of attorney, and she followed an elaborate trail of intrigue left by Justice Wynn. After a tumultuous 10 day foray, Ms. Keene uncovered shocking evidence that has derailed the Stokes presidency, including accusations of genocide, treason, and murder convened hearings based on Keene’s revelations, and House Democrats are preparing articles of impeachment. For her part, the enigmatic, Ms. Keene has become a legal pawn on Capitol Hill and political symbol around the world from India to America. She has been interrogated in closed door legislative sessions, lauded by a narrow majority of Americans, and vilified by myriad conservative allies of the displaced president.

Karen Farmer:

All right. Today, we are sitting down with the amazing politician and author, a woman of a million talents, Stacey Abrams. Welcome to the podcast, Stacey.

Stacey Abrams:

Thanks for having me, and thank you for the very kind introduction.

Craig Silva:

I assume most people listening to this will know who you are. But for the couple of people who may not, if you would like to give a brief introduction for yourself, that would be lovely.

Stacey Abrams:

I am Stacey Abrams. I have been in politics. I’m a small business owner. I am a writer. Most often, I write fiction, although I’ve written three nonfiction, two children’s books, eight romance novels, and two legal thrillers. And then I do some activism and try to defend democracy.

Karen Farmer:

I was like how do you-

Craig Silva:

A very nice short list, yes.

Karen Farmer:

How do you summarize your biography? So we’re going to dive into book questions. I’m sure that’s not a surprise, given that we are at the book festival. Your most recent book, Rogue Justice, came out in May of this year. Congratulations.

Stacey Abrams:

Thank you.

Karen Farmer:

It’s a sequel to your first thriller, While Justice Sleeps. So for listeners who haven’t yet entered the world of Avery Keene, I was wondering if you can share an overview?

Stacey Abrams:

Sure. The first novel, While Justice Sleeps, introduces us to Avery Keene, a studious Supreme Court clerk who is going about her business until she finds out that she has been made the unwitting guardian of a Supreme Court justice who suspects international intrigue and foul play. And Rogue Justice picks up four months after the end of that novel. Although you don’t have to read While Justice Sleeps to know what’s going on, I recommend it because it’s a really good book. But Rogue Justice picks up four months later and really follows the consequences of the first book. If the first book was about having responsibility with no authority, the second book is about the choices we make to make things right. When those who supported you have now turned against you,

Craig Silva:

How did you decide to do a sequel to this? Was it always planned? Or did you always have it in your head that this was going to be a multi-book journey, or did you decide that later?

Stacey Abrams:

It was much later. I wrote, While Justice Sleeps between 2009, 2010, and it languished because no one wanted to read it. It was a story of a president who is engaged international intrigue and a Supreme Court that it has monumental impact on the United States. And in 2010, that seemed a bit fantastical to the editors I sent it to. They were like, “No president would do anything like that, and no one cares about the Supreme Court. It’s irrelevant.”

Craig Silva:

Oh no.

Stacey Abrams:

So Avery took a nap for about a decade. When she woke up again, I was reminded of why I wrote it in the first place. And at the time when I was writing, it was because I was grappling with questions of, how do you try to make change when it seems absolutely necessary, but no one is willing to grant you the agency to do so? And Avery became such a fun character to write, and she has these good friends who help her navigate things, that when While Justice Sleeps finally made it to the light of day and did so well, I wanted her to have another story. Because the way the first story ends, it’s an incredibly important ending for the story, but I thought it was a really remarkable beginning for a character who could take her legal knowledge, her street smarts, and her growing sense of independence and responsibility, and really navigate what the world can look like when you’re bringing those pieces together.

Karen Farmer:

This is a perfect segue, speaking of legal knowledge. So my favorite fun fact that I’ve learned about you is that you wrote your first novel during your third year of law school. And my question is just, how is that possible?

Stacey Abrams:

So my ex-boyfriend, we’re friends now and we’d sort of become friends again, he sent me his dissertation. He was doing his PhD in chemical physics. And I think I’m one of five people other than his committee that read the thing, but I found it fascinating. I, for one moment, thought I was going to be a physicist, and I thought it was a remarkable story. And it intersected with some of my other interests in policy and geopolitics, so I was going to write a spy novel. And I thought, because I was an interesting law student, I was like, this is the last time I’ll have this much time to write. So I started writing the book, sent it to some friends who were in publishing because they were in the law school with me, and they said, “No one’s going to buy a spy novel by or about a woman.” And I thought, well, that’s just stupid.

