A Writer's Balance: Creativity, Self-Care, and the Journey of Publishing with Chloe Benjamin

As the leaves turn and the air grows crisp, we're reminded that change is the only constant, a truth Chloe Benjamin knows all too well. This week on The Bookshop Podcast, join me for a profound journey with the author of The Anatomy of Dreams and The Immortalists as we navigate the intertwining paths of creativity and self-care. Chloe opens up about the alchemy of storytelling sparked in her youth and the vigilant balancing act between the fervor of art and the necessity of wellness, a dance many of us know too well. Her insights provide a map for writers and dreamers to chart a course through the tumultuous waters of a freelance career, steering clear of the siren call of commercialized self-care and wellness.

Venture further into the heart of Chloe's work as we discuss the rich tapestry of The Immortalists. Chloe's dedication to authenticity breathes life into historical narratives, and her exploration of mind-body techniques presents a beacon of hope for those seeking solace from their internal storms. This episode is a testament to the transformative power of literature, allowing us to reflect on the threads of our own lives which mirror the characters we come to cherish.

Completing our literary odyssey, we lift the veil on the often enigmatic world of publishing, offering solace and guidance to emerging writers navigating this labyrinth. Chloe's experience demystifies the journey from penning the first word to holding a published book in hand. Our conversation expands to celebrate the written word's power to heal, inspire, and transport us to realms unknown, with recommendations that will ignite readers' imaginations and perhaps even inspire a few to embrace the meditative quietude that has touched Chloe's life. So, settle in with your favorite feline companion and prepare to be whisked away by one of my favorite contemporary authors as we converse about life, health, and writing on this episode of The Bookshop Podcast.

Chloe Benjamin

The Anatomy of Dreams, Chloe Benjamin

The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

#22 – Chloe Benjamin The Sewanee Review

Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Assassin of Realty, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

LIN Health

The Sparrow, Mary Doria-Russell

FeedSpot 20 Best Bibliophile Podcasts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly. Welcome to the Bookshop podcast. Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop owners from around the globe, authors, publishing professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice. To help the show reach more people, please share it with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 236.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Chloe Benjamin is the author of the Immortalist, a New York Times bestseller, and the Anatomy of Dreams, a Barnes Noble. Discover great new writers selection, library Reads favorite and number one next pick. The Immortalist was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, the Washington Post, entertainment Weekly and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, california, chloe is a graduate of Vasa College and the MFA in Fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages. She lives with her husband and two Maine Coon cats in Madison, wisconsin, where she is at work on a third novel. Hi, chloe, and welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I've long admired it, so I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that I have so many questions, but I do want to begin with learning about you, and especially your first memory of storytelling.

Speaker 2: 1:57

I love that question. I'm from San Francisco, california, where I currently am right now doing a kind of family visit, writing residency, although I live in Wisconsin and have for about 13 years since I moved there to do an MFA in fiction. I grew up just really enraptured with all forms of the arts. My mom is a stage actor, my dad is a lawyer and I think the combination of the arts and then the kind of argumentative analysis that I experienced with my dad led to this interest in creating stories where you know there's there's a huge element of imagination but there's also a bit of a litigation involved because you want to convince someone of this world.

Speaker 2: 2:48

My parents divorced when I was young and thereafter I had kind of a modern family. My mom met a woman named Molly and they were together for all of my childhood and into my college years. I have two younger brothers and then my dad remarried my stepmother Ellen. At my dad's house we practiced Judaism. At my mom's house we practiced Christianity. So I think there was just kind of a melting pot of different influences at that time. I was. I was curious about spirituality. Like I said, I was in love with the arts and I did a number of different forms. I grew up as a ballet dancer and I also did acting, and both of those things eventually fell by the wayside as I decided to focus on writing.

Speaker 1: 3:34

And do you have a memory of your first piece of writing?

