Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S9 Ep14: Kathryn Stockett at Women’s Prize LIVE

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Recorded Live at Women’s Prize Live, global bestselling writer Kathryn Stockett talks to Vick about the enduring allure of Mississippi, the book that gave her  “electricity in my ass” and her long awaited second novel, 17 years in the making, The Calamity Club.Kathryn  was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama, she moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. Her first novel, The Help, which was first published in the US back in 2009 has sold over 1 million copies in the UK and 15 million copies worldwide. Kathryn’s book choices are:09:58 The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty17:32 The Secret History by Donna Tartt24:19 Animal by Lisa Taddeo29:49 The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr38:59 The Colour Purple by Alice WalkerYou can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org  – every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops. Every week on Bookshelfie, Vick Hope is joined by inspirational women to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world, is run by the Women’s Prize Trust, the charity building a better future by championing women’s writing. Don’t want to miss the rest of season nine? Follow or subscribe now!This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

Coming up on this very special episode of Bookshelfy recorded here at Women's Prize Live in London. I think I'll always write about Mississippi because I don't know that it's a riddle that I can ever truly crack. I love Anne Patchett and she said, you know, when she is trying to come up with what she's going to write about next, she says, all she can think is I've got to get in, I've got to get in, I've got to get in, I got to get in. And then once she starts writing the story, she says, I got to get out, I got to get out. And I know that feeling, you're just running the whole time. I am a big believer. When I wrote The Help, I believe this.

And when I wrote The Calamity Club, I believe this. That it is vital for us just as sympathetic and intelligent human beings to try to imagine what it feels like to stand in someone else's shoes. I don't condone this. Those electric prod polls. There's one in my book. and that's what I felt like animal, the book Lisa Todayo's book did. It just kind of gave me electricity in my ass. I just didn't expect to hear the phrase electricity in my ass today, but here we are.

Hello, I'm Vic Hope and this is Bookshelfy, the podcast from the Women's Prize that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Now, before we begin, remember to subscribe to. or follow so you never miss an episode. With thanks to our sponsor, Bayley's. To everyone who's listening or watching the podcast, that was the audience, because this is live. And to everyone in the audience, I'm talking to the people listening to the podcast.

So I think we've all got it now. We can get on with it. A little about Catherine. Catherine Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama, she moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine, publishing and marketing, for nine years.

Her first novel, The Help, which was first published in the US back in 2009, has sold over a million copies in the UK and 15 million copies worldwide. 17 years later, her new novel, The Calamity Club, which is in front of me here and will be in the bookshop to be signed a little later, is out now. And she's here with us in London Town to tell us all about it

and discuss the five books by women that have shaped her and her writing. Another round of applause. Catherine, welcome. Hi. Thank you so much, Vic. Thank you. We were just having a little chat

before we came on the stage about how writing is such a solitary experience and you're not used to being on a stage in front of so many people, as lovely as everyone is. How does it feel? Dauting a little bit. I'm used to being in a room in my PJs

with a scarf around my neck, just facing what is even more frightening which is The Page. But I love seeing this audience of women. There are a few men here and there, but just women altogether, I feel like sparks are going to start flying any minutes. Well, we heard there that your debut novel, The Help,

it was such a huge success. It was a global bestseller. It was adopted into an Oscar-nominated film. Did that early success and that public profile, did that put pressure on you when writing your sophomore? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was when I first started writing the help, you know, there were no expectations of me. And I didn't think anybody was going to read it but me. And I had 60 rejection letters from agents to back that up. And then no one was more surprised than I was when it took off. But when I started writing the Calamity Club, you know, instead of just me alone in a, in a, a room, it was me with all those readers and critics kind of staring back at me. So it was paralyzing at times. Well, the Calamity Club, it's such a gorgeous story. I was so happy to be

inside it. It's set in 1933 during the Great Depression in Mississippi, which is, of course, where you're from. Is this history something that you've always wanted to write about? Tell us the origins of this book. Oh, I mean, I will always write. about Mississippi. And I want to read something that I just read this morning. Wesley Morris with the New York Times interviewed Steven Spielberg, who is, you know, such an incredible storyteller. And he, and Stephen Spielberg said, I can't express enough how therapeutic and healthy it is for me to keep doing this job over and over and over again, Spielberg said. I work so much out through this process, so much.