And I remembered reading espionage, but I realized it had been romance novels, or I was watching General Hospital. And so I had decided I was going to write the same novel. And I was running out of time because I’d agreed to take this… I’d gotten a job at a law firm and I watched enough LA Law to know that I would have no time as a lawyer, so I needed to get it done. And luckily, I was able to arrange my time and focus my attention and get it written. Turns out I can write pretty quickly once I’ve done all of my research. And because it was a fantastical version of his dissertation, my ex and I disagreed about whether the story made sense. I’m like, this is why we broke up. You have no imagination.

Craig Silva:

Hopefully he doesn’t listen to this podcast.

Stacey Abrams:

Oh, it’s okay. He’s still in prison. In the first book. It was a bad breakup. But what it gave me was the-

Stacey Abrams:

Bad break up. But what it gave me was that I did a lot of research, but it was a book that didn’t require as much research as my subsequent novels would require. But it was also the first fully formed story that I really knew from the beginning to the end I could write. And having that space in law school where all you do is write, I just shifted my dynamic from writing treatises on tax policy to writing treatises on love, romance and terrorist organizations.

Karen Farmer:

Amazing. Oh my gosh. I have more follow-up questions on your romance writing as well, but I’ll let Craig ask his burning question.

Craig Silva:

So I have a question about co-authoring. We’ve interviewed tons of authors for this podcast, and I think you might be the first author who’s co-authored a book with someone else, and I’m just dying to know what that process looked like?

Stacey Abrams:

So the book Level Up: how to… So Level Up is a story about a small business that I started with my business partner, Lara Hodgson, and we really wanted to tell the story of the success, failure and success of our business venture. So started this company, we grew to death, and from that came a new company that we started. Writing a book with someone else is much like starting a business with someone else. You have to know your strengths, their strengths, and sometimes you need to bring in a third party.

And so in this instance, because there’s a fallibility to memory, and I wanted us to tell not only the biographical story, but also the lessons we learned. However, when you’ve lived those moments, it’s difficult to pull out the truths that other people need to hear. You get so convinced of your own narrative that having our third writing partner, Heather Cabot was really essential to us. We told our story to Heather. Heather helped us shape the structure. And as a writer, part of my job was to trust another writer.

My other job was to then go through… Write the pieces that I needed to write and work with Heather to shape and refine. But it was one of the few times I was very comfortable having another writer take the lead. I was doing a few other things at the time as well.

Craig Silva:

Can’t believe it.

Stacey Abrams:

Just a few, but it was also, I think, an important exercise in the honesty of non-fiction. It is easy to become taken by your own genius or your sense of what could be genius, and having another person really tell you what they’ve heard and then repeat back to you what you thought you said was a fantastic way to build a new muscle for me. I love the fact that I can write fiction and non-fiction, that I write romance and legal thrillers, that I write tax policy and social policy. And this was another opportunity to learn a skill and that was writing business non-fiction, but also weaving in narrative and the storytelling that makes me so happy.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you for that. And so speaking of the range of things that you write, you can imagine at Libro.fm, we love an audiobook. And so some of your titles you’ve narrated on your own and some you’ve worked with other folks as the narrators. So we just wanted to know what that experience has been like and if you have any advice for authors who are maybe narrating their own work for the first time?

Stacey Abrams:

It takes almost as long to read it out loud as it does to write it. So the words in your head sound very different on page than they do in spoken word. I’ve been privileged to read aloud all of my non-fiction, with the exception of Level Up. I was in the middle of a political campaign when that one happened, so it was difficult to take the time to do the full narration. But my first two non-fiction, both of my children’s books were all narrated myself and it’s a lovely exercise, but first and foremost, you want to make certain that you’re good at it. When I was offered the opportunity to narrate my fiction, I studied acting in high school and in college. I know what that skill set is. I do not possess that skill set for the purposes of audio. And I was very comfortable saying, “That’s not my bailiwick.”