Speaker 2: 3:39

So it's interesting I'm currently working on a book in which I'm writing a child character and I don't have children, and so I wanted to find anecdotes that felt authentic, but I didn't want to steal them from friends children, so I thought I should rip myself off, and so my mom had a baby book that she made and kept, somewhat terrifyingly, until I was 15. This is, like you can tell, I was the oldest child, because I don't think that my brother's got this treatment, but I've been reading through that and so this is a long way of saying that I was shocked by how early that showed up. I mean, from, I think, two, three years old, I was creating little books. I was an incredibly verbal little kid. My mom noted that I would sort of work from sun up to sun down on these creative projects as a toddler, which is kind of hilarious and will connect to what we talk about later as far as work life balance, because clearly I struggled with that, you know, even as a very small child.

Speaker 2: 4:42

But one really strong writing related memory that stands out, as in fourth grade we had an assignment to write a story and mind wound up being so long that it had to be specially bound with string because it couldn't be stapled, and so we whole punched it, and my teacher that year was a man named Wally Gutierrez, fourth grade at Alamo School in San Francisco, and I've never been able to find him, and so if anybody knows Wally who, who used to teach at Alamo, please let me know. I think that was his support of that moment really made me feel like I was a writer and I've always remembered it.

Speaker 1: 5:26

It's such a gift to be able to think back throughout our life and remember the people who have helped us, who have supported us, and it's also great when we get to do that for someone else too. I'd like to talk about wellness, because I feel that is a word companies use to entice new employees, when often, in reality, it means a gym membership or something similar. However, wellness is about mental health as much as physical health. Two aspects are imperative to one's overall health. Many of us who work freelance tend to push ourselves harder, often to the brink of exhaustion. Can you share your experience regarding work-life balance?

Speaker 2: 6:10

Well, first of all, I completely agree with you about the way that wellness has been absorbed by capitalism and it's now a product, from green smoothies to gym memberships to all kinds of other things that may I mean. A gym membership is important to many people's physical and mental health, including mine, but I do think that maybe, culturally, we've lost a sense of the fact that this is within us and that you don't have to spend any money in order to try to bring more balance into your life. As far as my experience, I think it's most helpful to put it in the context of my career. When I was in my MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, I finished a manuscript that I had started several years earlier in college, and that manuscript got me an agent who then sent it out to about 20 New York City publishers and everyone said no. And I mentioned this first of all because I think so many writers don't know just how much rejection is involved in the industry, even for those of us who eventually become published, but also because it feeds into the drive that I had with my next two books. So my first novel that was published I wrote after that initial submission.

Speaker 2: 7:34

That novel was called the Anatomy of Dreams, and it was what we call in the industry a quieter publication, meaning it didn't reach a super wide audience, it didn't sell a ton of copies. So while I'm proud of what that book achieved and grateful for it, my agent and I knew that it would be more challenging to sell a second book, because the first thing that publishers tend to do is to look at profit and loss statements for your previous book. So the book that I was working on next was called the Immortalist and I felt really deeply that this was a book that I was born to write. My level of attachment to it was different and I felt also very deeply that the quality was a step above anything that I had done before. And my agent agreed, but she was concerned about this, the previous book and the sales issue. But when we sent it out, this kind of miraculous dream come true situation happened. There was an auction and it landed with a publisher that has been just phenomenal and an editor that I adore. I also had a wonderful editor, I should say, for my first book, but for this second one, a different house was a better fit. So all of this sets up in me this really strong desire for this book, this second book, to do well commercially and critically, because it sort of felt like I've been given a big chance. The publisher made the Immortalist the lead title. They were putting a lot into it and because I hadn't had the big, splashy debut, it felt incredibly important for this one to be quote unquote successful by you know, by whatever metric you can think of, really, and the wonderful thing was that it was.

Speaker 2: 9:35

But the unexpected downside is that pushing myself relentlessly over multiple years of publicity and touring led to a worsening of migraines that I had had for years but which had never been as bad as they became during the touring process for Immortalist. And eventually I was in daily chronic pain and truly disabled. I mean, I couldn't even work on the computer. Anything and everything triggered migraines, from certain kinds of lighting to sound, I would say stress was the biggest one. And so, finding myself in this rock bottom, I had to ask how did I get here and why did I put the success of my work over the health of my body and mind, and that began a multi year healing process.

