THE BOOK OF LIFE - Festive Friends Part I: Teshuvah and Apologies with Gayle Forman & Marjorie Ingall

10:00PM Sep 26, 2024

Speakers:

Heidi Rabinowitz

Marjorie Ingall

Erica Lyons

Christina Matula

Gayle Forman

Keywords:

marjorie

book

apology

jewish

gayle

writing

josey

talk

books

love

apologize

read

good

called

feel

person

people

nuance

years

kids

[COLD OPEN] This is Gayle Forman, author of Not Nothing.

And this is Marjorie Ingall, author of Getting to Sorry.

We'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast, and we'd like to dedicate our episode to... each other!

Each other!

That was adorable.

[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz.

There's a website called "Is It A Jewish Holiday Today?" dot com, which gives you a simple yes or no answer. And if you go to that website during the month of October 2024, the answer is going to be yes, quite a lot of the time. In honor of this holiday packed month, I've got a two part series for you, with both parts dropping at the same time for your binging convenience. I'm calling it Festive Friends, because each episode features a pair of friends talking about books relevant to our fall holidays. Here, in Part I, the festive friends are Gayle Forman, author of Not Nothing, and Marjorie Ingall, author of Getting to Sorry. While neither of these books are explicitly about Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, they are both about teshuvah, growth, and the art of apology, perfect for this season. I invited this duo, not only because of their excellent books, but because of their big BFF energy, which is a joy to behold.

FYI Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts on October 2, 2024 and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starts on October 11, 2024. In Part II of this mini series, you'll hear from Erica Lyons and Christina Matula, friends and co-authors of the picture book Mixed-Up Mooncakes, about a Chinese Jewish family celebrating Sukkot and the Asian Mid-Autumn Festival. You will find links to Gayle and Marjorie's websites, their reading recommendations, a transcript, the other Festive Friends episode, and more at bookoflifepodcast.com, where you can also leave a comment or email me to let me know your thoughts. Chag sameach!

Gayle and Marjorie, welcome to The Book of Life!

Thank you, Heidi!

Thank you for having us!

So I brought you here together because I read Gayle's interview in The Horn Book, where you gave not only a beautiful description of your new book, Not Nothing, but you also mentioned Marjorie, not just once, but like three times. Then Marjorie, you sent me an adorable picture of the two of you in a squishy hug at a reading at Books of Wonder, and I decided I just had to have both of you on the podcast to share your BFF joy with the rest of us.

And in doing so, made my dreams come true, because my entire reason for writing Not Nothing was so I could get on national media and name check Marjorie enough times that someone would invite us to do a podcast together... I played the long game!

And people do not appreciate that Gayle has written incidentally Jewish books for many, many years, and this is the Jewish book she has always been like, this is the book that was in her, coming to full flower for the Jews to love. And I'm so excited to welcome it to this world.

Well, thank you. And also to pat myself on the back, being the bossy Jewish lady that I am, I bossed Marjorie into both of her books.

Yes, she did. She--

I bullied these books out of you.

Gayle freaking midwifed both Mamaleh Knows Best and the book originally called --

I think SorryWatch, I inseminated too!

Heidi, I'm leaving that up to you if you want to leave this in. This is what we're like all the time.

That's great, I thought you'd be like this!

Gayle has been... can I say best friend? That sounds infantile.

We are absolutely best friends.

And Gayle also has an amazing gift for friendship that I, a little sourpuss, do not have. So Gayle has lots and lots of people who adore her, but I'm the top of the Gayle adorers.

Listeners, you are not seeing my eye roll.

I think they can feel it, Gayle.

I hope so, because this is the person who walks down the street and literally, random strangers come up to her to make friends, because that is the energy you give out. That's your version of tikkun olam there, babe.

Okay, babe, thank you. I have loved Gayle's work for almost as long as I have loved Gayle. I think we met on a message board in, like, the mid 90s. Does that sound right?

Go Go Girls.

Go Go Girls. Right. There were a lot of young women, and was like before there was a world wide web, it was a, you know, internet BBS, a lot of young women in media dealing with all the crap that comes with it. And, was it Suited Lab Rat? Is that what we called the publication?

That's what you called it.

Like we worked in these silly corporate environments. And, yeah.

I was gonna ask you how you met, and if you had, like, a meet cute.

Well, I we actually have a meet cute story, because I had a crush on Marjorie, a professional crush, because I was a huge Sassy reader, and Marjie was like the best writer at Sassy, and when I got on this message board with her, it was like being on a message board with Beyonce. I was so nervous. But then Marjorie said she was moving back to New York.

From San Francisco.

...from San Francisco, and it was a Tuesday night, and I'm like, you want to hang out Tuesday night? I mean, normally I watch Buffy and Sports Night. That was it, because those were her favorite shows!

Yep. And the minute we met face to face, we were inseparable buds. But also we have another special bond. Gayle's daughter, Willa, was born as my father was dying, and we think their spirits somehow crossed in some mystical Kabbalistic plane. Willa is this fierce advocate for other kids, and she's a scientist like my father was, and a nerd like my father was.

She's gonna major in math. Who is this person? How does she come from my body?

Right, from a musician and a word nerd. I've always felt that we have multiple special connections.

Well, you knew that I was giving birth because you called and left me a message and I didn't call you back.

Yeah, yeah.

And then kind of the weird bookend of the story is, Marjorie says she's always loved my work. She's being too kind. Marjorie will do this thing when she doesn't 100% love your work, she'll find the things that she really loves. And I think the first couple books, she was really good at that, but when I gave her, If I Stay, she called me sobbing, and I thought somebody had died.

I loved that book so much, I forgot I was reading a book. It was so immediate and real to me and so powerful, just a perfectly formed book and so deep on so many levels, while also Gayle has always been hilarious and always been kind, those things always have come through her work. But this was also just so otherworldly and perfect and big ideas. Well, all your stuff is big. I don't know why I loved it so much, but I did.

I love that too, but you neglected to remember that you, and phone, and crying, is a he trauma spot for me.

Also, Gayle loves to talk on the phone, and I hate it beyond all measure. So this is part of our friendship. Gayle will call and I'll be like, I love you so much, but I don't want to talk.

I know.

I'd rather text like a tiny, tiny Gen Z monster.

But I make us get together in person.

Yes, which is also very good.

This is great! I just wind you up and let you go.

Sorry!

But I do have questions, so I'm gonna interrupt you now with a question!

That was a "how are you?" answer!

Okay, so, Marjorie, you are an author, but not of children's books.

No.

Not yet!

And yet, you are a huge kidlit expert and advocate, and your annual "best of the year" list in Tablet Magazine were legendary. I think you should continue doing them on your own, actually.

I have been thinking about that. When I was at Tablet, you know, I could just call and say, here's where I work, send me a book. And it's hard to do that when you don't have an outlet. But yes, I would like to do that, because I miss it desperately. When I was at Sassy, that was a teen magazine way back in the 90s, I edited the book review column there. It was so hard to convince publishers that kids had deep thoughts and deep ideas. And I remember one year Knopf actually saying, why would we send you books? You're a teen magazine! Yeah, that was what people thought about teenage girls, yeah, and some cases still do.