And I think as an author, you want the words to sound the way they do in your head, but your job is to think about the listener, not the writer. So the creator has an idea, but if you’ve done your job on paper, trust that someone else can interpret it. On non-fiction, it was easier because there’s no cadence that I need to be really specific about. I use a lot of characters and so I didn’t have to learn a Scottish Brogue. So it was a very helpful thing to let others do the fiction, but I think it’s a fun exercise the first time you do your own non-fiction because you learn how different the written word and the spoken word can sound.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. You totally answered my follow-up question. I was so curious, as someone who does a lot of public speaking, if that skill set translated into audiobook narration?

Stacey Abrams:

It does. Part of it is thinking about pacing and flexion, learning how a listener is going to hear a sentence. We’ve all listened to fantastic audiobooks where the words are wonderful, but you move it to 1.2, 1.5, 1.7. My mission is to make certain you don’t have to increase the speed.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Craig Silva:

I love that. So obviously, we’re a book podcast and most of our questions have been about books, but I would love if you could tell us a bit more about Fair Fight Action. For listeners, it’s an organization you founded in 2018 to combat voter suppression efforts, specifically in Georgia, but also around the country. And I would love if you could just tell us about it?

Stacey Abrams:

Certainly. So Fair Fight is part of a triumvirate of organizations I created after the 2018 election in Georgia. Fair Fight really focuses on the architecture of democracy. Democracy is a construct. It’s what we agree to participate in, but defending it, protecting it, enlarging it requires care. And often there are bad actors who would like to limit whose voices are heard. So Fair Fight exists to ensure that the integrity of our election systems remain, but more importantly, that people own their sense of power to demand more.

Most recently, Fair Fight has been engaged in a battle against an organization that sought to remove voters from the rolls for no other reason than they thought they weren’t good. They made the presumption that these were people who should not be permitted to participate in the elections. And because there’s pending litigation, the trial has ended, but the decision hasn’t been rendered yet. I’m not going to opine too deeply, but my instinct with the creation of Fair Fight and then its companion organization, Fair Count, which focuses on the census and the Southern Economic Advancement Project or SEAP which focuses on policy, is that we have to think about the whole of democracy. It’s not just about going to the ballot box. It is your ability to register, to stay on the rolls, to cast your ballot and have it counted, to be able to elect people who represent your interest and to have policies that reflect your needs.

There’s so many people who want this to be true, but growing up in an area of the country where there has been a near constant attack on all of those facets, Fair Fight to me is the centerpiece of this larger operation, which is not just the defense of democracy, but expanding access so that every American who is entitled to participation can do so. But also that a global community watching us knows that we understand that democracy is both fragile and resilient, and that we’ve got to reduce the fragility to enhance the resilience.

Craig Silva:

Thank you for sharing that. We’ll get back into… We’ll get to your romance question in just a second.

Karen Farmer:

All right.

Craig Silva:

But it is not every day that I get to hang out with Stacey Abrams. So you mentioned that it’s not just going to the ballot box, and I’m just curious for citizens who care about democracy beyond voting, do you have any tips for people’s everyday lives of what they should be doing?

Stacey Abrams:

Absolutely. So voting, I tell people, voting is not magic. Voting is medicine, and it’s medicine that’s trying to cure the ills that we see in our communities. In the times between elections, our job is to still make certain that the administration of that medicine is taking hold. And so I encourage people who can sometimes be overwhelmed…

Stacey Abrams:

And so, I encourage people who can sometimes be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of need, to think about what you can do yourself. There’s this movie, Everything Everywhere, All at Once, fantastic title, terrible mission statement. Instead, I encourage people to do something, somewhere, soon. So think about the issue that matters to you, the reason you go and vote, the issue that keeps you awake at night, or that animates you and wants you to wake up in the morning and find a way to contribute there. If every one of us does that, that strengthens our democracy because in our act of addressing those issues between elections, we make the necessity of elections not less than, but we make their salience different. If we are fixing some of these ills, then we don’t require elected officials to do it for us. If we are tackling some of these challenges, we’re expanding the number of people who believe that they have a role to play.

The most effective democracies exist when everyone thinks that they have the right to be heard, but also that they can respect the rights of others. And that respect is best shown when we spend our days in between elections doing the work that we want to see done.