Speaker 2: 10:34

It's been maybe five plus years now of learning how to find balance in my life, learning to give myself permission to live and not just use everything for my work. Learning how to listen to my body, trust my body, facilitate my body in trusting me, because I had abandoned it, and I mean that. There's so much more than I know we have the time for today, but I pursued a number of different therapies, from vision therapy to help me get back on screens to EMDR. I recognize that not all writers or not all people have the privilege of being able to pursue these things, and I'm very lucky that I did so. From where I am now, I try to be open about this so that I can encourage artists to find ways of working that are mentally and physically sustainable, whatever that may look like, so that other people can learn from my story and maybe not get to the point that I did.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Something you said really struck me, and it was about, I think, something like letting your mind and your body trust you again.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Yes, I think my mind had to learn to trust my body and my body had to learn to trust my mind. So I feel like for many years I was really sort of living from the neck up and ignoring what was below. But of course the mind and the body are so connected. I took a class called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at some point in this journey, which folks may be able to find through their health care organization. That's where I found mine and it was actually initially designed for chronic pain but is now available to anyone for the purpose of bringing meditation into their lives. And it's pretty incredible how we take for granted that, say, if we're thinking about delicious food, our mouths will water, or if we're anxious, our stomachs will crunch up, but it still feels like a leap to say.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Stress causes physical pain or you know, the impact of our Productivity, obsessed culture takes a toll in these very concrete ways in the body. So learning how to connect and respect the relationship between the two has been really key for me. Do you still meditate? I do, yes, yeah, I mean I I've sort of built a Toolbox over these many years that have helped and that's a huge thing for me. I mean just the eye, the very idea of Not doing, of just being. I think that's really hard for me as an artist, and I'm sure there are others who feel the same way, because, as you're saying, it takes so much of you and there's not so much of a Work-life divide in the way that there might be for a career that isn't born of Passion in the way that the arts can be.

Speaker 2: 13:50

You know, writing is what I love to do, it's what I want to do. I mean, when I'm on vacation I want to write. One of the things that I get excited about is writing in different locations, and so, you know, it wasn't simply that I was pushing working myself to the bone because I felt like I should, and so that gray area can be very confusing. But I do think that I previously saw myself and my life and my body in my mind, as you know, a vessel for the creation of art, rather than believing that I, that it was also valuable for me to experience, without Looking to that experience from us with a viewpoint of extraction. And I I do think that the reason I had that was in in part because I have grown up in this culture. You know, american culture is really capitalistic and individualistic, and so unlearning some of that isn't easy.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Yeah, it's difficult, and for many creatives I know, I think, perfectionism is a rampant in their psyche, and patience is difficult too, because we spend years writing a book, creating a piece of art, writing a piece of music, and then we have to wait for it to be accepted, published, and that's difficult. So has what you've learned help you emerge with a different outlook on life?

Speaker 2: 15:18

It has, absolutely. I mean, I marvel at how If this hadn't happened, you know as awful as it was, and truly there were Year not just days or months, but years when I did not know if I would ever be able to live Something close to a normal life. It's changed me completely because they couldn't be prized apart. You know, just like the mind and the body, and how connected they are. If my work life was going to change, then my inner life and my Experiential life had to change too.