I wanted to ask you to talk about how you ended up in the role of kidlit expert in general, and Jewish kidlit expert in particular.

I wrote a parenting column for The Forward called the East Village Mamaleh for many years. So when I moved to Tablet, I started to expand on writing about things that were sort of kid adjacent. The first column I wrote about children's literature was when I was still at The Forward and it was so ignorant. And thankfully, a number of kidlit librarians called me out on like, you don't know anything, and I didn't. I've cared deeply about teenage girls and their thoughts and feelings, but writing about kidlit for younger kids was new to me and certainly grew as my own children did. Had one absolutely voracious reader from a very early age, and one kid who liked to be read to, but absolutely had no interest in reading on their own. That, I think, is a nice combination when you're interested in not only what children's literature is quality, but what children's literature is appealing to actual children, because those things don't always overlap.

All right. Gayle, you, on the other hand, are a kidlit author, and I'm very excited about your recent book, Not Nothing. It's a beautiful and compelling page turner, and it also feels like you're saying some truly important things, like wisdom for the ages. So I want to ask you to tell us what it's about, like an elevator pitch, and I want to ask you about the title. Why is it called Not Nothing?

Okay, I will try and make this an elevator pitch for an elevator that is like only 25 floors. So Not Nothing is the story of Alex, who's a 12 year old boy who did something truly bad. I'm not going to tell you what it is. And as a result, he gets in trouble with the juvenile justice system. And while he's awaiting a hearing, a social worker has the idea to have him volunteer at an assisted living facility for the summer. He absolutely does not want to be there. He is angry at everyone, resentful. Really hates the people there, particularly the other young do-gooder volunteering there, this bossy girl named Maya-Jade. So one day, he sort of finds himself in the room of Josey, who is the narrator of the book. He is 107 years old. He is a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor, and he has not spoken in five years. He is so old he is run out of things to say and people to say them to, and he is waiting to die. But when Alex lands in his room, for reasons neither one of them initially understand, he speaks, and he starts to tell Alex a story of this woman named Olka, who used to work for Joseys's family's department store in Krakow. And when they first meet, Olka is kind of embittered and frustrated. She's really smart, but she's gone as far as she can in school, and she is working as a seamstress. And she says something bigoted that could and should have gotten her fired, but for various reasons, he doesn't fire her. He asks her to teach him to sew. In doing so, he sort of invites her to rise to the occasion of her life, and saves his own life multiple times. And when Josey tells Alex this story, it really changes both of their lives. And Alex begins to kind of grapple with what he's done and what it means if you've never been invited to be your better self, and what happens when you are, and you accept that invitation and rise to the occasion. And it is called Not Nothing for many reasons. Mostly, the original reason is that when Josey came to me, this old Jewish man, "I'm 107 years old, I got gunk coming out of my eyes, hair where I don't want it, and no hair where I do, but I don't wear diapers. And at my age, that's not nothing." Such a Jewish phrase, but it comes to so much more, because Alex has been led to believe that he is nothing, and in a moment of great anger for him, when he explodes, he cries "I am not nothing!" And through his conversations with Josey and his relationships with Maya-Jade and the other wonderful residents at Shady Glen, he begins to realize that he, like all children, like all humans, is not nothing.

Thank you. In contrast to this idea of feeling like nothing, on page 228, (I took notes), Alex is visiting Maya-Jade, who is Jewish. And he's visiting her on Shabbat, and her family says the Shehecheyanu, and you write "Such a small thing, to pray for arrival in this moment, but to the boy, it felt like everything." So, everything, not nothing. And I thought this was really beautiful. Can you talk a bit about this passage?

It's so interesting you mentioned that. That little note came in later, and it was because, like, in a basherty way, the copy editor who they brought in, her mother was a Holocaust survivor, and so she had a lot of really interesting notes, including on a page where I kind of went to the default language about "liquidating the ghetto." She's like, please don't use language like this. It's the way Nazis dehumanized. She pointed out different translations of the Shehecheyanu and that one about sort of arriving in this moment. It had been such a journey for the boy, it had been such a journey for Maya-Jade, and it was just this capsule moment of, like, joy and commonality and community that for him was so enormous, even though at 12, he understood it was fleeting, probably fleeting, definitely fleeting. Everything is. So I was so grateful to get that particular translation of "arrival in this moment," because I thought that really kind of summed up he was.

A thing that I love about this book, and Gayle's work in general, is she's so thoughtful and so careful about language. Nothing and Everything appear in this book, the idea of rising to the occasion of your life appears in this book, multiple times. Gayle is smiling...

Not as many, multiple times as it used to!

I'm one of her early readers, and I did cut some! But like, she's just so thoughtful about looping back around and echoes in a way that is so satisfying for the reader. As someone who writes for adults, I do think the kidlit authors who are so careful and precise with language, don't always get the credit that they deserve, and she is absolutely one of them.

All right, thank you. In the end note, you said that it took you seven years to write this book, so I want to ask what inspired you to write this story, and why did it take so long?

Okay, so the inspirations were certain things that just live within me. My grandparents left Germany in 1938, months before Kristallnacht, among the last ships where they could leave by legal means. My grandmother's family had had a department store in Frankfurt that I based the one that Josey's family has. I wondered between '33 and '38, as they saw things getting worse and worse, like what kind of conversations they had, how many times they sort of talked themselves out of leaving? What moment do you decide: now is when we go? So that was part of it. I've spent a fair amount of time in assisted living facilities. When I was in my 20s, I volunteered with DOROT, and they introduced me to a woman named Oli, and I did not put the names together until I was well down the garden path of this book.And I used to go visit her every weekend. And she was one of Raoul Wallenberg's Jews, and I hadn't even known about the Wallenberg Jews at that point. And so that was so fascinating. We were so close. But also the assisted living facility, it was a humorous setting. It reminded me of a middle school, there was so much, like, gossiping and hurt feelings about who was at whose table and cliques. And my sister was working in an assisted living facility in Seattle, and I visited her, and I met this man named Sam, who was very much the basis for Josey. There's a story about these Polish star-crossed lovers who had met and fell in love in Auschwitz. He was Jewish, she was not. And they had a daring escape, and then they each thought the other was dead until many years later. So all of those things were kind of burbling around. But I think after Charlottesville, when we saw this just sudden resurgence in the kind of like antisemitic, anti-Islamic, anti-everything hate groups that had sort of been hiding in the corners but were now out and proud in plain sight, I started thinking about the Hannah Arendt quote about the banality of evil. And also thinking about my grandparents and my Jewish heritage, but also what drew people to these groups and what drew them out. And I started doing some reading about that. And so then I sat down and wrote a very terrible book that was ungepatchka, Marjorie, I always borrow your phrase for this. It just took me a long time to figure out that A, it had to be a middle grade novel, and B, how do I have 107 year old man be the narrator of the middle grade novel? Because I knew the heart of this book was Josey narrating it.