Karen Farmer:

Everything that you said too is just resonating so much. We just did an episode for Banned Books Week. It’s something we think about a lot, unfortunately, we’ve interviewed a ton of people about it, and I love what you said, “Something, somewhere, soon.” I think that is a lot of what we’ve heard asking for advice about book bannings as well.

Stacey Abrams:

Absolutely. Look book banning, it’s a time old tradition that seeks to use ignorance as a way to thwart effort. If you ban the sharing of knowledge, the follow on is that the knowledge will cease. Our response has to be the expansion of knowledge, the expansion of access, the celebration of those tropes, and ideas and thoughts that scare people so much. I don’t think everyone needs to know everything, but the decision should not be made by those who are afraid of knowledge, and that’s what banned books often represent.

Karen Farmer:

Mind’s blown.

Craig Silva:

So, back to romance novels.

Karen Farmer:

Yes. We’re going to take a heart here.

Stacey Abrams:

Talk about banned books.

Craig Silva:

I know.

Karen Farmer:

My sister and I both love romance as a genre. I’m always so excited to talk to you about your alter ego or your other half, maybe, Selena Montgomery. What can you tell us about your romance writing career? And I’m also curious where the pen name came from.

Stacey Abrams:

Started writing romance, as I mentioned, because the book I wanted to write, I was told I could not write it as espionage, because back in the late ’90s, in fact still today, there are very few women in espionage. But what I realized is I wanted to tell an interesting story that was full of intrigue, and complexity and that I had two demands; I wanted a character who looked like me, given my thwarted opportunities to do many things. CIA never came to recruit me, so I had to find another way to do it. Exactly, yeah. And if so, I couldn’t tell you anyway.

I wanted a character who looked like me, but I also wanted a character who was expected to be more than, and I came of age at a time when there were very few Black women writers who were allowed to write beyond a very narrow set of fiction. You had Toni Morrison and Alice Walker who were welcomed into… The, “Welcome” is a strong word into literary fiction. You had Octavia Butler who was making forays in science fiction, and you had two or three romance novelists who were allowed to have on the covers of their books, the characters that they imagined. I wanted to be able to tell that story, and my audacity said, “I should be able to do it in the year of our Lord, 1999.” The publishing world did not agree at the time, but for me, romance had always been this place where I could see myself, not necessarily in the description of the characters, but in the range of lives lived.

What is so remarkable about romance novels, they can take on the guise of almost any other genre of literature, but they are accessible, they are fun. And as a writer, I can tell you that one of the hardest things to do is to take a story where everyone knows the ending and still make them want to get there with you.

Karen Farmer:

Yes.

Stacey Abrams:

And that for me was one of the best parts of writing romance.

I have a pseudonym, not because I was ashamed. I’ve always been very proud of my romance novels. My face was on every cover, on the back cover, but I was in law school and I was also writing tax treatment. So at the same time I wrote Rules of Engagement, my first romance novel, I also wrote Resolving the Operational Distance of the Unrelated Business Income Tax Exemption. Something I’m sure everyone listening has read.

Craig Silva:

It’s my favorite book.

Stacey Abrams:

Exactly. And I was publishing op-eds and pieces on social policy. Because for me, I see no distinction in the things that interest me, other than, how do I tell the story in the best way possible? How do I get people to care about tax policy? How do I get them to care about the person they love? How do I tell those stories? And so, writing romance for me is just one facet of the joy of storytelling. And so because I had to have… It was at the advent of Google, so it was early 2000, Google had just become a thing, and I realized that if you looked up my name, you were going to find both a piece on tax policy and a romance novel. And no one was about to read romance by Alan Greenspan. So one of the names had to go. And I was watching a biography of Elizabeth Montgomery who played Samantha on Bewitched, because I watched an inordinate amount of television, and her evil cousin was Serena. And I was like, “I don’t like Serena,” because I didn’t like my Rs. I love my Ls. And so, I became Selena. Selena Montgomery.

Karen Farmer:

I love that so much. Thank you for the backstory.

Stacey Abrams:

Absolutely.

Craig Silva:

All right, so we are coming to the end here. We always end our podcast with what we call Lightning Round, where we ask you quicker questions that are sometimes a little silly in nature, so you don’t need to think about them.