I get to bleed off some of the darkness instead of letting it fester inside me, and then you get to let it fester inside you. I just thought that was such a telling way to explain why we tell stories, why we have to get these voices out of our head and unto the way to explain why we tell stories, head and onto the page and coming from a place as colorful and complicated as Mississippi, I think I'll always write about Mississippi because I don't know that it's a riddle that I can ever truly crack. And those characters who live and breathe the landscape, the setting that they're from feel like they tell us the story of Mississippi, you know, we get to know. I do. I

I do want to ask your first novel, The Help, it was a huge commercial success, but it also drew some criticism around certain representations. How do you reflect on that experience now all these years on? Well, you know, I understand the criticism, first of all, as a woman from Mississippi, when someone tries to represent my story, I understand getting defensive about it, but I'm I am a big believer. When I wrote The Help, I believe this, and when I wrote the Calamity Club, I believe this, that it is vital for us just as sympathetic and intelligent human beings to try to imagine what it feels like to stand in someone else's shoes. I wish they would teach this in school,

to imagine what it feels like to have someone else's problems, but also to imagine what it feels like to have someone else's successes. I think that's what teaches us how to hope. It teaches us empathy as well when we walk a day in the shoes of another. I mean, the Calamity Club, it follows 11-year-old Meg, who is an unadoptable girl at the local orphanage. But she is smart and she is witty and she is full of grit, which we've seen in your characters

in the help, we see it in other female characters as well in the Calamity Club. Are these essential qualities for your heroines? Well, I mean, I'm always going to write about women. Men are never going to fare very well in any of my novels. I have nothing against men. Sorry, guys. Again, I just love the idea of when a group of women get together

and try to solve a problem. because so often women think that if we have a problem, it is up to us and us only alone to solve it. And the truth is, when we all get together and share a problem, first of all, it's more fun to solve it. And second of all, we can do a much more stellar job figuring it out. I'm sorry, I can't remember your question. And you know what, it doesn't matter.

Okay, good. This is just where the story takes us. But I really like to write about characters that can showcase the absurdity of these so-called rules that we're supposed to follow in, you know, polite society and religion and race. And, you know, I have this friend named Vicky Love in Mississippi, and every once in a while she'll just pick up the phone and call me. And without even saying hello, she'll just say, what is wrong with people? people. And I like to write about characters like that. These are the characters you like to write about, but I'd love to know about the characters you want to read about, the stories that you want to get lost in when you read for pleasure.

What sort of books do you gravitate towards? It's always women. I mean, I'm always looking for a woman's voice, a woman's perspective. And usually, for me, it's the first person because I want to hear the eye. I want to hear the brain and the heart coming from the eye. And often I like to write from more than one female perspective because it's just more interesting to me to take a problem and turn it on its side and show how we can come up with a solution from very different directions.

Well, we're going to find out about the five books by women that take you on that journey, that present to you the voices, often women's voices, that have really enriched your lives that have shaped you. And your first bookshelfy book is The Optimist's Daughter by Yudora Welty. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel first published in 1972 is a poignant and reflective tale of love and independence. Set in Mount Salas, Mississippi, the story follows Laurel McElver,

whose father was the local judge. After his death, she's forced to confront grief, memory, and tensions with his much younger second wife as she comes to understand the peculiarities of her upbringing and the true relationship between her parents and herself. Why have you chosen this novel today?

Well, okay, so when we ask the question of why a novel changed my life, I sort of interpret that to be how did it teach me, how did it inform me to become a better writer, which we're always learning as writers. Every time you start a novel, It's like you're writing one for the very first time.