And it's so tight. There's a lot of books that I think, as a critic, are unfortunately, longer than they should be. This is just right, and that's not nothing.

I see what you did there!

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Actually, you mentioned this a little while ago, Marjorie: Gayle, you've written so many wonderful books for kids, for adults, but most of them are not overtly Jewish. So what made you choose Jewish themes this time and not those other times? And if I'm wrong about that, you can correct me.

You're a little wrong about that. I think, like Just One Day and Just One Year, is a book that is about two very different Jewish young people that has dueling Seders! And We Are Inevitable, which is my last YA book, it's a Jewish father and son. They're very culturally Jewish, they live in the mountains of Washington, they're not religious. So, I mean, those are three books where it's fairly overt.

I think that if it's not about being Jewish, whatever that means, the book often doesn't get the credit that I think it should get.

I value casual Jewish representation also.

I love casual diversity. Maya-Jade is Jewish. She's a Chinese Jewish adoptee of lesbian mothers. So does it get more Jewish than that?

Totally.

She is preparing for her bat mitzvah. But to me, it is Josey, I think, that makes this book feel so Jewish. And I would argue, yes, it is partially because he is telling a story of the Holocaust and losing his family, but I also think that Josey just typifies the kind of Jewish values that to me... like Marjorie, like, why is Marjorie my best friend? Because, like, she is the Josey of my world.

Awww!

She is the person with just the most moral generosity, thoughtfulness, kindness and open heartedness. So like, I took Marjorie and I just made her 107 year old Jewish man.

With hair growing where I don't want it to grow and not where I do want it to grow!

Exactly! But I think that, that's, that is what makes it such a Jewish book, just, it is flooded with the kind of Jewish values that, to me, are what my Jewishness is all about.

I would also argue that it is a Holocaust book that doesn't have easy stories about good guys and bad guys. It is so nuanced and complex in a way that is right for our time. In my writing, for adults with Getting to Sorry, I think a lot about the word "cancelation," which I have issues with, but this notion that there are good people and bad people, there are bullies and there are victims. And in real life, there is more nuance and complexity than that, and a lot of that nuance and complexity does not appear in Holocaust stories. There are only the good people and the bad people. And I think one thing that's really important when it comes to making apologies and accepting apologies and the notion of forgiveness, is the notion that we are all capable of being a bully and a victim. Everyone deserves a little bit of... I'm a little worried that I'm going to fall into non-Jewish phrasing here, but like we all deserve grace. To get back to quoting Gayle, no one should be remembered for the worst thing they ever did. And Alex is a child. One of the things that Gayle and I share an interest in is zero tolerance policies in schools, and this notion that if you do one bad thing, you're out. How does that child learn? How does that child's family learn? How do we not demonize people who screw up when the world is conspiring to make them not have the safety nets they need not to screw up? And so I love the moral nuance in this book and the ultimately extremely hopeful message that I think we need right now, in a way that isn't insincere or cloying or gross or fake or Pollyanna-ish.

I mean, we talk about this beyond just children, that the ability to make mistakes in a space where you get to grow from them is how we become better people. And we have seen a culture that has thankfully decided that a lot of things that we tolerated for years and years and years is no longer tolerable. But sometimes that off ramp is very steep for people, and there's people that sort of need help off, and how are we serving them when we are shaming them for getting something wrong? And how are we bringing them along to where ultimately we want them to be? So it's not just a conversation we have about children. It's a conversation we have about adults as well.

You know, certainly there are acts that are unforgivable, and I don't think either of us would say that there aren't. Professor Loretta Ross at Smith, talks about the importance of, whenever possible, trying call in culture rather than call out culture. Because I think a lot of us do this magical thinking, particularly in online social spaces, we're so eager to attack somebody else for saying a wrong thing, saying a bad thing. Sometimes they've just had a malformed thought. You know when people are educable and we're still choosing to point fingers and yell at them and tell people, don't buy their books, tell people shun them, shun them, burn the witch! We've just written off a human being who might be capable of learning. Of course, there are always going to be people who aren't, and there are always going to be people who argue in bad faith. But that's not everyone, and particularly people of a certain generation. I remember Cher was urging white people to stop racism. Cher used to tweet in this absolutely all caps, unhinged manner. "Friend Karen talk to me about my language. It bad!" And then she learned from friend Karen that she was using this white savior language that wasn't good, but Karen took the time. You know, we malign the Karens, but this particular friend Karen called her in rather than calling her out. And Cher was able to share with her gazillions of Twitter followers that she had learned something, and maybe that would help them learn something too.

One of the things I love about SorryWatch and Getting to Sorry is the distinction between shame, which I feel like is corrosive and shuts people down, and guilt. And I wonder if you want to speak a little bit about that, because I think that is such an important distinction.

It's an important thing in your book as well.

Just to set that up, I want to make sure that people understand that you have this project called SorryWatch. So I want you to explain what it is and also to tell about the book that you wrote based on that.

Yes, the book that I co-wrote based on that. So SorryWatch was a project that I started with my dear friend, science writer Susan McCarthy, who is a brilliant writer. We were friends when I lived in San Francisco, and I moved back here, and we wanted to collaborate on something. And Susan had written a piece for Salon, a humor piece about bad apologies, and was sort of shocked at how viral it went. She suggested that we collaborate on a website about apologies. And at first we just made fun of bad public apologies. But then once 2016 hit and we had a president who boasted about, you know, "if I ever do anything wrong, I'll apologize, but that hasn't happened yet," and this notion in politics that apologies are a sign of weakness, it made us take the site a lot more seriously, I think. And we started looking at research in different fields about what makes an effective apology. That ended up becoming a lot of the research that we went deeper into that in the book. Which was originally published as Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, and then came out in paperback as Getting to Sorry, which reflects the title, Getting to Yes, that classic business book, because we were surprised at the interest that we received from people in business.

But to answer Gayle's question about shame versus guilt, shame is paralyzing. Shame is "I am bad," and guilt can be galvanizing and can be "I did something bad." And when you do something bad, you can fix it, you can do something good, and you can go back and do the hard work of examining why you did the thing and what you can do to not do the thing again. You know, we like to quote Maimonides about somebody who sins and then doesn't make a plan to not sin again if the same circumstances recur, is like somebody who goes into a mikvah carrying a dead reptile. Susan McCarthy and I like to look at each other when we see someone digging deeper in a bad apology, and just go "drop the reptile."

Can you give us examples of a really terrible apology and a really great apology that you might have covered on SorryWatch?

Please do the booger apology!

The booger. Yeah, that's good.

That is a best apology in the world.

And it keeps us in the kid space, which I enjoy. Maybe I can send it to you. Heidi.

Yeah, there's a great visual to go with it.

There is a visual.

I could put it in the show notes.