Stacey Abrams:

Ready.

Karen Farmer:

What is your favorite song right now?

Stacey Abrams:

Let’s come back to that.

Karen Farmer:

Okay.

Craig Silva:

You inspire so many people, including us, and we were curious who inspires you?

Stacey Abrams:

My mom. Parent to six kids, and has been married to my dad for 54 years. It’s just this remarkable woman who’s done many, many things, and continues to just surprise me with how kind and… My mom’s the best human I’ve ever met.

Karen Farmer:

I told Craig, I was like, “I see that there are six siblings.” I’m like, “Is it a fair Lightning Round question? Who’s your favorite”-

Stacey Abrams:

“Favorite sibling and why?”

Karen Farmer:

And Craig said, “Oh, don’t ask that.”

Craig Silva:

And I said, “No.”

Stacey Abrams:

Do you want me not to go home? I mean, if you’re going to give me an apartment here, I’m happy to answer that.

Karen Farmer:

So you do literally all of the things, and I’m so curious what a day off looks like for you. How do you unwind?

Stacey Abrams:

I watch television. I read, usually fun fiction that I haven’t been able to read in a minute. And I sit in silence. It makes me very happy.

Karen Farmer:

Love that as well.

Craig Silva:

So you’re at an event, and people start standing up for a standing ovation, but not everyone has stood up yet. Are you one of the first people that jumps up for the standing ovation, Or do you kind of wait and see what the vibe is before you get up?

Stacey Abrams:

I honestly only stand if I think I should stand. I am not really susceptible to peer pressure.

Karen Farmer:

That’s a great answer.

Craig Silva:

Now I feel bad.

Stacey Abrams:

No, no, no, no. But there are different ones of us. You’re thinking about the person on stage, trying to make sure that they feel loved. I care about that too.

Craig Silva:

Oh, now I feel good.

Stacey Abrams:

See, there you go.

Craig Silva:

This is a roller coaster.

Karen Farmer:

We also do something quickly at the end here that we call Instagram Story Time in which we look at your social media and find a photo that we would like to ask you more questions about.

Stacey Abrams:

Sweet Lord. Okay. I’m pretty excited about this one.

Craig Silva:

So the photo that we chose for you is this picture. So maybe you can describe the picture for people.

Stacey Abrams:

It is me standing with the Christopher Bridges, better known as Ludacris, who is one of my favorite musicians of all time. And he is an auteur, so he’s a great author. Sorry, actually, he’s an incredible songwriter, great actor, he’s a foodie. He was a very strong supporter of me when I was running for office and is just an all around good guy who cares about people.

Stacey Abrams:

Plus his music is just amazing. And so I wouldn’t say it’s always my favorite song, but one of my favorite songs is by him. But I’m not going to say the name here. However, it is about being mobile and removing yourself from the premises or from the path of someone who is on their way to something.

Craig Silva:

Oh, I wonder what song this is.

Karen Farmer:

We know it and love it.

Craig Silva:

While we were prepping for the podcast and we pulled this photo, we absolutely were listening to Ludacris in here earlier.

Karen Farmer:

[inaudible 00:27:30] we put it on.

Craig Silva:

I was like, “We need to shut this off before she gets here. This will be embarrassing.”

Stacey Abrams:

Oh, no. We were at an event together and I was, fawning is a little strong, but it was really close. I love his music, especially the fun sort of anthem songs.

Karen Farmer:

Yep.

Stacey Abrams:

It’s just really good.

Karen Farmer:

Well, before we let you go, this is the part where we beg you for your book recommendations. What are you reading and enjoying right now?

Stacey Abrams:

So right now I just finished reading What You’re Looking For Can Be Found in the Library. It’s a novel by a Japanese writer. It’s really good. I am about to do book five of the Martha Wells’ bot series and I am reading The Last Lion about Winston Churchill.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. That’s a really good gamut of content.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. For real.

Stacey Abrams:

I read broadly.

Craig Silva:

Well, thank you so much for your time. I’m sure you have a million things to be doing at this festival and everybody wants your time, but we really appreciate you spending some of it with us.

Stacey Abrams:

This has been delightful. Thank you for having me and thank you for my fun questions.

