Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S7 Ep3: Bookshelfie: Kiley Reid

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Bestselling author Kiley Reid delves into her favourite books with Vick and discusses motherhood, morals and money. Kiley’s debut novel Such A Fun Age was an instant hit making the New York Times Best Seller list, and probably more excitingly, Reece Witherspoon’s book club reading list.   Despite this success, in her 20s Kiley had always thought of writing as just a hobby turning to other jobs such as nannying and sales. It wasn’t until she was accepted onto the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop that she began to give her writing her full attention. It was here she discovered how uncomfortable writing about money made other people feel, a topic that comes up in both Such a Fun Age and her new book Come and Get It. Come and Get It is out now in hardback and follows the lives of three women on a college campus and discusses topics such as class, race, age and money. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Guardian, and others. In addition to writing Kiley teaches at the University of Michigan. Kiley’s book choices are: ** The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada ** The Walmart Book of the Dead by Lucy Biederman ** The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison ** Either/Or by Elif Bautman ** Sleepy Time byGyo Fujikawa  Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season seven of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of season seven? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

I'm obsessed with people and the granular conflict that they have, which is often petty. I love petty. I love petty too. It's the drama mic. It's the thing that we go to bed thinking about late at night. What did she mean by that? Or should I have said that? And so I love to tap into what makes us think those things. With thanks to Bayleys, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices.

and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 7 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your 2024 reading this. Today I am joined by writer, academic and author Kylie Reid. Kylie's debut, such a fun age, was an instant hit, making the New York Times bestseller list and probably more excitedly selected for Reese Withers Spoon's Book Club.

Despite this success, in her 20s, Kylie had always thought of her writing as just a hobby, turning to other jobs such as nannying and sales. And it wasn't until she was accepted onto the Iowa's Writers' Workshop that she began to give her writing her full attention. It was here she discovered how uncomfortable writing about money made other people, a topic that comes up in both such a fun age and her new book, Come and Get It, which is sitting pretty in front of me right now. Come and Get It is out now in a hardback, and it follows the lives of three women on a college campus

and discusses topics such as class, race, age and money. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Guardian, and others. In addition to writing, Kylie teaches at the University of Michigan, where her classes focus on driving plot through dialogue, and the rules writers invent in fiction. She's a true believer that shape shifting in fiction is a necessity. And Kylie, it is a joy to have you join us today.

Welcome to the podcast. That's got very nice intro. That does not always happen. Thank you so much for having me. It's okay. I know sometimes it's a bit uncomfortable sitting through an introduction to yourself. It's like when someone sings happy birthday. You just have to kind of, you know, take a deep breath.

Clough along. Exactly. Do you find that your writing influences your reading, You're reading influences. You're writing, obviously, you know, as an academic and teaching every day. You're surrounded by literature. Right. I definitely think reading influences my writing more often.

I think that a lot of my projects are just a conglomerate of the things that stuck with me most that I just read. This novel, come and get it was the direct effect of three very specific books that I read. Some of them I sought out. Some of them I stole from my husband's shelf and they just really stuck out to me. As far as what I'm writing going the other way. I don't think that what I'm writing will lead me to something. It's kind of the other way around. And I read so much student work and also thesis projects and starting novels.

And those really inspire me to take a red pen to my work more often. So yeah, everything filters through the same kind of lens. That's interesting. I never thought about the fact that you are actually consuming so much brand new writing for your students. And that has to be quite an inspiring thing. It's very, it's neat, especially because whether there are graduate students, students who are very close to publishing their own books or undergrads who are STEM majors who just need an art credit, I definitely find myself saying, ooh, this isn't working. Do I do that?

Let me take a look at my own thing and make sure I'm not making the same mistakes. Yeah. I said in the intro that it took a while for you to realize that writing could be your profession and to find that voice. But were you a big reader growing up when you were a child? Oh yeah, I love to you. Yeah. I think so many authors are always filling up notebooks and just think this is my private thing. Were you a goosebumps fan? Yes. I loved. I think I had 70 of them. I loved them. There was the goosebumps books. There was also the books. Can you remember where you could choose your ending? Choose your own adventure. Yeah. Choose your own adventure to see what happens next and next, next. I have like specific memories of having my itty-bitty booklight in my bed with me in the chooseer and adventure as you're snooping around.

Yeah, they were just like magical. I read them all the time. Those and oh this is, there's a veterinarian named James Herrit, Harriet. I used to read all of his books. I have no idea why I was so obsessed with them. Anything I could find, I was a big reader when I was little. For sure. I remember the feeling of reading those Choose Your Own Adventure books and thinking to myself, oh my gosh, imagine if real life also would have a knock on effect, depending on

the decisions you make, and then it turns out. You're on to something. I was on to something. Imagine if you did something and then anything could happen off the back of that, and then it changes the whole course of you like, oh. That's actually quite sweet because when you're a child, you don't really understand that you have free will and choices as much because you're told to do so many things. So that's kind of a nice entryway into that part of life.

To unstitching the conditioning that's being built around you. When do you get the chance to do most of your reading? Because I can imagine, you know, you've got a little one as well, that life is busy. Of course, yes. As far as my personal pleasure reading, I do look to audibles now. That was not a thing I did before when I entered the world of nursing. I thought, okay, I need hands-free reading experience. And it was actually kind of sweet because it felt like my daughter and I were listening to

certain books together in a certain way. And so that was nice. But you fit in in wherever you can. I used to think the life of a writer is so routine and orderly. But it's truly if I'm in the car and I have 10 minutes, if I have a spare hour, just fitting it in wherever I can. Yeah. Yeah, fitting it in is I feel like something I'd frowned upon up until quite recently.

thought I've got to really respect the piece of literature here and I need to give a good amount of time. I need to put an hour or half an hour aside and actually it's precious little drops and I'll take them where I can and it doesn't make it any less. Right, right. Life is so busy and I feel like we're all working way too much and maybe one day my life won't be filled of so many emails or other things but that's where we are right now and I think respecting a season of life is fine. If most of my reading comes hands free when I'm doing laundry, I think that that's fine. Fair enough. Well, we're going explore those precious little drops and where they fit in your life right now. Your first book-shelfy book is The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. Beyond the town there is a factory. Beyond the

factory, there is nothing. Within the sprawling industrial complex, three new employees work. One shreds paper, one proofreads documents and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. Over time, little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving. where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And what am I doing here? The factory is a vivid and sometimes surreal portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace. Now, you describe this book as deftly towing the line between real and surreal.

So what is it about this that has appealed to you? This is a fantastic novel. I enjoy any book that can. can correctly portray work-life culture and also, like, anyone who does the real and surreal at the same time really well. I was so fortunate to interview Heroku Oyamata about her book. And she talked about how she was a temp. And she started writing this book while she was temping.

And how the day's monotony was just so intense that it felt like, wait, am I here? Have I always been here? No, I am the workplace. It was this line that was being crossed in really interesting way. There's something about the factory, too, that it pumps out to its workers that you are lucky to be here. At least you have a job. You're one of the lucky ones. Okay, now go and do these pointless tasks.

And I think that that's really emblematic of a lot of different work, especially when you're in your 20s trying to find your footing. It's a beautiful novel. And the inclusion of animals is really haunting. There's birds that circle overhead in a very ominous way. And, yeah, she just knows what she's doing. doing when she's talking about work culture. Why is work life balance a theme that you're so fascinated in that you want to explore? What's your relationship to that term? I think it's a farce. Truly, I don't think that we have true work-likes balance within a class society. There is something

that's been happening. Maybe I'm just aware of it, but I feel like in the past 10, 15 years, we see so many offices having an open floor plan and free cereal and you can do this here. And I used to work in an office that offered haircuts to the employees, which is disgusting. I had to clean it up. It was so gross. There were massages offered and, oh, we have this on the weekend. And if you stay late, you can get dinner. And it was as if they were trying to morph people's daily lives into their work.

And those were the people that you hung out with. there was no differentiating between life and work. And I think that that's a very scary place to be in. I think that it is totally fine to not have an intense passion and should just go to work because you want to earn a paycheck and exercise your passions at home. And this tendency to say make your whole life here is a really terrifying place to me. Yeah. I remember when they got showers in one of my workplaces and thinking, what do you mean by this? Is this my home? What are you saying? Yeah. And it's something that can be instilled in us in such a young age. They had showers in the library at uni. And I remember so many of my friends would just sleep there during exam term.

And it's telling us that there is no balance. This is your life. Which is scary. Exactly. And people benefit from making it. And it's not us. No. And I feel that even just the community that happens when you stay late and you're having a

drink. You may talk to someone you don't normally talk to. And then, oh, you're promoted because they didn't know you before. And I think that pressure is incredibly toxic and something we see all the time. It was something that I used in such a fun age as well. Amira has a date, but her boss offers like, oh, do you want to have a drink? And I think that when that work life balance is is infiltrated, you feel like, well, I don't want to lose my job. I don't want you to think I'm not a warm, fun person. So I feel the need to do this. And I think it creeps in. to what can be really beneficial, meet you family time at the end of the day. Yeah.

How old were you when you read the factory? Do you feel like that had an impact on your reading experience? I read it. It was during COVID, I think. I read it on the plane when I was on tour for such a fun age. So I was 32. And I had my office jobs in my 20s. So it was nice reading it after those and being able to look at those with more of a clear vision.

And so perhaps, and I definitely want to write about work often, and I was working on come and get it at that time as well. And what's your relationship with work now? Because as a writer, I'm sure, you know, it's a passion. So those lines can be blurred. Has that been something you've had to consolidate yourself? It's probably morphing every day. The process of writing a novel is so different on both ends.

In the beginning, it is so personal and intimate. It's just you and the words. And as much as I love talking to people about art, it does feel like the practice is like the antithesis of creating it. I think so many writers deal with that where they're very good at being alone and then they're pushed into talking about their work in a critical way. And it's definitely not easy. I think that it depends on the season.

Having a daughter I've become good at the phrases that they used in my old office was time boxing. So I feel like I'm good at saying, okay, I really want to clean my office, but I need to spend time with my daughter. I'm going to give myself two songs to do as much as I can, and then I'll go from there. So my balance is okay. I'm probably a messier human now with the daughter, but my balance is all right. I think messy is good, to be honest. I understand. Yeah. The second book that you've brought today is the Walmart Book of the Dead by Lucy Biederman, inspired by the ancient Egyptian book of the dead, this darkly comic incantation on the gods and scourges of the 21st century

contains spells to preserve the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife. In Lucy Biedermans, Twisted Tale, shoplifters, grifters, drifters, desirous children, greeters, would be Marxists, wolves and circuit court judges, Wander Walmart unknowingly consigned to their afterlives. Now, rather than a novel, as I said, this is a book of spells, which is so brilliant. Can you tell us about it? Why is it one of your favourite reads? Even just you reading, it makes me more.

I'm going to read it again. It's so wonderful. I was writing Come and Get It, which takes place in Arkansas, and Bentonville, Arkansas, which is 45 minutes away from Fayetteville, is the home of Walmart. That's where that came to be. And Walmart and the Walton family definitely has a stamp on Arkansas and so many buildings and jobs and a lot of the culture there as well. So I was ingesting everything Walmart and trying to get inundated with the world of Arkansas. I'm not a huge poetry person, but this book really, really captured me and it just lived by the side of my bed and I would read a spell or two before I went to sleep. It's beautiful. It's about money and buying things and desire and pettiness. And I love reading about normal people, just making their way

through the world and figuring out what makes them so extraordinary. It's a beautiful book. And I used a line from the book as the epigraph for Come and Get It. And I reached out to the author and I'm happy to say she's such a kind person in her friends now, so it all came full circle. Yeah. What was it about that line that really spoke to you? The line, I almost want to read it. Can I do?

Yeah, yeah, please do. Okay, this is the epigraph at the beginning of the book. I don't want to spend the eternity with the lights off. I'll buy the most expensive, longest lasting bulbs and charge them to my Amex. There was something that evoked the entire feel of the book. I wanted to write about consumption, desire, youth, and things. And Lucy Biederman definitely shares my view of the nightmare of buying things.

She and I had a conversation about the terror of wanting a plain pale hair of black pants. And I think that that's a bit symbolic of the vibe of my book as well. So yeah, I was thrilled to find that passage. As we said before, come and get it, is out now, hardback. What can you tell us about it? Come and Get It is about three very different women who all come to Fayville, Arkansas, in order to get three very different things. Millie wants to be an adult. She's a second year senior.

She's very responsible, and she's definitely marked by hustle culture. Agatha Paul is a visiting professor, and she's had a breakup with her wife, Robin, and she's looking to get over it and have a bit of a free, I can do whatever I want year. and Kennedy is a very lonely transfer student who has a secret. This is a novel about desire and buying things and what we do in our rooms and we're alone. This and such a fun age are both concerned with class, race, age and particularly money. And you weave these intersectionalities through your characters so subtly. What is it about these topics that sparks your curiosity? I have to be honest and say I never start with the topics.

I never start with the big theme. I'm obsessed with people and the granular conflict that they have, which is often petty. I love petty too. It's the drama make. It's the thing that we go to bed thinking about late at night of what did she mean by that or should I have said that? And so I love to tap into what makes us think those things. So I start with characters. I'm very interested in the limitation.

that a world puts on characters and money is a big limitation all the time. I think my interest in money is honestly more of a stylistic preference. Whenever I'm watching a movie and they're saying, oh, this thing is so expensive, I'm like, can you just tell me how much it is? I just want to know the number. And whether I think it's a lot or a little, it doesn't really matter. It would just help me color the world a little bit. I like to know exact details.

And so I think the combination of wanting to have very normal people include exact. exact limitations, results in, especially within contemporary fiction, results in a talk about race and class. I think if you have black characters, characters dealing with money, all of those things are going to come out. I'm always so interested in how Americans perceive class because it's a very different thing over there to hear in the UK. What do you observe about class in everyday America? I think, you know, especially after doing so many interviews, I just hear class in so much language from, oh, he comes from a good family. She goes to a good school or that's a trashy outfit. I see the class distinction in all of those phrases now. Class rules are our lives and who we date and

where we go to school and what jobs we get. I think as a working adult now, I understand how much more class is involved in your career path rather than anything else. I believe that hard work is great and that you can have definite benefits from it but I also believe that where you come from has a bigger effect on where you go in life yeah and and do you think there's a dichotomy between being a writer and having money I mean there's two quite distinct images of authors that seem to exist now you have the penniless writer in the garret versus the sort of superstand brand author I think money has a huge effect on if you can write or not writing requires so much brain space and patience and bringing your hand doggedly back to the page over and over again.

And you need stability to do that. That's why so many people myself included try to get an MFA because that's what it gives you is time and space. And so I think that there is this romantic notion of like this poor starving artists from like what the 1600s. And I understand where that came from. But I do think that most of the literature that we see is from people who had the finances to to write. Yeah, money makes writing and taking risk a whole lot easier.

And it's something we see across the arts. Baileys is proudly supporting the women's prize of fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book. Check out Baileys.com for our favourite Bailey's recipes. Let's talk about your third book now, which is The Blueest Eye by Tony Morrison. This is near perfect, in my opinion.

Nobel Prize winning author of Beloved Tony Morrison's debut novel, immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family, Pauline, Cholley, Sam and Picola in post-oppression, 1940s, Ohio. Unloved and Unlovely, Becote. polar praise each night for blue eyes like those of a privileged white school fellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling. The bluest eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. Now, I understand you listen to the audio book of this one.

Which she reads. Which she reads. It's incredible. How do you think that impacted the way you experienced the novel? It haunted me. It was both good and bad. I listened to it when I was nursing, sometimes in the middle of the night, and I would go back to bed and I truly could not sleep because her voice was in my head. It might be a perfect book.

It's so incredible. And there's so many little details from the little girl who calls her mother, Mrs. I can't remember what her last name is. It might be Robinson. But then the girls that mother babysits call her a sweet pet name, there's so many little instances like that of just real world class dynamics being. puts you like a tender emotional place. It's truly a perfect book. Like yourself, Tony Morrison addresses the intersection of race and class. Do you think that literature helps to move the needle, that writers have a sort of moral duty to address issues affecting society if it matters to you?

I have a hot take on this. Oh, I love a hot take. Please hit me. I don't think it's an author's responsibility to have a moral standing within a novel. Not everyone needs a novel to entertain, and I understand that. I want a novel to entertain. I want it to keep me turning pages. That's why I pick up a book. But I'm also entertained by things like great depictions of normalcy, so everyone has a different layer there. I think it's a really romantic notion to think that authors are capable of changing minds through fiction. I personally don't like when a novel tells me what to think. I'm like a 16-year-old girl, and that, like, if you tell me what you think, I'm going to think the opposite, don't do that. But I also think that the novels that rest on my heart and make me change the way that I think about the world are just true and just present facts and data to me in a really plain way.

So as much as I would like to believe that authors can change the world in that way, I also don't want that responsibility. I want the responsibility of just presenting truth, which also takes a lot of bravery on the page. It does. I've always said that the reason one of my first. favorite authors is one of my favorite authors to Amanda and Gossi Dice is because it's philosophy without philosophizing. That's what I want. Yeah. It's socioeconomic facts that I can then process and my moral compass will work out what it needs to work out based on my feelings towards that fact. I think that that's probably doing more than telling you what they think, especially because

when I want someone to tell me what the world looks like in that way, I go to nonfiction. I trust that information much more. Within fiction, I am looking for a more curated, entertaining read and layering authors, particularly black authors, with having a moral standing as well. I don't want to do that. And it's sort of imbueing them with a responsibility that isn't fair. I think so too. Always. I know that, you know, growing up, my mum always pressed the novels of black authors in my hands just to give me a bit of perspective on the world that I wasn't maybe getting from where we grew up. and I'm almost like looking to them to have answers because they have to represent me and they don't have to represent me.

Right, right, right. They can tell you their opinion and you can learn something new or not. But at the end of the day, I don't think authors should be held responsible to insert morals into their storytelling. Gadi, do you prefer an audio book or is it just, you know, necessity dictates that that's the way that you're consuming at the moment? Pure necessity. I love sitting down. with a book and doing my own, you know, voices in my head. But unfortunately, for the time being, it's audible books for me.

But it has actually brought me to books that I wouldn't have read otherwise. I now have favorite audible readers. Dionne Graham is my favorite. He does all of James Baldwin's whole canon. Eduardo Ballerini is another one of my favorite. So now I seek out books that I would have never looked at before because of who's reading them. That's so interesting. Yeah, that voice now changes what I'm going to, you know, go for.

And you mentioned as well that you listen while nursing your daughter. You've got your hands free then. How do you think motherhood has changed you? I'm going to say first as a writer because we'll move on to a book where I'm going to ask you about how it's changed you as a reader. Got you. As a writer, I mean, the timing is just different. It's so funny in graduate school. You're like, I have no time.

You had plenty of time. It's so different. But I have to say that I think being a mother, I feel consistently maybe 80% happier. in my life. And so I'll take that joy and put it into my writing. I think that everyone is different, but for me, having a child made me compartmentalize things a bit more correctly. And if my daughter is happy and healthy, then I should just write about whatever I want and take bigger risks. So she has made finding time to write so much harder, but my life is so much more joyful, I would say. It's a really beautiful way of putting it. What do you think you would or could be doing if you

weren't a writer. I wasn't a writer. I do love teaching a lot. I hope I would still continue to be teaching. To be honest, I would be just fine being a stay-at-home mother. I love being a mother. I love the tediousness and watching my daughter grow. I would have no problem staying at home with her and just making sure her days were really full and exciting. What else do I be doing? There's so many things that I would love to do, but I would be terrible at you. I would have. I was a cheerleader in high school and I loved gymnastics. I could not be worse at it. I'm terrible at it.

So I don't know if I could be some kind of ambassador for the gymnastics world. That's what maybe that I would be doing. What would you be doing? You're not doing this. Well, I remember being asked when I was very young and what I wanted to be. And I remember answering J-Lo. That's a great answer. She's a great job.

I was like, just J-Lo, you know, triple threat. There you go. Truly. But, yeah, I mean, thinking about it now, it's the same thing. There's obviously a difference between the things I would love to do but wouldn't be good at. I'd love to be a gymnast. Can I do gymnastics? No.

Probably working for a charity, I imagine, in the charity sector. There you go. But here we are and we're doing this. Exactly. Yeah, this is pretty good. And we're talking about your next book, your fourth book, Shelby book today, which is either or by Elif Bateman. Celine is the luckiest person in her family, the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. now it's her second year, 1996, and Celine knows she has to make it count.

The first order of business to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, either or is a landmark novel. Hilarious, revelatory and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page. tell me why you picked this book. I loved this book so much. And I think I did I do The Audible? Yes. And it was very good.

I think the author reads it. I'm very into the authors reading their own work right now. It is such a clever, wonderful book about the musings of a young person as she's growing up in college. I like a lot of plot. And I wouldn't say this book has a ton and it doesn't matter. I could stay in this person's head forever. There are pages where she just has musings. musings of music. And there's now songs that I can't listen to the same way, again, without

thinking of the book. And it's always in a really great way. It's a really beautiful novel that has a more accurate depiction, I believe, of what coming of age looks like. It's not so romantic. And it's really extraordinary. Have you read it? I haven't. So this is a book recommendation for me. And I'm making a mental note to put on my lips. It's a continuation of the characters from The Idiot, but you do not have to read The Idiot to understand it. It's really well. Yeah, I've got written down here. Notes, I liked this better than the idiot. Yes, I did. I did. It was very good. But there was something about this one that really captured me. Yeah. Well, this book and come and get it, they both take place on a university college campus.

What is it about that setting? And I totally think that it makes such a good backdrop for a novel. I'm not just novels. I mean, look, how many movies. Right. We're obsessed with it. Yeah. Okay, I have a weird, weird theory about this. college campuses, particularly in the United States, are the one time when Americans can live in a walkable utopia, like, community. You can go to a grocery store, go see your friend, you can go to change your major or go to an improv group. There's so many options right there where you're at. And I think that after college, we're swept into the workplace world where we have a 45-minute commute in a car and then we're tired, and that's it. It's just this college is like this little paradise, I feel. You're also coming. and bringing all of your values from home and then having them challenged in a gentle way because you're just meeting new and interesting people. I do think colleges are a lot like a shopping mall

and that they're very shiny and look to offer this promise of a brighter future when that's not always available and everyone's coming at college from very different socioeconomic backgrounds. But there's something about the urban infrastructure that makes it seem like anything is possible on a college campus.

It's true. After that part of your life, your will does get at once bigger and also smaller. You will do less on a day-to-day basis and things are physically further away. I was discussing just the other day the sort of the pros and cons because as the university gets more expensive and life gets more expensive, kids are having to weigh up, do I really want to do this as opposed to it being kind of a given right of passage that it used to be? And I said to my partner, because he didn't go, and I did, I said, you know what it was? It was prime friend-making mode because that doesn't happen again in your life. You're never surrounded by so many people, like you say, who can maybe challenge things that you're thinking, but offer your opportunities to think in new ways. They're all just there laid out for you in this sort of weird microcosm.

They all want the same thing as well. Everyone's searching for different connections. That was something that I wanted to mess with and come and get it for one of the characters. Kennedy, she comes in just so crippled by the idea of how to make friends. But it seems like everyone already has friends to her. And there is so much available. There's so much choice that kind of cripples her. But for some people, that's where they take off and make friends that they keep for the

rest of their lives. Yeah. It's very fascinating. Oh, my God. That fresh is fair. When you've got all the stands and the stalls and their free pens and all the different things you could be joining the societies. I found it so exciting.

It's like the world just opened. All of these shared resources that are like, you know, someone's great grandmother or paid for some library that you just get to go sit at. Yeah, it's an amazing time and and really complicated for a lot of people. Well, let's talk about music in this book. Yeah. I think you said Lauren Hill's songs have completely changed now because of you thinking of this book when you hear them. Why do you love that aspect of it? There's a section that is so genius and what the character goes into her analysis of killing me softly by Lauren Hill. And it's a great lesson in doing more than one thing at a time.

It's a way of looking at a song differently. It's identifying the character's characteristics. And it's also taking you through what's important to her in the story. And I always think that fiction should be trying to work on more than one angle, not just plot, but emotion and character at the same time. It's just really clever. And I don't know if I've seen music analyze this way in fiction before. And I hope I see it again soon.

Do you listen to music well? You're right. No, I don't. I keep it really quiet. Sometimes I'll go on rainycafe.com and put that on just because I need some background nosy. But no, no writing, no music, yeah. It can be difficult.

Some writers absolutely love it. They find it really inspiring, really helpful, and others it's a huge distraction. I know that during the UK sort of exam period study leave, the number of 15 to 25-year-olds who listen to classic FM goes up by like 50% because they just want music with no lyrics. Right. So they can have something. clear but not everything. Do you listen to music while you work? I would listen to like very minimal, maybe tech, house, something without lyrics.

I would find that too distracting. Yeah, yeah, I think I would too. I think I try and save it. I take a lot of breaks when I'm writing. Like every hour and a half, I try and get up and go for a walk and I save the music for later. It's like if I work through this, you get to listen to the music. Yeah, exactly. Do you have any other habits when you're writing other than putting on the sound of rain? I do wear headphones even though nothing is playing from them.

From them, it's a nice symbolic, okay, you're working now situation. Other than that, no, I try and exercise my eyes and make sure I'm taking my eyes up and out and looking out the window, just doing whatever I can to get it done that day. It's pretty simple, yeah. During that writing process, where in your mind is the pressure, especially, you know, let's talk about the fact that such a fun age, receives such a positive reaction from readers and from critics, then you move on to come and get it, your second novel. Do you feel the pressure to write another successful book?

Is that in the back of your mind? This might sound crazy, but I did not feel that pressure in the way that I thought I would. I had a thesis professor who's wonderful tell me, you already did the big book. You did the big one. It did well. Now make this the book that they never would have let you write before and just have no expectations from it. And that was really freeing.

So thinking that you've already proven that you've done a big book makes you say, okay, I'm going to take the risk that that I want to take here. So I've just been pretending that this is like my acoustic album that's just for me this whole time. I do like a little bit of pressure. I think the great thing about the success of such a fun age was more understanding that there's going to be a canon. And my agent, when I was signing with her, said I don't want to just be there for the great ones. I want to be there for the smaller ones, more experimental ones, if you want to do something different. And so I'm starting to see the future of my work a bit.

And so I didn't feel like a crippling pressure with this one. This is your Joanne. Yes. Lady Gaga's country album after she'd managed to tell everyone, okay, art pop, you've got what you want. Yeah, now I'm back to me. Exactly. Yeah. It's time to explore your fifth and final book, Shelfy Book.

Sleepy Time by Gio Fujikawa. I love that we're taking a slightly different, A little twist, a little turn. Slightly different route here. Baby's yawning. Babies bathing. Baby's sweetly slumbering. Day is done and it's time for bed in this classic book.

Fujikawa's gorgeous illustrations contrast the children's nighttime rituals with the horse that sleeps standing up, the lazy sloth that snoozes upside down and animals that doze the winter away. For parents and children alike, this book is a lovely way to say good night. tell me why you pick this. All right, let me tell you something about children's books. So many of them are terrible. So many.

And like you're reading them all the time. My daughter loves to read. And so I think it's important that we're all, you know, getting a little bit of enjoyment out of these things. So many children's books are just telling her to behave a certain way. And she's, she's so little. She's just learning about the world. And I want her to just be filled with ideas right now. and not anyone telling her what she shouldn't do.

Fujikawa's books are so beautifully drawn, but they're also like a bit of a fever dream. There's not a clear through line. It's just, hey, this is what we do when we go to bed. Oh, look, there's a horse that's also going to bed. And some animals sleep in the day. Isn't that crazy? The end. And I really love that frenetic but calm energy.

We have three of her books. My daughter is obsessed with all of them. These are the books that I give to friends when they have babies. I really love her work. I can imagine, obviously, you read a lot of children's books these days. As you say, some are terrible. How has it been coming back to these? You know, there was a book called The Monster at the End of This Book.

And I remember reading it over and over again when I was two or three. And it's about a Sesame Street character who says, don't turn that page. Don't turn that page of the monster at the end of this book. And I remember being so scared as I was reading it. I don't know if that book created my entire personality, but that is truly the feeling that I want to give people when they read my book of, I know something's coming. And I don't know what it is.

And so it's been fun to revisit books in that way. But of course, my daughter has different interests than I do. And it's just, it's neat to see where her brain goes. Is there something that you look for in particular when you're picking books for your daughter? You said there that you just want her to see. sort of know that the world is spinning. Things are happening. Right.

I'd love for her to see just the way that people can look differently. She's very into animals right now. And so that's really important. Anything that's like visually stimulating in a way that's calm, I feel like a lot of children material is really big flashing lights and neon is to keep her attention. I want her to just feel like she's in nature almost when she's looking at a book and just see new ideas on the page.

I don't think I would ever write a children's book, but I have very strict opinions about what makes a good children's book, and I don't think it's easy to do. It's totally fair enough. I mean, what goes in is going to have a huge effect. And I think we must never underestimate that. I took a break from social media recently and from just my phone in general, and was just in nature for about a month,

and came back and looked at the headlines and realized that, it's no wonder I was so stressed and often depressed because I'm being bombarded. Oh, yeah. And it's important to know what's going on in the world, but no human being can possibly conceive of the magnitude of some of these things that I'm seeing on my tiny screen. It's a lot. And imagine you're a baby and you've got all of that going in. It's important what you put in.

100%. Well, now that I've had her too, I want her to understand what it's like to be bored or to just be able to focus on some thing. And you're totally right. When you're on your phone, it's like you're saying, happy birthday. There's a war in this place. Or maybe you should buy this. And it's all in the same place coming at you so hard. So I'm also impressed by your dopamine detox that you went on. I'm considering doing the same. But yes, we, you know, of course, she's going to make her own decisions and be a human in the world for right now when she's so little when it comes to her books. We just want her to be able to discover new things on a page on a different read that aren't being

flashed at her in a really dramatic way. It's probably a little while, but how do you feel about the thought of her reading your books? Oh, that's so interesting. I don't know if I've even thought about it because she's so little. I hope she would be entertained, but I would totally respect her saying, ew, that's my mom, that's gross. Like, I like reading books, but that's too close to home, yeah. And Kylie, where would you like your writing to take you next?

I want to do something different with every book. So, of course, I'm always, I think most writers are always working in their brains, but I'm going to be a little bit coy about the next one as I'm excited about it. I want to try new things with style, character, delivery, tone. And yeah, we'll see what happens. Give me a few years, though, because it takes a little bit to write with the baby this time. I'll hit you back up. A few years time.

There we go. We've had quite a spread. I mean, we've had this beautiful children's book, a book of spells. If you had to choose one book from the list that you've brought today as a favorite, which would have been why? All right. I think I'm with you with the bluest eye. It's just, it is just such a testament to a vision. I am of the belief that as a writer, it's a chemical like makeup of your brain and the way that you see the world. And this is just a person who is just her body and brain lends it so, so naturally to storytelling an incredible way. Blue's eye is also a hard book to read. And there's so much trauma and sadness in it. And one. wanting to go back to a book like that, I think is a real testament to the author. It's truly a perfect novel. And of course you read it as an audio book read by Tony Morrison. It did. She feels sort of imbued by her. I thought there were so many moments where I thought if I was

reading it just by myself, I would not read these lines as well as her and I would not get the full body of them. And it's also funny in moments. There were moments that I laughed at that I would not have done if I had read it by myself. She knows what she's doing. Well, I think if any of our listeners have read it, which I'm sure so many have, it's maybe worth going back and taking it in in that way now. Truly, yeah. Oh, Kylie, thank you so, so much. I've got some excellent recommendations to take away from this.

This has been so lovely. It's been absolutely gorgeous to get to know you. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. You know,