Yeah, that'd be great. So we found a note online. I think it was on Reddit, so it was utterly divorced of it context, but it was in little kid handwriting, and it said, "Dear Ciara, I'm sorry I chased you with a booger. Here it is. (Disgusting smear circled on the paper.) You can get me back with it. Love Riley." How is this a good apology? It uses the words, I'm sorry. It names the act that was wrong. That's a really hard thing for people to do when they apologize, which is why you know in public apologies, you see people say: the incident of last week, the allegations, the events of last Thursday. People don't want to say "the thing that I did" and Riley did that. They made it clear that it wasn't going to happen again. Made reparations, giving Ciara the booger. And it didn't have any of that, you know when you feel that someone is forcing you to apologize, or when you know an apology is motivated by something as simple as, oh, it's Yom Kippur coming up, so I'm gonna say "if I did anything this year" -- I hate that. I hate "if I did anything." I realize that that's just a ritual, but I feel like a lot of us can actually think of things that we want to sincerely apologize for, as opposed to some blanket, legalistic, I'm-c0vered-now, thing. Yeah, Riley. You know, kudos to Riley's parents, because they did it right.

Can you give an example of a terrible apology?

The problem with terrible apologies is they tend to really bring down the room, and I'd rather not do that.

Well, they have these things, right? It's like passive voice. It's, "if your feelings were hurt, I sincerely regret it." They don't name it. "I'm not that person."

"This is not who I am. Let's move forward." All of which the person who wronged does not get to say. It's the person who was wronged who gets to decide that.

Oh, Ellen DeGeneres, that's a funny one. You know, when Ellen DeGeneres, when there were, I think it was something like 78 counts of harassment at her show. And her thing was, you know, "I just discovered this thing happening in my environment. How could this be?" And then she made jokes about people calling her the Be Kind Lady. Like, "don't choose that as your nickname when something like this is gonna happen." Or you could choose to be kind, you know, there's also that. And like, "I'm sorry that I was unaware." So many of the allegations were actually about her, that saying that she was blissfully oblivious made no sense. A huge number of people tuned in to watch her apologize, and then those viewers just hemorrhaged.

People who don't believe in apologies say: don't apologize because they won't forgive you anyway. One thing that Susan and I both like to point out is, good apologies go viral as well as bad apologies, because people love hearing good apologies. People want to feel good, want to feel positive. People want to feel like the world's not a horrible place. There was this wonderful story that went viral on a bunch of different social media sites about a guy who reached out to someone he bullied. I'll do it from the perspective of the bullied person, who was a gay person in the arts in Los Angeles. And all of a sudden, he gets an email out of the blue from someone he went to this tiny high school in Alaska with, who he hadn't thought of in 20-25 years. And the guy was like, "I don't know if you remember me, but my daughter was doing a school project on bullying, and asked if I'd ever bullied anyone. And I remembered how horrible I was to you, and I wanted to find you and say, I'm sorry. And I hope I'm not the only person who has apologized to you. I feel terrible for what I did, and I want to raise my kid better than that." The guy in LA thought about it and wrote back, "I don't remember you, but that's because everybody in our high school bullied me. Like I had to have an escort walking in my locker. A teacher had to go with me so the entire football team wouldn't kill me and throw me into the walls. While I don't remember you, I'm really grateful for this apology, so thank you, and I accept your apology." And people loved that, because people want to think that we can do better. And that's another beautiful thing about Gayle's book, is people, when given the opportunity to do better, will often do it.

That's a beautiful story. I'm feeling all choked up now. There's a moment in Not Nothing that could have come straight out of Getting to Sorry. So, again, I took notes: on page 76 the character Julio says, "I'm not very good at apologies." And the narrator then explains "Very few people are. Most of them prefer to say sorry for having offended someone rather than being sorry for the offense itself. But Leyla, another character, knew that a good apology had to name the wrong and offer some compensation." Gayle, were you influenced by Marjorie when you wrote this passage? Or Marjorie, did you help write this passage?

I don't think it's plagiarism, because I obviously was condensing what I have known from Marjorie, not just from SorryWatch and from the book, but from when I go to her myself to kind of figure out how to deal with a situation. And then there's a scene later on, I don't want to get too spoilery, but Alex does a different apology, and he recognizes that he may never get forgiveness for this, and that he's going to have to learn to live with that and to use that to inspire him to do better in the future, which is such an uncomfortable place to be. And one of the things I've learned from Marjorie and Susan is like, you can't ask somebody for forgiveness. And I think that's one of the reasons apologies are so hard, is we are in this hot take reactive moment, and apologies force you to sit quietly with yourself and to, like, take an accounting. It's like a, it's like a mini Yom Kippur, right? It's like, it is such an example of the chasm that even the best of us humans have, of the person we are and the person we want to be. And when you have to sit with an apology, you are contemplating that chasm. And when you do a good apology, you are crossing it. And whether the person forgives you or not, you are still making progress across towards your better self. This book is, like, so deeply funny because Marjorie and Sue, but also it's like the most important thing that we all need to be grappling with right now is in this book about apologies.

I would like to point out that I call Gayle or Susan when I need to make a really serious apology, because even though we have done this website since 2012 and we wrote this book, and I have read so many studies about what makes an effective apology, and I've seen so many bad influencer apologies, where somebody goes, "Hey guys, I just wanted to come on here and..." And I also know psychologically why. You know, when we are the one in the hot seat, everything we know about what makes a good or a bad apology just goes out the window, because we are so programmed as a protective way of dealing with cognitive dissonance psychologically in our own lives, to see ourselves as the hero of our own story, that we will do linguistic and psychological and emotional backflips to be the good guy in the story. And that makes us apologize badly, because when you apologize well, you're acknowledging that you were the bad guy in somebody else's narrative. So I actually, when I have to do a real, authentic apology for a bad thing that I did, you know, we have the six and a half step framework in the book, and I sit there with it open on my computer, and I call Gayle... call I use the phone voluntarily!

That's how bad it is!

Or I call Susan, and I start going through: these are the six and a half steps. This is what I have to say. And I still get caught on the step over and over again, about not making excuses. My brain just starts whirring and goes there. And the reason for the not asking forgiveness; again, we both love kids and the work aimed at kids. And there are often signs in the Responsive Classroom that say things like, "here's how you deal with when you make somebody upset," and they're always good, like, "Say I'm sorry. Say, how can I help?" These things are all great, but a lot of them end with, "Do you forgive me?" which just is like record scratch, fingernails on a blackboard to me, because you don't get to ask for forgiveness. It's like asking for a gift. You know, you can say, "I hope you'll forgive me," or "I hope I can earn your forgiveness," but saying, "Will you forgive me?" puts the other person on the spot and makes it an equal exchange in a really bad way. And I don't think we should be teaching kids that.

Wow. That's a really interesting point that I had not thought of. We've sort of touched on this, but let's flesh it out. What is Jewish about apologizing?