Speaker 2: 15:52

Because again, it's you know, as an artist you're, you're pulling of yourself, you're making of yourself. It's not as simple as saying, okay, at five o'clock I'm not going to think about this anymore, because everything that you're taking in, you know, might find its way into a book, you know, no matter how conscious you are at the time. So I do try to instill boundaries by saying you're going to bed now, we're not thinking about the book, you've got to drop it, you got to save it for tomorrow. But at the same time, I think the deeper work of finding balance and release and moving away from Perfectionism controlling my life had to do with, like you have to go from the bottom up. It has to encompass the entire person.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Thankfully, you had that sense of knowing deep down inside that something had to change and no doubt you had a wonderful support system of family and friends around you.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Yes, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think what was very scary about it is that I had pursued all kinds of Western neurological things, that that simply didn't help, and so Everyone in my life was really at a loss, as was I, you know as to what would, what would help me turn the corner. I'm so grateful to my husband, who went through really, really Intense years. You know, it was like the highest highs and the lowest lows, because my dream, my dream, was coming through, coming true professionally. But in my personal life things were so difficult. You know, my parents were wonderful, I have wonderful friends, but for anyone listening and I'll just say, as an aside to you may be feel free to cut this if this is not, you know, relevant, but to anyone listening who has pain and is curious about the role of the mind, what really Changed my life most drastically was finding a treatment method that focused on the role of the brain in Creating and maintaining chronic pain, and what I found was something called Lynn health lin. It's mediated through an app. You meet weekly with a coach who guides you through the methodology.

Speaker 2: 18:10

There's a lot of pain education involved, but essentially the the thesis is that fear keeps your brain and body in a sense of high alert, and this creates and maintains chronic pain. And so by teaching the brain Safety, you can downgrade the amount of pain that you have, and I've been able to reverse Pretty much all of my triggers. I live in a way I never knew that I could again and you know this is a developing research. But at the same time, when I brought it to my neurologist, she said this is where pain treatment is going and that was really validating. But it took me a long, long time to find something that would actually work for me.

Speaker 1: 18:52

I think when we go through a traumatic health event getting through it is one thing, the recovery is another there's that sense of am I ever going to be able to do the things I did hiking, swimming, you know, working out how do I have to rethink my life? Am I going to die? All these things come up and I can only speak the experience I've had. But I think there's a profound sense of gratitude and with that sense of gratitude comes kind of an evolution in your own Mindset that things have to change. And for me it was definitely Meditation. I will not go a day without it. For me it's just like having a cup of tea or coffee. It's just part of my daily routine.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Okay, let's get back to the immortalists. The first time I read this book I appreciated the research you put into the story, especially regarding San Francisco in the 80s and the AIDS crisis. Simon's story in the immortalists is authentic in the sense of the culture, location and political aspects, from gay clubs and bathhouses to Diane Feinstein announcing the deaths of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey milk. Now, you're originally from San Francisco and as I read the book it felt like the city, her people and her history Harbor a very large piece of your heart. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Yes, I. Part of the reason I do these long visits home I'm actually currently here for a month is because I long for it so much and it makes most sense for my husband and I to live in Wisconsin. He works in sustainability at the University, but this is sort of our our way of enabling me to get that fix and Reconnect with a place that is so Primally important to me. Like I said, I was born and raised here and I Loved being able to bring in certain certain things that had a relationship to my own life. For instance, I very rarely pull anything Whole sale from my life and put it into a book, but the ballet school that Simon attends in the Castro is Entirely the ballet school that I attended for years and years, and the ballet master there, golly, is Very obvious to anybody who, you know, knew him very obviously, based on my teacher Zori.

Speaker 2: 21:27

So that was a. That was a pleasure. You know just even little things like the like, the culture of each neighborhood or the geography. You know, knowing my way around San Francisco was really helpful because there's so much research that's involved when you're writing about a place that you don't know intimately.

Speaker 2: 21:46

That said, I was not alive during the Years of the AIDS crisis in which the book is set, and so I knew it was hugely important for me to do Do diligence via research, so that I could write about that time with integrity and respect for what people experienced. So that section in particular was definitely a marriage of things that I may have experienced or Ways in which I felt connected to the city and its communities, even though I am a straight woman. As I mentioned, my mom and her partner, molly, were a gay couple, and so I was raised by a lot of amazing LGBTQ people in our circle of family friends, so I had certain touch points or things that I felt strongly about but again really felt it was important for me to do Research so that I wasn't relying on on my experience when it didn't fit the elements of that piece.