But Udora Welty wrote this story about a woman that leaves Mississippi and goes to Chicago and comes back home and sees everything is exactly the same as she left it while she has changed so much. And I think as a writer, you have to get out of your microcosm. You have to get out of that bubble. go learn about the world and understand that not everything is, you know, as it was from where you came from, and come back and get that fresh perspective. And that's why I love that story. Well, you said that Eudora taught you how setting, we talked about this before,

and a sense of place can become central characters in a story. So how does Mississippi, the landscape, the heat, how does that shape the emotional atmosphere of the novel and also influence the characters in a lives? I mean, for me, Mississippi is a character unto itself. It is such a complicated place, and, you know, it has such a terrible history, and yet it's so beautiful there. And so I live in New York and Mississippi, and so I'll go to New York, and I'll write a while, and then I'll sort of run out of gas and I have to go back to Mississippi

and listen to the voices and feel the humidity and the heat and the grass and also get a little bit pissed off all over again and fill my cup and once I've done that then I can go anywhere I want to and write but inevitably I'll run out and have to go back to this place

that just perturbs me and always will What's pissing you off? Oh, the politics, absolutely. The control of women's rights. I mean, I try not to get too political in these things, but women in America are losing their health rights. And I'm not saying that we've gone back to where we were in 1933, but that's why I wrote the Calamity Club,

because, you know, the car's had it in the wrong direction. And I think that we have to remember by reading a book, if you take one thing away from this book, is that history classically repeats itself. So as women, we cannot take our rights for granted. That pendulum keeps swinging. Progress is never one. And on the subject of looking back in time, historically,

Mississippi is a location that's obviously a central character in your own novel, so I'd love you to paint a picture of the Mississippi that you grew up in, Catherine. Oh, well, I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, was kind of like the armpit of the South, to be honest. Back then, it has improved a little. But it's the most hospitable place. People are the kindest, most generous people that I've ever known.

And yet went to a first Presbyterian Church day school, and they taught me that dinosaurs weren't real, or else they would have been in the Bible. and I'm thinking to myself, I have been to the Natural History Museum in New York City. I was probably one of the few children in that room that had been there.

So it was puzzling the way that they tried to repress your thoughts as a child. But, you know, it's getting a little bit better. It's coming along. And I pick on this women's group, the Junior League.

I don't know if y'all know what the Junior League is. but in Mississippi, it was this kind of social club where women came together. And my mother was the first of her group to get a divorce in the 1970s, and she was in the Junior League. And when she got a divorce, she looked around herself and saw that there was not a single person of color. There was not a single Jewish person in the room.

And so she stepped out. And so she raised me very unusually. She raised me with my eyes open, which was very different from so many of my peers. Do you think it was your mother who encouraged you to not take things at face value when you're told that dinosaurs don't exist, didn't exist? Oh, absolutely.

My mother called that place bullshit from the very start. And that child's mind and curiosity and questioning, did that lead you to want to write stories to find truths and express them? I think so. I think it's not really natural for me to be on stage and expressing myself. You know, as I said, I'm just kind of a nerd that sits behind a desk. But I can do that on the page. I can speak my truths.

And sometimes the reader relates to them. And that's where I feel human connection. How is Yudora Welty's writing about place that you love so much shaped your own approach? How do you create that sense of texture in the place? I mean, I think that she understands how to construct a sentence in such a surprising way at the end where you're smelling the south, you're hearing the sound. you're hearing the sounds, and yet you're looking at it sort of from above

and understanding how complicated Mississippi is and the relationships between blacks and whites. And Udora Welty was in the 1930s when there were no jobs for women during the Great Depression. She was hired by the Works Progress Committee, and she took a camera and went around Mississippi and took photographs of people. No one was taking photographs of black women, black children, white women,