You know, even though I just mocked pro forma High Holidays apologies, I love that we have a time of year every year where we get together. I think there's something so potent about being in a room with people who are all beating their breasts simultaneously. And who doesn't love an acrostic, BT-dubs, and, you know, reciting the Ashamnu, reciting this prayer where we say in alphabetical order, all of these things that we did. And did I do all of those things? I did not. But I am sitting in a room with all of these people singing in a melody that people have sung for hundreds, thousands of years, saying we did these bad things, we say them out loud. I mean, saying it out loud is a big part of what we've been talking about here. This idea of collective apology and being vulnerable with all these people in a room together, and acknowledging that we've all sinned can be really a healthy and helpful way to say and *I've* sinned. And I like looking at which of our prayers are in the we and which of our prayers are in the I, because there are both of them, and I think that it's important that we have both. And the fact that apologizing in our tradition is apologizing to both God and to our fellow human beings.

Marjorie, in Getting to Sorry, you talk about situations in which you should not apologize. Can you explain that for us?

If you are genuinely not sorry and you are getting pressure to apologize, the first thing you do is you go to your Gayle, or you go to your Susan, and you say, "be my reality check here." And hopefully a good friend will say to you, "you screwed up," and help you see that you can and should apologize. If your friend says, "You know what, I get it. You know, don't apologize." If somebody who constantly demands apologies from you, or who constantly guilts you.

Here's a real life situation, and I do have permission to tell the story. My younger child, who is gender queer, was being bullied in middle school and finally yelled a curse at a classmate who had been pretty relentless. And it was in the classroom, and it started with F, and it ended with You. And the teacher had a policy that when there is an altercation, both parties have to apologize to the other. That was the school rule. And I was like, "Do you want me to reach out and say we're not going to do it? Because I'm happy to not do it." And Max was like, "No, I don't want to do that." But we thought of what Max could apologize for, and Max could authentically say, "I'm sorry I disrupted the class." That was sufficient for this, like, ridiculous rule that the teacher had. But I think it's important that I tried to let Max direct what they wanted, even though, as a parent, I really had a different idea of what I wanted. All of my mama bear stuff was triggered. I mean, the chapter on teaching kids to apologize in the book is called I'm Sorry I Chased You With a Booger. But there, it deals with this kind of stuff, about age appropriate ways to think about apology as you're teaching your kids from the time that they're very small, when it's a lesson you learn, like we wash our hands after we poop, you know, we apologize when we bite someone, to, when the kid is older and starts to see the incredible nuance in the situation.

[MUSIC, BREAK] Announcement time! First, I want to remind you to enter the drawing to get a free tote bag with the Book of Life logo on one side and the logo of the Nice Jewish Books podcast on the other side. Leave a review on your podcast app or share our podcasts on social media. Then email a screenshot of your post to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com. Your participation not only gets you a chance at this lovely tote bag, it also really helps our podcasts to reach a wider audience. The deadline is October 24, 2024 when Simchat Torah begins, the ultimate Jewish Book celebration. Secondly, I am pleased to share that MulticulturalKidBlogs.com has invited me to do a Jewish Joy series of interviews with diverse Jewish authors. The first one features Ruth Behar, who was on the podcast in May 2024 to talk about her novel Across So Many Seas. I'll put a link in the show notes at bookoflifepodcast com. Now back to our Festive Friends conversation. [END OF BREAK]

Are there any other books that you would recommend as good companion books for Not Nothing or for Getting to Sorry? Could be books about apology or teshuvah or growth or rising to the occasion....

One book that I've been thinking about recently, it also came out this year, is Adam Gidwitz's Max In the House of Spies, which is a very different kind of rising to the occasion, because Max becomes a spy. But to me, the rising to the occasion part is based on the real story, which is that Max is based on somebody that Adam knew, who was sent away from Berlin on a Kindertransport, and people on the other end who took them in. And I love that book so much because Adam has just such a unique ability to have humor and this incredible adventure story, almost.

It's in such a freaking page turner!

It's such a page turner, and Max like deals with bullies and antisemitism in just such clever ways. But he also has these two mythical creatures on his head, Stein and Berg, which is so Adam, being able to sort of blend that in. And it's, of course, a story of a Jewish hero in the Holocaust in World War II, which is something that we don't get very often. I really loved that. It's a very different book than Not Nothing. But he and I have talked. We both started writing when we saw some of the things that were happening in the world that reminded us of a history that doesn't feel that far off to us.

I just wanted to mention that I interviewed Adam, along with Steve Sheinkin about Impossible Escape. That was another joint interview.

Another Jewish hero book!

Yeah, and that was in July 2024 if anybody wants to go back and listen to that one, that was a great conversation, too.

Impossible Escape. I just like, I'm like, how it this true???

Right? He is so gifted. Both of them are incredibly gifted. Like, the chutzpah of combining this really harrowing, based in fact, World War II story with magical realism, and then Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's The Night War also has an element of magical realism and a Jewish self-rescuing heroine. The Kimberly Brubaker Bradley book is another one where a kid has agency in a time of so little agency, and this very gutsy, I think, adding of magical realism that is not trivializing at all. I thought it was great. You know, I wrote a piece for The Times about feeling like there are too many misguided Holocaust books for kids, well meaning, but misguided and unintentionally not helpful, either morally or educationally or developmentally. And The Night War is another book that is a total page turner that gets the values right. You know, and it's hard because you don't want to soft pedal the horror.

And when we're thinking about apology books... I'm blanking on the title of Leila Sales'...

Oh, right!

...YA. If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say.

Yes, Leila Sales is an editor and an author of middle grade and YA. And she was so ahead of the time she wrote a book, I'd say, four or five years ago, about a young woman who gets internet canceled for doing something stupid, and because the internet can sometimes be stupid, reviewers... like, I think people judged the character as if Leila herself were reflecting her own views and what the character had done. Boneheaded.

Right. And people, I think people have a really hard time with unlikable female characters, which she is in the beginning.

You think?!

You think? I looked at Goodreads reviews from kids and they hated this girl so much because they wanted to believe that they could never do it. And unfortunately, I think a message that Gayle and I both care deeply about is, all of us can say something incredibly stupid at the wrong time. It may be fueled by our own privilege. It may be fueled by our own narrow conception of the world. But we are capable of doing better. It's a dark, dark, funny book with flawed parents. I just admired it so much. I think I wrote about it in Tablet. I was really struck by how angry people were at it, and it did not deserve anger. It deserved all the applause.

Yeah, people are so scared of, like, people coming after them. It's like, I'm just gonna shoot first.

Yeah, it's magical thinking. If I am the most righteous gunslinger in the West, I will never err and no one will ever come after me, because everyone will know that I am morally righteous and could never do wrong. And you know, that's a Stephen Colbert character, that is not real life.

I wanted to go back to that picture book that you mentioned earlier. I don't even remember if we were recording when you talked about it, but...

I don't think we were, the Kyle Lukoff book.

Oh, I'm Sorry You Got Mad. Which is this delightful, hilarious, smart picture book that is very much like, you know, if somebody channeled SorryWatch. A kid at school does something wrong, and their opening salvo is, "I'm sorry you got mad." Which is, you know, Marjorie's definition of a bad apology, does not name the mistake....