Speaker 1: 22:53

Simon's story is heartbreaking, but I encourage people to read the immortalists. We cannot forget what happened with the AIDS crisis. It was devastating.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, that's absolutely devastating.

Speaker 1: 23:08

Chloe. I would love to hear your publishing story, from your first finished manuscript to finding an agent and Landing a publishing deal. I think you mentioned there was one book you had written before, the anatomy of dreams. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 23:22

Yes, yes, and I have dreams followed the manuscript that I finished in my MFA and that's the one that I submitted to agents and that connected me with my agent. But we were unable to sell it and that book lives in an imaginary drawer now, as we say, and it Doesn't need to come back. I don't think I would try to publish it. I actually agree with the feedback we received, which was like lovely sentences but where's the story? And I think I came from this literary fiction model that is more common in MFA's than not, which prizes subtlety and you know pros and character over plot. But what I realized when I got all of that feedback was there are authors who do a beautiful job at that kind of very literary novel, but I don't think I'm one of them and I actually love story, like I love reading books that have equally strong stories as character development and prose. So when I gave myself permission to write a book that didn't shy away from a more plot, pyrotechnics or Emotion even, I mean I think again, in that literary fiction model there's there's sort of this, the subtlety that goes all the way to the level of Emotional display as well. There will often be a kind of quiet epiphany that a character has and again, I nothing against that approach. I have so many books and short stories I love that are working within that. But for me I think my work improved vastly when I said let me just write up the kind of book that I would want to read and not be worried about whether it's perceived as too dramatic. So that led me to Anatomy of Dreams, which followed a trio of dream researchers who were looking into lucid dreaming, and that book has kind of a speculative element because of dream research and I invented the kind of research that they're doing. It doesn't exist in, at least it didn't at the time, but that said, it could have existed. So it didn't veer into science fiction or fantasy or anything like that.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Immortalists also has a slightly speculative element. The immortalist follows four siblings growing up on the Lower East Side of New York in the 60s. They hear of a woman who claims to be able to tell anyone their date of death and they go to see her and receive these prophecies. The book then follows each of them over the course of their lives. So in that book as well there was this question of is this a power that someone can have. But the book that I'm working on now kind of goes head over heels more into that literary genre crossover space. So I think in all of my work I'm interested in what feels like magic, whether that is truly something magical or whether we just label magic as what we don't know. And I think that makes me similarly drawn to both spirituality and science, because I think spirituality is a way of holding space for mystery, and science is the pursuit of knowledge when it comes to mystery, and so that tension between knowing and not knowing and mundanity and magic is something that I seem to return to.

Speaker 1: 27:08

And I for one I'm glad you do, because I love your stories. Perhaps for some people, anything to do with spirituality or magic or the paranormal is easy to write off as imagination if you haven't experienced something in that realm. But I guess some people could say well, that's kind of how I feel about meditating. However, the exciting thing about meditation is that now we have a lot of scientific evidence in the form of MRIs, where one can see changes happening in the brain. I probably sound like I'm thinking out loud, which maybe I am.

Speaker 2: 27:46

But I think you're right, and I think that relates to the connection between mind and body as well. I think there are things that we feel intuitively or that non-Western cultures have known for a very long time, among others, that Western science is just starting to be able to understand, whether that's the role that the brain plays in pain, or whether that's what happens in our minds and bodies while we're meditating. So I know exactly what you mean.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Well putting our foot back into the world of reality. Can you tell us about the consulting services you offer and what prompted you to take this on?

Speaker 2: 28:27

I offer consulting services to writers. I don't read or edit manuscripts, but I do offer information and guidance about all aspects of the publishing process. So I've worked with people who love to write and just want to talk about how can I fit writing into my life, all the way to people who are queering agents or people who are publishing books. I love being able to talk with people in all stages of the process and to offer mentorship. I came to this because I noticed that in my own journey it really wasn't until I had published two books that I felt like I understood the lay of the land when it came to publishing. And that's even though I went to an MFA program where you would think you'd receive more education about the industry side of things. But I think MFA's are really focused on craft and that can be a great thing. For someone like me who is kind of ambitious and perfectionistic already, it was probably a good thing that that time was really preserved for the writing itself. But the downside is that you really learn as you go along, and I suppose that can be true in any field.

Speaker 2: 29:40

But I do think that a lot of up and coming writers feel that publishing is sort of a fortress or obscured in mystery, and there's so little standardization in the arts that, for instance, sometimes my writer friends and I will say, if we are really close we'll talk about what we're paid, because none of that is public. You can't publicly find out how much a book has sold. You need to be in the industry, for instance an agent or an editor, to access the book scan that gives you those numbers. So there's a lot that is sort of hidden behind the curtain and I hope to offer some of that to writers as well as do the kind of work we've been talking about and encouraging folks to find ways of working that help them to stay healthy while they're pursuing the arts.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Yeah, this is interesting because I've heard it from so many authors who have completed MFA's or MAs in creative writing that unless you have a professor who has a publishing deal, who's prepared to kind of take you under their wing a little and guide you towards the whole process of publishing, you're kind of left on your own. So you leave this MA or a PhD not having any idea about the publishing process and as I published my own books, I can tell you there are so many platforms out there and people who are ready to rip you off about self-publishing. It is alarming and shameful.

Speaker 2: 31:18

Oh, absolutely. I think that there are great reasons to do either paths, but often people don't know just how expensive not just in terms of money but in terms of time and energy it can be. To self-publish and that can still be a good option, but I think having that information going into it is important?

Speaker 1: 31:41

Yes for sure. It's going to save you a lot of money and heartache. I was reading some of the essays you've written and there was one that stood out. It's a piece that you wrote for the Sawani review and a phrase stuck with me, quote Dr Kay once told me that OCD is often described as an allergy to uncertainty. You explained underlying the specific fear that dominated my OCD was a more elemental one a fear of loss of the vulnerability of the body, of the fact that so much of human being is beyond our control end. Quote has this understanding helped you gain control of your OCD? This question really interests me because I also suffer from OCD.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Oh my gosh. Yeah Well, I was really tortured by OCD for most of my life. I talk in that essay about how it was only in writing various section of the immortalists, the last sibling, who does have OCD that I realized I probably have this and I probably need to deal with it because I can't keep enduring the way that it is controlled my life. And so when I was I think it was that year, maybe I was 30 the year that it came out and for the first time I went and saw an OCD specialist and he confirmed that I fit the profile exactly and I remember crying in the parking lot because it was such a relief, you know, to know what it was.

Speaker 2: 33:19

And the treatment of choice behavior relief for OCD, which you probably know, is something called exposure therapy and the idea is that continuing to avoid an object of fear let's say for OCD that has to do with contamination reinforces the brain's belief that it's dangerous, and so you can't eradicate the feared stimulus let's say it's dirt or germs. You can't eradicate that from the world but paradoxically, when you put yourself in contact with it, more your brain actually learns oh, this is actually okay. And so you have to do it slowly and there's a whole process that a professional can walk you through. But I did a very slow purposeful exposure therapy for about a year and I never thought that I could escape the particular fear that just had gripped me at that point for almost 20 years. And now I rarely think about it.

Speaker 2: 34:23

And it was only because I did that that I believed that this brain-based treatment for pain could work, because actually, to loop back to what I was saying before about limb health, exposures are one of the treatment elements of that approach. So by slowly exposing yourself, say to lights or to sound, your brain realizes oh, I think this is actually okay, I don't have to create a migraine. And I don't think I would have even believed it was possible if I hadn't seen that this was utterly transformative when it came to my OCD. And so, discovering that that same gripping desire for control, hatred of negative possibility and simply the unknown to which I ascribed negative possibility, even though I now see the unknown as a safe space those things all drove my OCD and my migraines. And so, to finally answer your question, I think what helped me to cope with the uncertainty of life and gain better control of those things was ironically releasing a lot of control, because I never had it anyway and it was only causing me literal and figurative pain.

Speaker 1: 35:47

Yeah, Gosh, so much great information in what you've just said. I think you and I need to sit down over coffee or lunch and chat about this. I'm sure I will learn a lot from your experience. Okay, let's talk about books, my favorite subject. What are you currently reading?

Speaker 2: 36:03

Ooh, right now I'm looking around. Right now I'm reading the second book in a series, the first of which is called Vita Nostra. It's an incredible book theories written by Ukrainian authors, translated into English by a fantastic translator, and it has to do with a Russian set magic school. So we've talked a bit about magic and how much I love those stories, but it is utterly how do I put this?

Speaker 2: 36:38

As you read this book, you don't know what is actually being taught at this school. The understanding of the methodology that is being taught comes over you slowly and culminates at the end, and it is one of the most worthy reveals that I've read, because you're waiting and waiting, and waiting, and I don't even want to spoil it for anyone who's listening, but I will say that it's a metaphysical system that imagines the world as a text, and so it's incredible. I mean, it's the kind of book I love to read because it's atmospheric, there's plenty of story, but it's also firing on those intellectual levels and it's just a delight. So, yeah, the second book is called Assassin of Reality. The first book is called Vita Nostra. I'm reading that right now. I'm also reading Breeding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmer and a phenomenal, incredible book that I think should be required reading for every human on earth, or required reading for seniors in high school.

Speaker 2: 37:49

Yeah, yeah, or at least college, absolutely yeah Do you have the paperback or hardcover?

Speaker 1: 37:56

I know I have the paperback. Oh my goodness, I have the hardcover and it is just glorious to hold. It is so beautiful. So even before you get into that beautiful, rich prose, the book itself is just gorgeous to hold. It really is a treasure. Oh, I'm sad I don't have it Now. A book that has come up again and again recently in interviews is one of my favorite books the Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

Speaker 2: 38:26

Oh, love the Sparrow. Okay, you are going to love Vita Nostra Because the Sparrow I see I'll email it to you. The Sparrow I see is very much in line with this kind of book that I love, which is both you know has a wonderful literary qualities, but also science-fictional or fantasy-based ones, but also a lot of brain-y, like food for the brain. So I love the Sparrow Devastating. You've already read it? It sounds like.

Speaker 1: 38:57

Yes, I have, but I need to read the second book, which is Children of God. Chloe, I just love chatting with you. I could chat with you for hours, not only about books and writing, but health and wellness. I have great admiration for you as a writer and also as a health advocate. Can you imagine what a wonderful world it would be if we all meditated?

Speaker 2: 39:21

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways in which things could change if that were the case.

Speaker 1: 39:28

Yeah, yes, that's for sure, and next time we have to talk about cats. We haven't even touched the subject of kitty cats oh my goodness.

Speaker 2: 39:37

Yes, I'm always down for a cat conversation.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Make sure you bring photos, and I'll bring photos of my kitty cats too when we see each other in person at the Lunch with an Author Literary series at Ellen Canto in Santa Barbara, California, on Tuesday March 5th, and I will make sure to put the links to sign up for this event in the show notes. To make your reservation, call area code 805-845-5800 and ask to speak to the concierge to make your booking, or you can also email conciergeele at belmondcom.

Speaker 2: 40:13

Well, I'm so looking forward to that. And, mandy, thank you for being such a wonderful voice and community member in the literary world. The way that you bring attention to other authors, but also bookstores, is just so wonderful. We need people like you, and I know that you're also a writer yourself, so you have just so many hats that you wear and you give so much to this community of people. So thank you for the work that you do.

Speaker 1: 40:41

You've been listening to my conversation with Chloe Benjamin, author of the Immortalist and the Anatomy of Dreams. To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhan and graphic design by Francis Ferrara. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.