women doing their laundry, women going shopping. It was just so unusual to see a woman behind a camera at that time. And so I studied her photographs so much. They informed me so much about that time and history. Well, Mississippi is also the birthplace of the author of your next. bookshelthy pick, which is The Secret History by Donna Tart. Now, this is a regular favourite on this podcast. It follows a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college who become entangled

in a secretive intellectual circle under the influence of a charismatic professor, which ultimately leads them down a very dangerous path. This cult classic is regarded as one of the most influential literary debuts of the 1990s, first published in 1992 and establishing Donatard's reputation. She was shortlisted actually for the Women's Prize of Fiction with her later novel, The Goldfinch, in 2014. Now this was an absolute literary sensation and you brought it today as your work of genius. So why do you think it continues to have such a captivating effect on readers? Well, I mean, just the idea that you can tell a story about killing your best friend in college

and get away with it is like, that's genius to me. I mean, there's so many people that I would love to, I mean, I won't say kill them or push them off a cliff, but I have thought about it. And as a, I don't know, maybe 22-year-old, my friend Tate Taylor, who I went to high school with, and he wrote the screenplay for the help and directed it.

I'd come home from graduating college, and he handed me this book and said, you ought to read this, and I've read it. And just to read a story by a woman from Mississippi who was only a few years older than me, and to tell it so fantastically, it gave me permission to take writing seriously, Seriously, it's really what opened the door for me.

So at 22 years old, you're reading this book that is so rich, that is so beautifully written, we've graduated from questioning the dinosaurs. At this point, what were you like? What was it about Tart's voice that was so inspiring and groundbreaking for you as a writer at this point? I mean, just the way that she could describe. a character so economically in just a few sentences and you could see them and you could hear the screech of Bunny's voice in your head and and think oh I would definitely kill him it just she I don't know as a fellow Mississippian man she just she just she just nailed it she went to Ole Mississ for a year and then she

transferred to Bennington. And I think getting out of Mississippi, as I said, about the optimist daughter, getting out of your bubble and teaching yourself a little bit more about the world, I think gave her such an interesting perspective on these characters. Did you feel imbued by that sort of level of ambition as a writer? Well, I mean, I'll never compare myself to Donna Tart in terms of performance. but yes, I mean, just seeing that a woman my age from Mississippi could do this gave me some kind of hope, I think I had been kind of raised in the 80s to believe that I had to do something productive that would earn me.

Either I had to get married to someone who could support me or I had to figure out how to support myself. So being a writer and expecting to actually earn a living from it was not an option. But when I read that book, I thought, oh, well, maybe I can. I mean, it took me a while, but I did, you know, eventually it got there. Well, speaking of taking a while, like Tart, you achieved this massive success with your debut novel, but then you chose to take a step back from the public eye for quite a while. Why was that? And how did you navigate that time?

Well, okay, so it's been 17 years since the help came out in the Calamity Club. And as I said, it was kind of paralyzing at times to face that page again. But, you know, it didn't serve me that I was really determined to write a really short book. And I was determined to write a book that did not. raised the types of criticisms that the help did. And after about four or five years of trying to write this story and coming out with a very bland version that's nothing like this that really lacked the heart and soul of this story,

I finally gave in to the fact that you cannot write about Mississippi, especially in 1933, and not write about hypocrisy, and racism and sexism and the absurdities of the world. And so once I gave into that, the story really started to blossom. What does that moment feel like where it all starts to make sense? Oh, I mean, it's like a race. I love Anne Patchett. And she said, you know, when she is trying to come up with what she's going to write about next,

she says, all she can think is, I've got to get in, I've got to get in, I've got to get in. And then once she starts writing the story, she says, I've got to get out, I've got to get out. I got to get out. And I know that feeling. You're just running the whole time. And then when it's done, I mean, do you find it hard to finish it? Because you've sat with it for so long, knowing, okay, we've got to stop now. We've got to get out.

Oh my God, I was so happy to finish this book. You have no idea. This episode of Bookshelfy is sponsored by Bayleys. Bayleys is proudly supporting the 26 Women's Prize for Fiction, helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Baileys is the perfect adult treats, whether shaking in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes.

Well, on to another massively impactful gut punch of a debut now. Your third book-shelphy book is Animal by Lisa Todayo. First published in 2021, this exploration of female violence centres around Joan, a traumatised woman hardened by years of abuse who flees New York City after her married lover shoots himself in front of her. She's trying to track down Alice, a woman with a mysterious connection to her past, but becomes entangled in increasingly intense and often destructive relationships. Today, her as bold and controversial debut novel is an electrifying story of sisterhood and female rage that explores the relationship between trauma and sexual violence.

This is a quite different book to the others on your list today. It's noirish. It's got this LA setting and the visceral quality of its subject matter. So how did you come across it? Well, I read three women, which was Lisa Todayo's kind of breakout book. And I just kept going. You know, once you read a book by somebody and it's so good, then you go back to the store and you start scanning what else they've written.

And when I read Animal, I mean, it blew my mind. I just feel like this book has not gotten the attention that it deserves. And the thing that Lisa knows how to do is put you in the very visceral present. And in just that same sentence, take you to the past of something kind of horrifying that happened and then bring you back to the present, all in sort of the same stream of thought. And it floored me. It taught me about time travel as a writer.

How important it is and the techniques that we as writers have to use so that you, the reader, can understand, okay, here we are in the present of the book, but you need to understand where this character came from, how they grew, up, who their parents were. Even if we don't tell you about all of those details, we certainly need to know as writers about those questions. And she can just be like walking down the street and suddenly, you know, she's in the bathroom with her parents

and sees that her mother has sliced herself open in the bathtub, and then she gets to the store where she's going to try on shoes. And you just went through that journey and just one sentence. And I thought it was so deft and magical. That time travel, that rightly technique, do you feel like it opened your eyes, like it impacted your own writing? Oh, yeah, I learned so much.

And there were many times when I was writing this book where I have to admit, I mean, I don't know if writers really admit this, because it's not plagiarism, I hope. But you have a book open kind of on your desk, and when you run out of sentences, you look at sentences that, that give you that brightness that shine a light in your eye

and wake you up like a good cup of coffee and then you can go back writing because writing something, especially when it takes you 17 years, can be really dull business. I know some writers, they can't read other novels or other author's works when they're writing, but you do, you like to dip in?

I do. I need that kind of shock, that cow. You know, they use those, it's terrible, I don't condone this, those electric prod poles, there's one in my book. And that's what I felt like Animal, the book Lisa Todayo's book did. It just kind of gave me electricity in my ass. I just didn't expect to hear the phrase electricity in my ass today, but here we are. Are you drawn to novels that boldly experiment like that? Oh, yeah.

I mean, we're always looking for new materials. We want to see who's broken the mold. We want to see who's learned how to craft a sentence a little bit differently, but we also have to go back to the old standards that taught us from the very beginning to become writers. This book pictures a heroine who describes herself as depraved. Oh, it's a great word. Yes. Talk to me about unlikable female characters.

Unlikeable female characters surprise me especially when you read a book like yesteryear has anybody read that is what everyone's talking about right now yeah we don't like this woman at all and yet we are compelled to read this book to the end and that to me is a damn good writer

who can keep you on a story through the end with someone that you don't like and there as I said there are many people in this world that I don't like and yet I find that I'm often seated next to them for dinner and so I just take it as a learning experience. Yeah, I think that's the best way to navigate this life even in the darkest moments. There's a story here. Well on the setting the standard for writing as you put it scrappy female characters. Let's talk about your fourth bookshelfy book, which is the liars club. I by Mary Carr.

I like that every time I mention the name of your next book, which you did provide us beforehand, you're like, yeah, that one. So good. That's right. Mary Carr grew up in a swampy East Texas refinery town, in a volatile but defiantly loving family. In this funny, devastating and haunting memoir,

with a raw and often painful honesty, she describes her pain to mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip over into psychosis. and her hard-drinking, fist-swinging father, who liked nothing better than to spin tales with his cronies at the Liars Club. When it was published in 1995, the Liars Club raised the art of memoir to a new level. It brought about a dramatic revival of the form.

It's a classic that paints a harsh world redeemed by Carr's warmth and intelligent humour and finely spun prose. The Liars Club is both heart-stopping and heartfelts. I'm credited with reviving the memoir. It's a big accolade. It's a big claim. Is this a genre that you would usually gravitate towards as a reader?

No. Right. I'm not a memoir writer, but I think it's so important as a writer to confront the places that shaped you as a child. and kind of, can I say this? Kind of fucked you up. And the things that F us up as children, you know, we just get that narrow window in our lives that we,

and I feel like this is what Steven Spielberg was trying to say. They shape us, and we keep going back and revisiting those nightmares. and I don't care how fancy or perfect or special a childhood you had. You always experience some trauma, you know, whether it be something awful like death or discrimination or just hearing your parents having sex in the next room, whatever it is. It shapes you as a person and you keep having those dreams. as a grown person about or a nightmare about that time that you heard your parents doing that. And it just, it forms you as an adult.

And Mary Carr is a memoirist who has this impeccable memory of herself as a young child. And she had a really tricky childhood. And for me, it was in Mississippi. For her, it was in Texas. And she writes about these nightmares that still face her daily that she experienced as a child. I just, I don't know how she could remember all that. When you sent your books across to us,

you said that she sets the standard on how to write a scrappy female character and that a woman can be vulnerable without being a victim. What draws you to this particular character trope of an underestimated woman? And why do you think vulnerability is so important to explore? I mean, vulnerability is what helps the reader identify with the character, and it's what me as a writer identifies

with these people on the page. we have to be vulnerable to get to know someone. But once you turn yourself into that victim, I guess, that's when I'm kind of no longer interested or feel any empathy for a character. It's a fine line, I guess. But Mary Carr, you know, she was just this scrappy kid, and she always kept her chin up

and her fists clenched. And yet you see this child, this girl child, kind of punching and fighting her way through her life in Texas, surrounded by crazy people. And I just thought she was so brave. And I love to write about underestimated people. They're the underdogs, you know. They're like my mother who, you know, who found herself after getting that divorce. The only person that was brave enough to do that in the 1970s in Mississippi. Mississippi. And those are my heroes. At the beginning, you mentioned the 60 rejections that you got.

So how did you deal with people underestimating you as a writer and as a woman? Oh, well, I am just, I know some people call it tenacious, but really I'm just so stubborn that I just, I don't know how to give up, I guess. And some of the best advice that I've ever gotten was from the writer of Bastard out of Carolina and she wrote in the front of my book, it's okay to F up. And by making mistakes, even though we as women so often are so afraid to make a mistake, but by making these mistakes, this is how we learn. And I think it's because, you know, women haven't had all the rights that we're entitled to for really that long, if you put it in perspective, to, you know, the human experience.

We, women have, you know, been limited for so long and it is okay to make mistakes. And it's what builds us as a person and makes us better writers. From learning from our mistakes to an inherent warmth, we see that with Carr. She's got this scraffiness, but she's got this warmth and that's a quality that makes it possible to escape her miserable surroundings. I want to know what resilience you've seen in women that has really impacted you, that's made you go, okay. Well, I mean, I wrote about these characters in the Calamity Club that, you know, I mean, women just did not have rights. They just didn't have any opportunities in 1933 in Mississippi. You know, if you were not born into money, if you were not, if you didn't have a husband who was earning a living,

you just did not have a lot of choices. And so, you know, I'm not judging what the women do in the book. I'm not exactly condoning it. I'm certainly not condemning it. But what these women have to do just to get by financially is something that, I mean, I won't give the book away, but, you know, they use what God gave them. and just the fact that they were put into that position and they all got together as women

and came up with this idea. I don't know. I think those are the kind of women that I like to write about. I know that after publishing the help, you and your daughter, you moved to Bali. You stayed there for two years. Yeah.

Seeking an adventure or an escape. What made you want to radically transform your life at this time? Well, so I, my daughter was in high school in Atlanta, Georgia, and, you know, I guess just high school was just getting a little bit clicky, and Atlanta is predominantly black and white, about half and half. And I just noticed that like, you know, she was, things were just starting to separate. And so we pulled up our stakes. And, and, you know, we pulled up our stakes. And, moved somewhere else in the world so that we could give her that different perspective I think it's so important and for me I didn't have the opportunity to

do that until after graduated college and I moved with with Tate Taylor the director of the help we moved to a little four hundred dollar cold water flat in the in the West Village and lived together oh and my parents were just horrified they were like oh my God you'll live in with a man and you know I I didn't have the heart to tell him, mother, he's gay. But, you know, it was a great escape. So I wanted to give my daughter that same opportunity, but at an earlier age.

Well, on the subject of a different perspective, an enlightened way of looking at the world, let's talk about your fifth and final bookshelfy book, which has given me just that when I read it. It's the color purple by Alice Walker. In rural Georgia, sisters, Seeley and Nettie share the pain and struggle of growing up as African-American women at this time. At least when she's forced into an abusive marriage,

Cili can offer Nettie refuge from their violent father in her new home, until Nettie catches the attention of Cedie's husband and is forced to leave and forge her own journey. Through a series of letters spanning 20 years, the sisters sustain their hope in each other across time, distance and silence in a triumph of resilience, bravery and ultimately love. First published in 1982, this award-winning novel

is widely considered a 20th century classic and rightly so. I know this is the book that you always recommend. It's such a popular choice on bookshelfy. What makes Alice Walker's novel one that you have to push into the hands of others? I mean, just as a southerner, this was the book that taught me

forget what they what you know all the English writing that I learned in school writing a straight sentence constructing it very academically I mean Alice Walker taught me how to put a voice on a page you can hear See Lee's voice you can you can smell the south you can you can see the color of the dirt and for me it's always about voice anytime I sit down to write a story or a chapter. It's the voices that come up first, and plot is always secondary. And I just, you know, I could hear it.

I could feel it. For an epistory novel, albeit, you know, she's also talking to God, you really do, you move with the dialogue of it, don't you? You're so wrapped up in that. You do, and I studied it. You know, again, it was one of those books

where, you know, I had one hand on the computer and Alice Walker in this hand where I'm just looking at how she translates the world and the vulnerabilities of these two sisters. And I really love the theme of sisterhood and it's not always the one that you were born in the same family to.

It's the one that you find kinship with. Well, sisterhood, of course, is a key theme in the Calamity Club as well. what do you think is particularly powerful about the bond between Celie and Nettie? Because for a long time, they're not even together. They're not. I mean, sisterhood is, it's complicated. I mean, you have this relationship with someone that you're tied to by blood, but may kind of drive you absolutely crazy.

And you're sort of stuck with that person. But what I think I'm more interested in as a writer, and I learned about in the color purple as well, is this idea of found family. So often we don't relate to the people that we are, you know, kin to. And so I live, so Tate, I know I keep bringing up the name Tate, but he really is one of my best friends. I mean, we were the two oddballs in high school.

We grew up together. He moved to L.A. I moved to New York because he wanted to be in movies. I wanted to be a writer. But after I gave him the rights for the help and he wrote the screenplay and directed it, afterwards we were just kind of like, where do we go from here?

So he bought a house in Mississippi in the middle of nowhere. And then he got on the phone and called me and said, Kitty, there's a house next door for sale. I think you should buy it. So I bought the house next door that was falling apart. And then one of the actresses, the big actresses from the help bought the house next door to Tate,

And then the casting director bought the house across the street for me. And then the choreographer bought this house. And the producer bought the house next door to Tate. And here we are, this found family of just weirdo creatives, just complete nut jobs, all in this same little town that we have created. And this is, you know, and we all have second jobs. I've got to be in New York for work. They have to go to L.A., but when we come back to Mississippi,

and we all just get in each other's business and we get to talk about books and art and movies and just what we're working on. I don't know. It's just this beautiful enigma that's so wonderful and I just feel so lucky that I found my family because my own family absolutely drives me nuts. And sorry again to Catherine's parents,

but he's gay. He's gay. The colour purple made me look at the world differently. I now see purple flowers and I have to remember. They're there to make me appreciate life and the fact that we're here. If they are so beautiful, then they're supposed to be looked at.

Has reading the colour purple, reading Alice Walker's exquisite words, made you look at community or made you look at place, Mississippi, differently? Yes, because growing up, you know, I lived in a very white world. I lived the only person of color that I knew well was the woman who kind of raised me, Demetri.

She worked in my grandmother's house. She cooked our food. She raised my father, my uncle, and then me and my four brothers and sisters. And so I wasn't privy to the secrets and the beauty. of what was happening right there in my, in my, you know, home town, just all over Mississippi and for the color purple in Georgia, all over the South. There was there was so much more to my world that that no one had invited me to see.

It was like a secret, a beautiful secret. And when I read that book, I understood the South so much better. And I admit I'm still an outsider looking in to that beauty, but I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to see through that window. You talked at the beginning about those 17 years that it took between the help and you being able to put the Calamity Club out into the world, and that there was a moment where it just felt right. And you went back to Mississippi,

and you had this prison that you knew you wanted to see the world through. I do have to ask, do you think it will be another 17 years until we get book number three? I don't know. I hope not. You know, as I said, when I sat down to write this, I told myself I was going to write a really short book. You can see that it is not. And not write about the same things that dream. you know the kind of criticisms that the help drew and I stumbled upon this law that just completely opened my mind and opened doors somewhere along the way and it was

the law that legalized like if you were a woman in the United States it was legal to stop you on the street and the police to detain you because you looked promiscuous that day and they could test you for sexually transmitted diseases. The police. The police. It was called the American plan. It was after World War I. And then this was then later adopted to become the law that legalized the sterilization

of anyone deemed feeble-minded or, as they call it in the law, an imbecile, or had epilepsy or what we know today as autism. And when I discovered this, it just, it was like, I don't know, my mind exploded, and I was able to finally get on track on this book. And so the importance of research, I just got to say as a writer, as a historical writer, obviously, is just, it's so vital to me. It opened those doors so that after many years of writing, I guess the wrong book, I was finally writing. the right book. I knew. And so no, I don't think it'll take 17 years to write the next one. I hope not.

It'll take as long as it takes, and it's your story, it's your journey. You've taken us on such a beautiful journey through your favorite novels. Before we finish, I do have to ask you probably the hardest question so far. And that is if you had to pick one of your five as a favorite. We do this, I'm sorry, on the podcast. which would it be and why? The colour purple because for me

it is always voice and Alice Walker taught me how to put the vernacular and the colour and the twists and turns of a southern language and the music of southern language on the page.

What a stunning way to end and I just want to say massive thank you it's been such a pleasure to get to talk to you to go on this journey with you, Catherine. Also to our wonderful audience. The tent is full. So this is a, yeah, it's a real treat.

Can we give it up for Catherine Stockett? I'm Vic Hope, and that was Bookshelfy from the Women's Prize, supported by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thanks for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books that we discussed in our show notes. There's also a link to our bookshop.org shelf, where every purchase supports independent bookshops and the work of the Women's Prize Trust.

a charity helping build a better future by championing women's writing. Now remember to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you liked this one, then leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. I'll see you next time.