I'm sorry you have no sense of humor. I'm sorry you don't understand that my comedy is edgy.

Sorry you're not smart enough to understand my incredible wit.

I'm sorry ou don't understand the nuances of politics in America.

And with the help of a teacher as wise as Marjorie and Susan, the kid gets there, draft by draft, in terms of how to actually take ownership of what they've done, and to give a proper, meaningful apology.

I'm also thinking about the incredible nuances of the Hobans' Frances books in general.

While we're thinking about the Hoban books, let's talk about the Ramona books. Because one of the reasons I loved those books as a reader when I was younger, reading aloud to my kids when I reread them, and then again, when I started writing middle grade, is Ramona is so flawed. Of course, she's flawed. She's like from age 4 to 12 in these books, and she is learning to be a person, and she is messing up along the way, constantly. Has some fights with Howie about the red ribbon, like it's really rough stuff, and figures it out and stumbles her way forward, because that's how we get forward. Often when we are young, we don't do it in these like poetic leaps. So those books are just such wonderful examples.

Chrysanthemum. No, not Chrysanthemum.

Lily's Purple Plastic Purse?

Lily's Purple Plastic Purse is another one with a hard won apology that ultimately makes the kid feel really, really good, which is a thing that I don't really think we talk about enough when we're teaching kids to apologize, is that you will feel this great relief and this great weight come off of you if you apologize well.

Not just kids!

Right!

Right? One of my favorite sayings is, the truth will set you free, but first, it will make you miserable. But I think with apologies, the misery comes first.

Yes.

Once it's out there, it's like, you've put it out in the sunlight. It's like, oh yeah, I did this very awful, boneheaded, insensitive, terrible thing, I'm sorry I did this to you. And then suddenly it's like, neutralized. The shame is neutralized.

Yeah. It's an incredibly good and powerful feeling. The Frances book was A Bargain for Frances.

That's what I was thinking. The one with the tea set?

The one with the tea set, yes, oh my god, the level of nuance and complexity in there. Frances's friend essentially tricks her out of the tea set she wants, and Frances has the opportunity to get her back, and the mom asks this incredibly nuanced question about "Would you rather be careful or friends?" There's so much richness there. Sometimes you know that people are flawed, and you can make the decision to have a relationship with them, and that can be okay, or to not have a relationship with them, and that can be okay. And the notion of that level of complexity for me in a little kid's book is just luscious.

Yeah, that's a great example. That's one of the books I grew up on. I think I had a record album of it.

Oh, my god.

Oh my god. I had Make Way For Ducklings.

Oh, that was great. And you weren't even a New Englander like I was.

No.

We had Bread and Jam for Frances, which is just, you know, "baby's first food porn." You know, later on I would write about food in Little House on the Prairie, and in, of course, the All-of-a-Kind Family books with the twirled cones of hot chickpeas. This sounds absolutely disgusting, as I say that out loud now, but like in the book, that was the most amazing thing. And barrel of broken crackers, can I get a quarter worth of penny candy? Actually bringing us back around: Gayle, who is an amazing cook, writes food, and there is such amazing food in this book, in Gayle's book, and. And a way in to see... now I'm going to cry about the lasagna. Just, a kid who has not had the privilege of having delicious hot food made with love, ever, or in a very long time. Oh, the beauty of the food writing in this book is just going to be a pleasure for adults and kids.

Aww, that means so much to me.

Oh, I mean it.

I love to feed people so much.

You should do a cookbook, like a cookbook with stories.

Just do a side novella about Leyla. Her emotions come out in her food.

Leyla, who is the cook at the assisted living facility in Not Nothing.

Look at Heidi doing awesome hosting there!

I know, she's amazing. She's like, not everybody has lived with these characters like you two have, for seven years.

So back to the book Gayle. On your website, there's a project called Operation Rise, which is also the name of a project undertaken by the characters in Not Nothing. So can you please tell us about both the fictional and your version of Operation Rise?

So glad you asked. So this big theme of this book, Alex hears about this term "rising to the occasion." He doesn't quite understand what it means. But then he and Maya-Jade, they're enjoying Josey's story so much, and Maya-Jade really wants to interview the residents, because they realize what interesting stories. And so they come together, and they start interviewing. They start with Maya-Jade's grandmother, who is a diva in the literal sense as well as the figurative sense. And she tells them a story. And they realize, you know, all these people have an example of when they rose to the occasion. And that is the thing about rising to the occasion, is like, it's hard to define. It is not just doing a good deed. It is this moment when you were bigger than you thought you could be, bigger or better or braver, however you want to define it. And so they decide to start interviewing the residents about times when they have risen to the occasion of their lives. And they call it Operation Rise.

And I wanted to see if we could invite the students in classrooms and people who would be reading this book to think in those terms as well. So we've created a space for them to talk about this. There's a virtual space for it, but also, when there's school visits, it's a big part of it. There's an emotional intelligence curriculum that I think can go along with it. And so this was just offering a framework, both within classrooms, or young people on their own, to encourage them to question what it means to rise the occasion. Think about how they might want to do that, because I feel like lately, we've gotten a lot of invitations to sink to the occasion. So let's give them some invitations to rise.

Is there an occasion that you could think of where you rose to meet that occasion? Or if it's embarrassing to talk about something that you did, maybe you know about each other rising to the occasion.

I know lots of things about Marjorie rising to the occasion. This was just a little story the other day, but I was visiting her, and somebody had misdelivered a package.

Somebody left it in the lobby of the building.

Which makes it even more. It wasn't even dropped on your doorstep. She went and found the woman to bring it to her, and when we found her, she had come down in her little granny cart, and it was a phone that she had been waiting for to communicate with her son, who had a traumatic brain injury. And she was just so glad to see Marjorie. It was that moment of connection, the neighborhoodliness. I just saw love increase in the world. When that happened, it was beautiful.

Before we started taping, I mentioned that one of the things that I really love in New York is water towers, even though they're not always in use anymore. And I just love the symbolism of this notion of this thing that we share that is a built object that's on so many roofs, it's for buildings that lots of people live in. A nice and terrifying thing about New York City is that our lives are so intertwined. I live in the East Village, which is a neighborhood that has lived many, many lives. And this woman who we met and had such a nice chat with, had lived here for 50 years. You know, just talking about what makes a neighborhood feel like a neighborhood. And the last chapter in our book is about apology-adjacent things that make the world feel like a better place to live in, and those moments of connection with strangers; writing and receiving thank you notes. There was a very cleverly designed study that looked at how happy people were to receive a thank you note. There are lots of little ways we can make the world feel smaller and warmer. For me, you know the person who is stressed out by talking on a telephone to my friends who I love, the notion that I'm constantly like, ugh, Gayle, I need a break, can I come over? "Well, yeah, there's so and so is staying here, and so and so's friend needed a place to hang out. And there was this person who's having a hard time, and they're staying with us for a while..." and the fact that Gayle's visceral knee jerk response to someone who needs something is to say yes and to be the most incredibly generous soul in ways that people never see, is so potent and inspirational. Fundamentally, I know that my friend is an absolutely stunning human soul, and that's a really nice thing to just have in your back pocket all the time.