Craig Silva:

Thank you so much. Bye.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you so much for listening to our interview with Stacey. We hope you enjoyed it, learned lots of things like we did. Craig, any hot takeaways?

Craig Silva:

I wouldn’t say takeaways. I mean, obviously there was a ton of takeaways because she’s so intelligent and I learned a ton. But I think one of my favorite things I learned about Stacey is just how nice of a person she is. You never know, you see people on TV or watch a debate or whatever, but actually getting to sit with her and have her crack jokes and take pictures with us and all of the Libro staff and also anyone who just happened to walk by the room and say, “Oh my God, can I take a picture with you?” Just making the time for everybody. She was just so gracious and such a lovely person.

Karen Farmer:

Yeah, I completely agree. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about this interview too. I think she could tell we were a little bit nervous maybe and she just instantly put us at ease and was so generous with her answers and her time and I’m so glad we got to do this.

Craig Silva:

Not me. I wasn’t nervous. I’m never nervous.

Karen Farmer:

Okay.

Craig Silva:

No, I’m nervous before every single interview we do. I was like, “I’m sweating. Can you tell?” So it has Come to that time of the episode, Karen, I would love to hear what you are reading.

Karen Farmer:

I am reading a book that I love right now. It is for a book club that I am in. I’m going to hold it up and show it to you. It is called Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. This came out in 2022, so it’s relatively new. I desperately want this to be turned into a movie because I would go watch it immediately. But essentially it’s about four women who are assassins for a top secret group that goes all around the world, wreaking justice. Can you say that? Wreaking justice on wrongdoers. It’s like wreaking havoc, but for good. And the book flips back and forth in time between when they were very young and just training to become assassins and learning how to do this. And when they are now in their sixties and meant to be retiring and things have gone very sideways with their retirement party, they’re having to bust out some of their old assassin skills in order to get through this situation. So I can’t recommend it enough. I was hoping to finish it last night, I did not. I’m so close.

Craig Silva:

You’re so close though.

Karen Farmer:

Yeah. So tonight I will be done and I’m going to be sad when it’s over.

Craig Silva:

That sounds amazing. And even just from your synopsis, it sounds like a movie. Who would you cast in this movie? I know you’re big into films. Oh, this seems like a question you’re prepared for.

Karen Farmer:

I have been picturing Allison Janney as the main character in this book the entire time. She is an incredible actress. I think the reason I’m picturing her as this character is because she was recently in a Netflix movie called Lou that has a bit of overlap to what we’re talking about here. But casting directors, if you can hear me, Allison Janney as Billy in Killers of a Certain Age.

Craig Silva:

Yes, I am sure they’re listening to this.

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely.

Craig Silva:

I love Allison Janney because I love The West Wing and she played C.J. Craig and now I really want to watch The West Wing and read that book. So thanks for your two recommendations. One accidental, one on purpose.

Karen Farmer:

Craig, what are you reading right now?

Craig Silva:

I’m reading a few things, but I just finished a book that again, I also cannot recommend enough called How to Loiter in a Turf War.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, I haven’t heard of this.

Craig Silva:

It is by an author from New Zealand named Coco Solid, who is among many things, not just a writer, they are a poet, an artist, I think a screenwriter, a filmmaker. They’re a renaissance person. Loved this book. Two reasons. One, very good. And I’ll tell you a little bit about it in a second. Two, extremely short. Great December book if you’re trying to hit your goals like me. So this book is autobiographical fiction. It is very unique. It is the story of three creative friends, I forget. I think one is a poet, one is a musician and one is a painter maybe. They are three creatives. I’ll just say that. They live in, I believe, Auckland. And the whole book is about their sense of self tied to their city and how it’s being gentrified and how memory, this place that used to be, “My uncle’s hat shop is now this thing.” And dealing with that. And it is great. So good. And I think clocks in at 170 pages. So again, great December book. Highly recommend.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Thank you so much. I will absolutely be checking that out.

Craig Silva:

Well, listeners, if those books sound interesting to you or any of Stacey Abrams’ books or any of the books Stacey recommended, if you do not have a Libro membership yet, when you sign up, use the code LIBROPODCAST and you will get two credits for the price of one.

Karen Farmer:

And as always, thanks for listening.