Right back atcha, menchette. Truly. Menchette. Just the most moral, loving person with also like yes, the sharpest, wittiest...

I know you are, but what am I?

When I saw how many times I had name dropped Marjorie in that thing, I was a little embarrassed, but it is like the privilege of knowing this person who's just one of the best writers I know, important cultural critic, but also just a deeply loving and just and humane person.

I think we got over a hump. Do you remember once I told you that I was jealous?

I knew you were gonna tell that story.

Yeah.

It was one of the most generous things you ever did.

What were you jealous about?

It was so hard to say.

I had a Cinderella moment with my career. Yeah.

If I Stay absolutely deservedly, just exploded. She got this humongous advance. So deservedly. A gazillion international deals with deal sizes those countries had never done before. A movie. And it was so hard for me to say to this person who I love so much, I feel jealous. And Gayle was so freaking gracious about it.

Well, because I told you the truth, I would feel jealous too.

Yeah.

And to be able to have these two things in your hand at the same time, I love this person. I am so happy for them, and I am jealous. That is where shame comes in, right? Because normally you shove down that other gross part of yourself. So for her to do that, it was like, Duh, of course. It just got it out of the way and we moved on, or we grew.

It was a watershed moment for sure, to feel that I was safe saying that, to be that vulnerable in our relationship was a big deal.

Heidi, I wanted to say in this interview something that I was very grateful for, which was you running that superb voting package. Because I think one thing to talk about in terms of small acts that can change the world, voting and ensuring that other people have the right and the means to vote is an absolutely huge, tiny act a lot of us can be involved in helping with,

If I want to think of really rising to the occasion, it was feeling so powerless after a certain election and coming together collectively with people and working now for eight years to make sustained change. But it really does all come down to making sure people vote. The protesting and the writing and all of that is so important in moving the culture in a direction. But the mechanism for structural change in our country, and we desperately need structural change, is at the ballot box. And so we have an opportunity, all of us, it is such a small, huge thing to do.

My younger one was absolutely galvanized. Thankfully, they're the one who lives in Pennsylvania, so their vote matters. The rest of us have never even ever had that privilege. And the older one was cynical and not gonna vote. So two things: one is feeling the excitement gather from other people. But the other thing was, Josie started to watch Veep. They're super into it, and somehow Veep has made them excited about, like, actually excited about voting.

That's awesome, and that's good news too. Every vote does count.

Just to circle back around, I did want to say thank you for re-upping that and for keeping up a drum beat for your listeners, because it is so important.

Yeah, well, thank you for participating in that in the first place.

Sure!

That was the one that I recorded in 2020 and replayed it in 2024. I guess the next time there's an election, I'll just start fresh, because I don't want to keep replaying it.

Yeah, totally!

It was an interesting snapshot too, to look back, because people were talking about Covid and how they felt a little unsafe about leaving their house to vote. But speaking of politics, Gayle, I know that you do a lot of political advocacy work. Can you talk about that?

Yes, after the 2016 election, just feeling so distraught about what had happened to the country, whatever I had been doing, it didn't seem like enough. And so I wound up getting involved in an organization trying to raise money to flip state legislatures, because we realized that so many of the issues that we all care about, whether it's the kitchen table, issues of economy, or like social issues about LGBTQ, civil rights, criminal justice reform, reproductive justice, environmental stuff, all that was happening on the state level, as well as things like gerrymandering and voter suppression. So I started working with a giving circle to raise money to flip state legislatures. And then I began working with a newly formed organization called The States Project, and I now serve on their board. And this work has been so profoundly nourishing because it is teaching people the power that we carry within us, especially when we act collectively and like once you start to understand that you carry it with you. So that work has been really important.

And now I'm working with Authors Against Book Bans, which is another organization that formed six months ago because of these insane book bans that we have seen sort of spread like wildfire, that are being fomented by a very small group of people with some very cynical funders. Like if you look at what's really going on, I believe that it's people who want to privatize public education and public libraries, one of the last great non-partisan things that we all have faith in. So how do you do that? You erode the faith in that. And so authors realize we cannot sit by the sidelines on this. There's been librarians and educators who-- you're in Florida, you understand this --like, are risking jail time for carrying books. It is terrible, and we need to be the author army. We need to raise attention to this. We need to show the book banners we are paying attention to them. So that is once again, building something from nothing and realizing that when you get a bunch of people together, oh, the powerful things you can do.

Wonderful. Thank you!

The States Project is TheStatesProject.org, and Authors Against Book Bans is AuthorsAgainstBookBans.com.

It's Tikkun Olam time. So what action would each of you like to call listeners to take, to help heal the world?

We just talked so extensively about voting, and I think that is a huge one.

Yes, I think voting is huge. And this is a tricky one, because I know for some people, there are boundary issues, and people sort of give too much. But look for ways where more generosity, and however you want to define generosity, can be applied to anything. Can be emotional generosity, it can be food generosity, it can be financial generosity. It can be opening your space, however you want to define it, and whatever works for you. Marjorie mentioned that I like to invite people into my home, but the secret is, it's just an ancillary benefit that it helps somebody else out. It makes me feel good. That is, to me, how we repair.

All right. Good advice.

I love that.

Is there an interview question that you never get asked that you would like to answer?

I'll reverse engineer it, because one thing I've come to realize is the books that I love to read are not the books that I'm good at writing. I mean, I love Not Nothing. Love this book with all my heart. But if I were sitting down to pick out a book to read, I read mostly contemporary fiction. So I don't know how you ask that question, but it's an interesting dichotomy. I don't read middle grade novels generally on my nightstand. I mean, I do occasionally, because they're my friends and I want to see what's going on. But you know.

Yeah, and I read them for fun, and I just can't even fathom writing one. But I am now like number 7,842 on the NYPL wait list for the Miranda July book, because of you.

You have to read that and Sandwich, the Catherine Newman book.

I read Sandwich! I enjoyed it immensely.

There you go. Also so weird, the Nick and the Willa!

I know! Two of the characters...

The laconic husband is a Nick...

...which is Gail's husband.

The 20 year old daughter is a Willa, and the main character is a 54 year old, slightly neurotic writer.

Slightly.

Catherine Newman is in my brain!

Right!

I haven't read that book, but that book was mentioned in my September episode where I was asking people about their Jewish emotional support books.

I like the idea of a Jewish support...

Emotional support book.

I'm gonna put a list together.

Yeah, this was an episode that I did with my podcasting friend Sheryl Stahl, who does Nice Jewish Books, which is a show about adult Jewish fiction. When we were at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference, we interviewed people there about their Jewish emotional support books because we had seen a cartoon: this couple's getting ready for bed, and there's this towering pile of books, and one's gonna move the pile, and the other person says, No, don't move that, those are my emotional support books. So we were asking people to tell us about their emotional support books.

I mean, Bread and Jam for Frances is my emotional support book. The way, it's not preachy, it's so freaking funny. There is a serious lesson in parenting there. There is unbelievably delicious food. What more could you want in one book?

And I was such a picky eater, so that one was particularly potent. I don't know what my Jewish emotional support book would be. I have to think about that.

It's got Jewy vibes, but nobody would ever say Bread and Jam for Frances is a Jewish book, except for it being about food.

What are each of you working on next?

Oh, Heidi, tell me what to do.

Can I say what Marjorie is working on next?

Sure!

I'm writing a piece about poop for Prevention Magazine.

She's doing this like great annotated project with all the Sassy magazines and scanning them, and just going to have this whole project where she annotates them because she was there. And circling back to my having, like this megastar crush moment, because she was legendary, is legendary, iconic, but also just that age of magazines, and Marjorie's life as single gal in the 90s in New York. She's working on that, and I'm very excited about that, and I nudge her about it all the time.

Perhaps because it feels so resonant, I'm very scared and blocked about it.

Just start scanning and annotating and worry about the rest later.

No, you're absolutely right.

I know, I'm always right.

She's always right. It's so freaking annoying.

I really am. So I have a young adult book coming out in January called After Life that is very different from this, but has some interesting similarities and questions about spirituality. And then after that, my daughter and I are collaborating on my next young adult novel, which is a mother daughter gap year story. So she hates to write, even though she's a good writer, so she took a gap year, and travel was very profound for her in a lot of ways. And so we're drawing on that to work on this.

As it was for you.

As it was for me when I was, yeah, I traveled for several years before I went to college.

Cool. So After Life, from reading the blurb on your website, it seems like that, and several other things that you've written have a lot to do with... being alive and being dead. I mean, obviously that affects all of us, but you in particular are choosing to write about that. So why? Why is that something that you want to explore?

You know, I lost four friends at one time when I was in my early 30s, my two very good friends and their two children, and they were the first of my friends to have children. That was the event that inspired If I Stay, like, seven or eight years later. So I think it's weird, because After Life is written 15 years after If I Stay. Writing about my friends keeps them alive. For me, I've come to realize that in the West, we have such a solid wall between life and death. And one of the reasons I tell people like, Jews do it well with the shivas is like, you just talk and talk about the people and tell wonderful stories. That's how you keep people alive. And so After Life came to me because I had this vision of this girl riding her bike home from school and then getting home and realizing she had been dead for seven years. I want to write stories about people rising to the occasions of experiences in their life they don't think they can. And what is the worst thing a mother can imagine? It's this part of me, the supersitious part of me is like, even talking about this ptui ptui ptui, like I'm calling it upon myself, but I just, how do you get through things, and how do you connect to the people that are no longer with you? You know?

What you were saying reminded me of a Yehuda Amichai poem called Near the Wall of a House, which I don't think is explicitly about death, but I feel like it also is. I don't have the translator in front of me, for which I apologize. It might be Chana Bloch. "Near the wall of a house painted to look like stone, I saw visions of God. A sleepless night that gives others a headache gave me flowers opening beautifully inside my brain. And he who was lost like a dog will be found like a human being and brought back home again." This part: "Love is not the last room: there are others after it, the whole length of the corridor that has no end." And I feel like the whole length of the corridor that has no end, and the rooms after love, that's kind of what you're talking about.

Love continues.

Wow. I don't remember ever having anybody spontaneously quote poetry on the show.

This is what happens when Marjorie Ingall comes on your podcast. Right? We're in the presence of greatness here.

So I wanted to ask you where listeners can learn more about your work. And as I'm formulating that question in my head, I'm picturing both your websites. And I just had to comment, it so interesting that the headers of each of your websites seem very characteristic of you. So Gayle, on your website, it says "All. The. Feels" at the top, which is totally what your work is like. And then Marjorie, yours is about coffee: there's coffee beans and there's like an image of the ring that a coffee cup leaves on the table, so it just seems very representative of your personalities. But go ahead and tell where listeners can learn more about your work.

MarjorieIngall.com, and SorryWatch.com, and I'm trying desperately to stay off other kinds of social media. Although I got on Tumblr because Max, my younger kid, writes about anime, had a following on Tumblr, and I just wanted to make sure. And I'm like, I love Tumblr. This is the most wholesome website, like, it's really kind, and it's because it's beneath the notice of people who want to make money off of people's suffering.

I mean, I wonder if there's something to that, like the algorithm is not there to keep your rage going.

Yep, it's just weirdos finding other weirdos, people sharing their little mini fan fiction.

[SINGING] Weirdos, weirdos finding weirdos, are the luckiest weirdos!

That's us. Like the thing that Gayle and I always say about each other is that there are two kinds of people in the world, the people who see someone carrying a dead wombat in a box and quickly look away, and the people who are like, "Hey, why are you carrying a dead wombat in that box?" And we're the latter.

That's awesome.

I am at GayleForman.com and it is G A Y L E F O R M A N.com.

Multiple ways those could be spelled.

Yeah.

Is there anything else either of you want to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?

Heidi, this was amazing. I just can't thank you enough for bringing us together and letting us ramble, but then asking these, like, incredibly smart questions.

Yes!

Thank you.

We've done events together, but we've never done a podcast together, right?

It's true.

It's been a pleasure, and we thank you for thinking of it. Thinking outside the box, Heidi!

Thank you! And Gayle, thank you for name dropping Marjorie so many times in that Horn Book interview, because that's what made me think of it. I knew you were friends because Marjorie, you name drop Gayle frequently, just in conversation.

I do!

But this was in an official interview, and I was like, wow, if you're gonna go there when you're talking to Roger Sutton at The Horn Book, then this is serious.

Yeah, maybe because Roger's scary, Marjorie is like, my name dropping shield. Like, you may not think I am fabulous, Roger, but I know Marjorie Ingall!

Okay, but I'm gonna encourage people not to look at that until after they've read your book, because I felt he led with a spoiler.

Yeah, a little bit.

It's a great interview. Gayle, as you now know, is like such an amazing talker. But if you are somebody who doesn't like any spoilers at all, wait to read that interview.

It's not a massive spoiler, but it's a very satisfying...

Oh my god. Do you remember? I think I was at your house when I read that, and I was shrieking!

Gayle Forman and Marjorie Ingall, thank you so much for talking with me.

Thank you so much for having us. This was so fun.

Heidi, my dream come true. Thank you so much.

[MUSIC, DEDICATION] Hi. This is Erica Lyons.

And this is Christina Matula.

And we're the co-authors of Mixed-Up Mooncakes. We'll be joining you soon on the Book of Life podcast.

We'd like to dedicate this episode to the Hong Kong chapter of SCBWI, the Society of Book Writers and Illustrators, a wonderful supportive group through whom we met amazing writer friends, including each other.

[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com Check out our Book of Life podcast Facebook page, or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through Bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookofLifePodcast.com Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading!