Fresh Air - Best Of: Record producer Peter Asher / Romance writer Kennedy Ryan

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

Record producer and manager Peter Asher discovered James Taylor and launched Carole King’s career. Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in his family’s basement. He spoke with Terry Gross about having a front-row seat to some of the biggest moments in recording history.Also, romance novelist Kennedy Ryan talks about how she fell for the genre in middle school, even though her mother, a preacher, didn't approve. Ryan’s best-selling books center on people who are usually at the margins – Black women, queer women, and women with chronic illnesses and disabilities. TV critic David Bianculli has a review of the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ remake.Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today we hear from the man who's been described as the force gump of rock and roll, Peter Asher. He discovered James Taylor and launched Carol King's career. Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote, I want to hold your hand in his family's basement. The new documentary about Asher is Everywhere Man. Also, romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. talks about how she fell in love with the genre in middle school, even though her mother, a preacher, didn't approve. Ryan read them anyway and hid the evidence.

Hundreds of romance novels, like, hidden at the back of my closet behind clothes. And it was, like, literally in my 30s when I was like, you know when you told me to stop reading romance novels? I didn't. And TV critic David B. and Cooley has a review of The Little House on the Prairie remake. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Year weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. One of the successful British invasion bands of the 60s was the duo Peter and Gordon.

Peter is my guest, Peter Asher, who later became a famous record producer. The first record Peter and Gordon released became a number one hit in England and the U.S. That song, A World Without Love, was written by Paul McCartney for the Beatles. But John Lennon didn't like it, so Paul put it away, until Peter asked. to record it. Paul had been living in the Asher family home where Peter, his sisters, and his parents lived. We'll hear why a little later. It's a great story. So here's A World Without Love from 1964. Peter and Gordon went on to have other hits, including Nobody I know, I don't want to see you again, and I go to pieces.

After the duo split up, in 1968, Peter became the first ANR man at the Beatles' new Apple record label. The first person he signed was James Taylor, who had never recorded before. Peter didn't stay long at Apple. He moved to L.A., produced and managed Taylor, and helped turn him into a star. He introduced Taylor to Carol King and launched King's performing career. He produced and managed Linda Ronstadt. Other artists he produced over the years include Randy Newman, Cher, Neil Diamond, Morrissey, Diana Ross, Elton John, Bonnie Raite, Barbara Streisand, Robin Williams and Steve Martin. Wow, that's really a phenomenal list. Pete Asher is part of other important moments in music history. Peter co-owned the gallery where John first met Yoko while her work was on exhibit there. Peter was unintentionally responsible for Mick Jagger meeting Mary Ann Faithful,

which began their romance. In addition to the many Grammys, his artist won, he won three producing Grammys, and in 1977 was on the cover of Rolling Stone. A new documentary chronicles Peter Asher's life. It's called Peter Asher Everywhere Man. It's playing in select theaters around the country. Peter Asher, welcome to Fresh Air. I really like this documentary. You've had such an interesting life.

So let's start with World Without Love. Did Paul ever explain why John rejected it? I think it was the lyrics. First of all, I think, I don't think it's quite true. to say that Paul wrote it for the Beatles. I think he wrote it pre-Beatles, actually. Oh, that's right. You said he wrote it when 16.

He was like 16 or something like that, which is extraordinary. And I think what John didn't like about it was the lyrics that he thought, please lock me away, was an absurd line to put in a song. And so he would actually say to Paul, okay, I will lock you away. The song's over.

So it's copyrighted to Lennon McCartney. Everything was. Yes, I know. And Paul told me one of the times I interviewed him that he regrets having the Beatles songs that Paul or John wrote independently credited to both of them, especially because even if Paul wrote a song himself, the credit started with Lennon, Lennon McCartney. I'm not as sure I agree with Paul about that. I think it was something particularly charming and emphasized the closeness of their relationship

that they agreed to credit everything to the two of them. And I think that was actually a very fair division of credit and saved them any arguments. because at the beginning, of course, they did actually write together. The songs they wrote in our house in London, as you point out, but songs that John came over, they sat down together at the piano or together with two guitars facing each other and wrote together. So I think that even if they just later did it in commemoration of those moments of togetherness and creativity, I think it was kind of a cool thing to do.

So since you were talking about them writing songs together, let's hear a clip from the documentary. And this is a part where Paul was talking about living with your family and what that was like. And it leads into writing with John Lennon at your home. And in the second part of this clip, we'll hear you. It was such a family. Claire was a very nice younger sister, a lot of fun.

And then there was Peter. He was an interesting, bright guy. I could talk to him about anything. and also very interested in music, very musical. So there's a lot of connection there. They got a piano in my room and there was a piano in the basement as well. So when John came to visit, we could write there on the piano at the same time. There was a little music room in the basement.

And I do remember one particular occasion, shortly after Paul had moved in. John came over and he and Paul went down to this music room. They were down there for a couple of hours, and then Paul called him. and then Paul called up the stairs to me in my bedroom. And I wanted to come down and hear this song they had just finished writing. They sat side by side at the piano and hammered out the first version

anyone had ever heard of this brand new song they had just finished called I Want to Hold Your Hand. Peter Asher, your reaction was what when you heard the song? Amazement. I mean, I thought, am I losing my mind or is this one of the best songs I've ever heard in my life? Well, possibly both. but I was thrilled and amazed.

And they looked at me for some kind of reaction. And I said, I think that's amazing. And perhaps the biggest giveaway is the fact that I immediately asked them if they could play it again. And perhaps the second giveaways, the fact that they were delighted to play it again. I think they knew that they'd written something special, whether they had in mind the fact that it was going to change the whole attitude of the whole world, starting with America, that everyone was going to become a Beatle fan when they heard, I want to hold your hand,

that that was the magic track that set off the American beetle mania epidemic. I don't know, but that's what it turned out to be. So Paul was living with your family because your sister, Jane Asher, was a famous actress by then. And Paul was her boyfriend. Yes. The Beatles had a home in London for when they were there, but Paul found it too chaotic. He must have moved in very early in the Beatles' career because if he and John hadn't yet written, I want to hold your hand. That had to be pretty early.

That's a good point. Yes, that's correct. I'm very bad at dates, as I told you. But yes, that certainly would be true. So watching Paul's fame, what did it teach you about what it means to be famous? Because you are on the verge of becoming famous yourself? It's a good question. I don't really know I learned anything about becoming famous,

and certainly nobody was famous in a way that compared to the Beatles in any sense. But certainly, when we go to America, there's no question. the template for the famous British invasion member had been sort of set by the Beatles and that all the girls who chased you around the streets and stuff, which they did, were following what they'd seen in the Beatles movie and how they knew everyone reacted to the Beatles, the screaming reached fever pitch, and we were lucky to be sort of part of that whole madness. And it was a thrilling time. Did you always feel lucky that girls were chasing after the band and that

They were screaming probably so loud. They couldn't actually hear the music that you were playing, and you might not have been able to hear Gordon when you were singing with him on stage. Yes, that was very annoying. That was true. I mean, certainly one of the downsides of the technology of that era. Monitors hadn't been invented yet at all. Oh, you had no monitors.

No monitors at all, let alone the fancy in-hears that we all have today. So we couldn't hear ourselves at all. I mean, Ringo, I remember, did an interview, explaining that he knew where he was on the song by watching the backs of Paul and John. He could tell from their movements which bit of the song they were in. But you couldn't hear anything between the screaming and the technological setbacks. It was guesswork. It must have been strange for you from going to a guy who was playing, you know, like small clubs.

Yes. To suddenly having a number one record, touring America, getting on the Ed Sullivan show. it's like an extreme jump. It was indeed. I mean, I often say that there was a comparison between at one point, I remember when I was before I'd even made the record, I was at university reading philosophy at London University and bicycling home from school before in the afternoon,

in the dark and the rain very often if it was a British winter. And only less than a year later, I think, I was instead driving down Sunset Boulevard in the broad sunshine in a rented Mustang being recognized by beautiful women. And at that point, I kind of went, this isn't a substantial improvement, you know. I think this is better. So I made the decision to quit university, of course,

and take up this pop stuff full time. Did it change yourself image to have women chasing after you? No, but it's fun, that's for sure. I don't think, I don't know, change myself image, but I suddenly feel suave and grown-up and manly. I don't think so. I think my insecurities remained intact, but it was certainly amusing. So you loved American jazz, folk music, rock and roll, and suddenly you go, I mean, you go to America,

and everybody's really absorbed in the British invasion. Americans were in love with British bands. Was that incomprehensible to you? It was a surprise, I mean, because that's the whole miracle of the British invasion. We loved all this music, you know, as you said, folk music and jazz. and I was a big jazz fan. And it just was extraordinary. And then we learned all this music, R&B and the Everly brothers in our case and so on and decided who wished to emulate among the stars of American music.

And then the miracle is that we somehow learned it all and tweaked it slightly and sold it all back to you. It was remarkable achievement from a business point of view, I suppose. I want to mention another connection between your family and the Beatles, which is your mother was a professional oboe player. She performed with symphonies and taught obo at the Royal Academy of Music, also taught private lessons, and one of her private students was George Martin, who later became the Beatles producer. I don't think he was producing them yet.

Am I right about that? That's right, yeah. I don't think so. No, I think that's correct. Yeah, it was an extraordinary coincidence. So by the time my mother was introduced to George Martin as her, her daughter's boyfriend's

record producer she was like oh it's George you know she had given him private lessons to because he was concerned about passing his exams at the Guildhall School of Music

and he had to oboe was his second instrument and he required some further training evidently but presumably it was successful in the 60s while you were performing and recording with Gordon

your singing partner you also became the co-owner of a bookstore and an art gallery that were part of London's underground culture of the time. So the gallery that you co-owned is where John and Yoko met during a period when the gallery was exhibiting her work. Were you there when they met?

I was there when John showed up and I can't remember. I wasn't actually the person who introduced them or anything. But John came in his Mini Cooper with a chauffeur. And, yeah, it was John Dunbar who ran the art half of the Indica operation

and he'd seen Yoko or talked to Yoko or something and that's, he suggested that Yoko would be a good person to be, you know, exhibited in our gallery, which he was indeed. I certainly saw John there at one point but I don't think I was the person who actually physically introduced them. So the gallery...

Even though sometimes they get blamed for it in the context. But that gallery was the place that the whole controversy started about whether Yoko broke up the Beatles. Well, exactly. I mean, it's funny because I tell the story as part of my stage show, which is a bit of how stories, half music.

When I tell that story, it gets such wildly different reactions at different days. Because sometimes it's a, oh, you know, what a sweet love story. Other times it's kind of, I don't know. And then finally, one time that only this happened,

And as soon as I told a story, somebody jumped up to their feet and said, it was you. You broke up the Beatles. And I had to say, no, I didn't. You know, because I didn't. Not your fault. You were involved. Not my fault. Exactly. Exactly so. We're listening to Terry's interview with record producer Peter Asher.

The new documentary about him is called Everywhere Man. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to Terry's interview with record producer Peter Asher. Americans first knew him as half of the 60s British Invasion band Peter and Gordon. Their hits included A World Without Love, Nobody I Know, and I Go to Pieces. Asher went on to become a Grammy-winning record producer.

His first two enduring music relationships were with James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. So in terms of your music life, you went through a transitional time in the late 60s. Gordon Waller, your singing partner, decided he wanted to go solo. And you knew that you wanted to produce recordings. I did. The minute I went into the recording studio and figured out what producers did, I thought this would be so cool. I love the idea of being able to influence the arrangement and mix and sound and identity,

musical identity of a song. Before you had produced any record, you became the first ANR man for the Beatles' new Apple record label. A&R stands for artists and repertoire. Describe what your job was. Well, Apple took this very bold step of actually soliciting tapes. Because normally there's got no unsolicited material was supposed to be sent in to most major record companies.

but we actually took ads going, you know, send your tapes to Apple Records, and God, did they ever. We got giant mailbags full of tapes. And the sad thing was they mostly were not any good. And not just that, it'd be weird stuff, like somebody sends in 100 pages of lyrics that they know John Lennon is anxiously awaiting

to write music for and things like that. And you'd suddenly realize there's an awful lot of odd people out there who think they should need to be signed, Apple Records. But eventually, of course, we did find a few good people, but usually not, sadly, through the unsolicited tapes. They usually came through connections or friends or coincidences like me meeting James and things like that. Well, the first person you signed was James Taylor and you did not find him in the slush pile. How did you find him? Well, when Gordon

and I played America, we were supplied backup bands kind of locally. There'd be some promoter in, say, the Midwest or something, would find. a band to back you up and usually would just find an out-of-work local group who would do it for cheap. And so the quality of those bands vary enormously. But one band that I actually liked that came to us in that manner was a band called the King Bees. And one of the King Bees was a guitar player called Danny Kortchmar. And Danny and I became great friends. We remain great friends to this day.

He's a brilliant guitar player and a remarkable man. And then subsequently, Danny was in a band with his childhood. friend James Taylor. That band was called the Flying Machine and it suffered all the vicissitudes that living in New York could convey and, you know, there were drug problems and money problems and food problems and all this other stuff going on. So finally that band broke up. James decided to go to London and when Danny found this out, he said to James, you should look at my friend Peter Asher, he's okay. So that's how I got a, my phone rang and this guy. aunt said, you know, very sort of cultured, slightly southern accents,

explained that he was a friend of Cooches. And I said, great, you know, if you're in London, come over. I mean, come and visit. So he came to dinner the following evening, and he'd already made a demo tape the previous week. And he played me a couple of songs on the tape, and I was completely blown away. And then he picked up my guitar,

and just leaning in the corner of the room, and played me something live. And I couldn't believe it. I thought his guitar playing was exceptional. His singing was exceptional, and the songs were brilliant. One of my favorite James Taylor recordings is Fire and Rain from his second album, Sweet Baby James, which of course you produced. And it's a song about a friend who died by suicide. Did he tell you the story behind the song?

A little bit. I mean, he's told it publicly. I mean, Suzanne was a friend who had killed herself, and I think people didn't want to tell him or something. So there was some delay in him actually getting the information. And of course, there's the thing about flying machines in pieces on the ground, and there's been much misinterpreted, and people think it relates to a plane crash, and it doesn't at all. The flying machine was the band, as I explained before, that he was in with Cooch that broke up.

So that was the flying machine in pieces on the ground. So I want to play Fire and Rain, which was recorded in 1970, And I want our listeners to know that it's Carol King on piano. And after we hear this, you can explain why and how you got her to play. Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. Susan, the plans they made put an end to you. I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song. I just can't remember who to send it to.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend. But I always thought that I'd see you. Okay, so how did you get Carol King to play piano on that? And why? Well, actually, Danny Karchmar is a key figure yet again in this story because when I came out to L.A., I wanted to put together a little band to play on the whole track

because I wanted to keep it much simpler than the preceding album had been and to make sure that every song was based entirely around the arrangement that was self-contained in his guitar playing and his singing. And I found a drummer called Russ Kunkle, and Danny Kortemar himself was going to play guitar. obviously and then I was trying to choose the piano player and by this time I'd heard some of Carol King's demos I already was a huge fan of hers Gothen and King wrote so many of my favorite songs of course you know whether you said love me tomorrow being the

first one when she was 18 that was number one all over the place and that went on to do you know natural woman and I'm into something good and up on the roof and I loved Carol King's piano playing specifically because it was very much an accompanist's kind of piano playing, not flashy, not complicated, but just write, sort of sing a songwriter piano. So I got to meet Carol through Danny Kortemar. I then asked Carol if she would consider playing

on this James Taylor album that we were about to make. I said, I would need you for about five days. I love your playing. I think you and James would sound great together. And she said, maybe, and she didn't know who James was. So I invited over to my house where James was staying at this point. And she sat down next to James at the piano bench. James played his guitar and she started playing piano.

I suggested they'd just sit and start playing. And it worked perfectly. I thought her piano playing was exactly, exactly what I had in mind. And James loved her too, and of course he was a Carol fan already. And so we sort of booked Carol as a studio musician for the next five days. And that was when we recorded every track on Sweet Baby James. And if you look, you'll see that Carol King is credited on piano on every one of them. And that's how Carol King and James Taylor became friends and collaborators.

Yes, exactly so. I want to thank you so much for talking with us. The film is fascinating. The documentary about you called Everywhere Man. And I wish you good health and continued performances in producing. Thank you very much indeed. Peter Asher speaking with Terry Gross. presenting a new version of Little House on the Prairie based on the popular series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

All eight episodes of season one are available to stream, and Netflix has already ordered a season two. Our TV critic David B. and Cooley has some thoughts about this new remake, and about the original NBC series from 1974 as well. Here is his review. When Laura Ingalls-Wilder started writing her Little House on the Prairie book series in the early 1930s, It was as a fond salute to her own childhood memories. Laura was born shortly after the Civil War in 1867, in the very log cabin she describes in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.

That book and her later ones detailed the joys, the difficulties, and the hard work involved in pioneer life, as seen and told from the perspective of a precocious young girl. Laura loved her ma and pa and her siblings, but she observed them all carefully and perceptively. She was the Little House on the Prairie what John Boy was to the Waltons,

another nostalgic family TV series set during an earlier time. In that case, the Depression. The characters of both John Boy and Laura displayed a gift for writing early on and narrated their family's stories. When Michael Landon, after spending years as Little Joe on Banan,

brought Little House on the Prairie to NBC in the 1970s, he cast himself as the patriarch, Paw Ingalls. But the storytelling, as in the books, belonged to Little Laura, played in that series by a young Melissa Gilbert. If I had a remembrance book, I would mark down how it was when we left our little house in the big woods to go west to Indian Territory. That Little House series was very popular and ran from 1974 to 1919. especially in the early episodes, it was faithful to the original books and characters. When an Osage Indian chief came by the Ingalls cabin, Paw invited him in for a sit and a smoke.

Ma was frightened, as was Laura's elder sister, and was relieved when he left. But Laura was charmed and sympathetic to his tribe's plight. What Laura says in that 1974 premiere may sound like liberal Hollywood rewriting, But the empathic dialogue, like much of the TV series, came straight from the original books. My goodness, he's gone. Why, I thought it was kind of nice. For an Indian. Yeah, I wouldn't be upset about it.

Even much from now, there won't be an Indian left in the territory. But why not, Paul? Government's going to make a move half-biting it. Move where? West, I guess. I'm glad. I'm not. Does so not do Shane have to go to, even though he's a chief?

I'm afraid so. It's not fair. They were here first. The new incarnation of Little House on the Prairie is created for TV by Rebecca Sonnonshine. Her writing credits include Housemaid and episodes of the TV series The Boys and the Vampire Diaries. She and the show's other writers, as well as the directors, take some liberties with their new version. They introduce an entire family. of Osage characters, for example,

to present another set of family dynamics. One thing they don't mess with, though, is Laura as the central voice. She's played here by Alice Halsey, whom you may remember as the brilliant daughter on Lessons in Chemistry. And her performance is the show's very best, a show that starts, as before,

with Laura's opening narration. Once upon a time, Paul and Ma' and Mary and Laura, left their house in the big woods of Wisconsin. Ma was sad to leave her life behind, but Paul said it was getting too crowded, and we needed a fresh start in the West. Every day, the horses traveled as far as they could,

and Paul and Ma made camp in a new place. Warren Christie is another standout. He plays John Edwards, a Civil War veteran and sometimes drunken loner, who agrees to help the Ingalls build their log cabin before winter sets in. Charles, that's Paw, to Laura, likes him. But Caroline, that's Ma, fears him as much as she does the Osage and sends him away. Luke Bracey plays Paugh, and Crosby Fitzgerald plays Caroline.

He's not coming back. He was drinking here at our home. He said he didn't do it while you work, but I didn't believe him. What did you say? I told him not to come back until he didn't need something to chase the sheep. It doesn't work like that. You don't just snap your fingers and make it go away. His wife is gone.

His girls are gone. He got chewed up and spit out by the God-forsaken war. You knew. You knew and you didn't say anything? Caroline, we are alone at sea. We don't have room for this obsession with virtue. It's not virtue! I don't want to lose my family again.

We can't finish this house without it. Their argument is intense. But as filmed, there's something. there's something off about it. Like many other scenes in this new Little House on the Prairie, it's shot by handheld cameras in extreme close-up and calls too much attention to itself. Also, some of the dramatic plot points

that work so well in the books and in the NBC series are less effective here, because they're not established or presented as well. The familiar title of Little House on the Prairie may bring lots of viewers to this new version, but I can't say it really resonates. except for the performances of Alice Halsey as Laura and Warren Christie as Mr. Edwards.

But I will say that the entire original series of Little House on the Prairie is available to stream on Peacock. And when I dove back in there to refresh my memory, that series really did resonate. David Beancouli is Fresh Airs TV critic. Coming up, we hear from romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. Her characters are the people romance has often left at the margins. Black and Indigenous, queer women, people living with disabilities. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Say the words romance novel and watch what happens. Some people light up, others roll their eyes. Almost nobody is neutral. It's the best-selling fiction in the world, outselling mysteries and thrillers, and yet it's still the genre people feel they have to defend or apologize for. I've always wanted to know what makes a writer choose a genre that has historically been shunned by critics in mainstream publishing. My guest today, Kennedy Ryan, is one of those writers. And in some ways, her path is typical of the field.

For one, Kennedy Ryan isn't her real name. Many romance writers use pen names. She didn't get her first publishing deal until 40, which is also common. 45 is the average age of the genre's most successful writers. Kennedy Ryan's love for romance began in middle school when she'd sneak the books past her mom who was a preacher. She came back to it after building a career in journalism and autism advocacy. Her characters are the people romance often leaves at the margins,

black and indigenous, queer women, people living with disabilities, navigating ambition, caregiving, and grief. Ryan builds them the way she once built news stories by going out and interviewing real people first. Ryan is the first black writer to win romance's highest honor, the Romance Writers of America Award, known as the Rita. Her bestselling novel, Before I Let Go, is being adapted for Peacock,

and her latest book, Score, follows two former college sweethearts, reunite it while making a film about the Harlem Renaissance. Kennedy, Ryan, welcome to fresh air. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. The paradox is really interesting to me because millions of people read fiction, but people are so drawn to romance. Romance outsells every other kind of fiction, but critics have been kind of condescending about it for hundreds of years. You looked at romance and decided, this is where you want to go. You want to go all in. What was it about romance for you? Yeah, I think I, like you said, I was young when I first discovered romance. I think it was one of my first introductions to seeing what relationships looked like. Besides, obviously, the one that was in my house, which was very healthy, fortunately, with my mom and my dad. But I liked, I think, the escape of it, too. I mean, I was only in the eighth grade. But I liked being transported kind of to another world. And there was a glamour to it, especially then. So this is like the heyday of the bodice rippers and Harlequin presents. And so it was usually very glamorous kind of setting. And I was living in rural North Carolina with like deer,

dear on my front porch, you know. So the glamour of it, I think, really drew me. And just this idea that you could be in another world. And also that just kind of seeing women, especially loved and esteemed and at the center of something. I was just a little bit of something. I was a lot. I was, a voracious reader, so I was reading a lot of things. But romance quickly became my favorite. And so, and, you know, I left it a little bit after high school. But in my 30s, I came back because it was, it was an escape. And I think it was a reflection of a lot of hopes and dreams and desires and needs. And I think that's what draws a lot of people to it. Your latest novel score, it follows two former college sweethearts who broke up badly a

before and they're kind of thrown back together making a film about the Harlem Renaissance. And Verity is the main woman character and she's a screenwriter. She also has bipolar disorder. And I don't think I've ever read a book about love and desire from the point of view of a person with a mental illness. How did you come to decide to give your character this type of backstory? story. I am interested in writing the stories of people who don't typically see themselves at the center of cultural narrative. And, you know, what I mean by that is usually it's not the, you know, usually the, it has been the black girl, the fat girl, the sick girl, the disabled girl. She was the sidekick. She was a secondary or a tertiary character, but she certainly wasn't at the

very center. And she wasn't the one who was getting the happily ever after. And I want to take those identities and those experiences and those communities that have been on the periphery of cultural narrative and set them firmly at the center. This is the second book in the series. The first book was a heroine who has lupus. You're not reading a lot of that. I mean, not that it doesn't happen at all, but there aren't a lot of romance novels that are focused on women who are navigating lupus, you know, and now women. Yet, there are a lot of women who, particularly black women, who suffer from lupus. It's one of the... which is, yes.

So you've done a lot of research here and really trying to figure out not only your audience, but the realities of your audience. Yeah, for sure. And I think a big part of this series and kind of a lot of what I write is there's someone for whom you're not too much. And what I mean by that is we all hope that there is someone who's going to love us through hard times, through bad times, through difficult situations, you know, in real the book before this, book one of this series where the heroin has lupus,

she's going through a flare, you know, and she's self-conscious because she has lesions and she has ball spots and her body, she is in a battle. And yet, this romantic partner, he's impervious of all of that. Like he's like, I love you. I'm here for you. I'm going to stand by you. You'd just be surprised at all of the emails and messages and DMs that I get from women who are living with chronic illnesses.

who are incredibly moved by that because that is their hope. You know, their hope is that there is someone in real life who will love them that way, you know, even given difficult circumstances that they're navigating in real life. And I want that. You asked, you know, about romance. Romance to me is the genre of hope and it's the genre of joy. And people sometimes talk about the happily ever after being, quote, unquote, predictable. But every genre has its, you know, these are the boundaries.

of the genre, these are the things that you can expect from the genre. And it's just that with romance, it's a happily ever after. Me, especially writing black and brown and queer and chronically ill and fat people, like when I am writing those identities that in the real world, a lot of times our outcomes are compromised. A lot of times our outcomes are not as good as other groups. I can create a world where we are guaranteed joy. I want to go back to your childhood. for a moment, you growing up in a small town in North Carolina. When you say small, how small are we talking? It is so, it was so small that like it would have a phone number for one town. We had a Pio box, no, a route. We had a route. We had a route for a mailing address. And I went to school for another town. Like it was in between small towns. Basically, this is a strip of land that my grandfather owned. And like as far as the I could see, it was just farmland that he owned.

And he sold off all of these plots of land to put his kids. I think it's 12 of them. My dad will kill me because I get it wrong. But put all of his kids through college. And he only kept a plot of land for each of them. And that was our community. So you're talking about basically community of my family. It's my uncle living to the left and it's my uncle living to the right.

And it's my uncle, you know, living in front of me who's raising heart. And on a Christmas morning brings us a little white cheesecloth bag with slaughtered, you know, sausage. It's pear and peach trees in my backyard. It's, you know, a grapevine. It's cherry trees. It's a garden. My dad coming straight home from work going straight to like pull collard greens and string beans. I am a country girl, you know.

Through and through. It sounds like it. Through and through. Yes. Your dad was also a college administrator. for several HBCUs, historically black colleges. It's interesting because they feature prominently in many of your books. They often HBCUs are there.

He was an academic and your mother, a preacher. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, and my mom had a full-time job. She was a dental hygienist, but she also was a preacher. And then later on, that's what she did full-time. And now they're both preachers. Now they have a church together. But yeah, so, I mean, I grew up.

My dad is such a huge part of why I love language. You know, he has two master's degrees and a doctorate. But my mom is the one who really foster my love of reading because she's a big reader. And I'm the classic, you know, before we had screens, I'm, you know, with the flashlight under the covers reading well into the night. So I had, they're amazing. They, you know, they're a huge shaping force. That famous story that you tell all the time about your mother saying, oh, no, you cannot read these types of novels. But do you remember what you were reading and what she caught you reading?

You know, and it wasn't even a caught because I didn't know that she would object. I was reading. I don't remember the specific title, but it was a historical romance, you know? and it's got like a woman on the cover with her breast spilling over the bodice and, you know, a half-naked man. And I'm like, look, Mom. You know, I just, I didn't. I was just like, I love this. And my mother was.

And back in the day, they used to have them along the grocery store checkout. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I would, I was at the, the library was like one of my favorite places in the world. And it's not like was this expansive library. And it was this huge selection. But I loved it. You know, it's where I first read Jane Eyre.

It's where I first read, you know, all of the classics and Tony Morrison. And, you know, like, that's where I found. That's where I kind of discovered my love for language and for reading. And then one day I was like, I think I was in the eighth grade and one of my classmates handed me one of the, like, historical romances. That's how I came into it. Was she handed it to me because she loved it. And I took it home and started reading it. them. And I didn't even think to like hide it from my mom. It's just I told her about it or she

saw me with it and she was horrified, you know. And then I was, she was like, you are not allowed to read them. You know, with distance from it, I understand why she was monitoring what I, you know, what I ingested. I completely understand that because we now have parental controls and all of those things. But as an eighth grade, you're just like, I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to sneak around and do it if you tell me that I can't do it. So yeah, but it's a funny story for us now because I did not tell her until I was in my 30s that I had hidden all those romance novels from her. She thought I had stopped reading them. So. Because after she told you to stop, you continued and then you just collected them so many that you kind of had a little

stockpile in the closet or something like that. Oh yeah. In my closet. Oh yeah. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of romance novels, like, hidden at the back of my closet behind clothes. And it was, and it was like literally in my 30s when I was like, you know when you told me to stop reading romance novels? I didn't. You know. I want to go to a very, very important pivotal moment in your life that really changed things for you. It was before you started writing fiction, your son, you have one son. he was diagnosed with autism, two years old, and the very next day, your husband loses his job. Yeah. Take me to that week.

Oh, one of the toughest weeks of my life, I think, because my son is now 25. And 23 years ago, like, the landscape for autism was very different than it is now. Like, we didn't have a lot of the solutions. We didn't have a lot of the supports, the waivers. the, you know, the financial support, insurance. Everything was considered experimental. So you're paying out of pocket for everything. And then I think there was just a lot we didn't know. Like, literally when the doctor diagnosed my son, he told me that I should, told my husband to give me time to grieve. That's the word he used. And he said, you know, motherhood is going to be just

so different than what she thought it would be. And it has been very, very. different than I thought it would be. I think, you know, autism is a spectrum and it looks different for different people and my son is very impacted. Even at 25, he's still only partially verbal. And, you know, he kind of works at his own time. You know, there are certain benchmarks that I thought he would reach when he was 10 that he still hasn't reached or that he reached much later. One of the things I think that this journey has taught me is not to compare myself, my son, our life to anyone else's. Things got really dark. You're in this moment.

The health care system has not really caught up to what it needs to for you as a mother. And the financial impact was just, it was a lot for you in that time. Yeah. Instead of only surviving it, though, you built this advocacy group, then a therapy group for couples going through it. And I, Kennedy, I just always marvel at people who build the thing they need when they have the least amount of resources or power. And when did you realize you'd have to build the thing that didn't exist in order for you to actually survive? Yeah, I think it kind of, a lot of times came down to, am I going to pay for therapy or am I going to pay my light bill?

And I was like, we shouldn't have to make these decisions. My husband and my both of our cars were repossessed. We woke up one morning and the cars were gone. We had to do a short sell in our house. We didn't have food sometimes. It taught me a lot about community too, you know, people just kind of rallying around us and making sure that our family had what we needed. And I just kind of said to the Lord one day, like when I'm praying, I'm meditating,

and I'm like, I just don't want anybody else to go. through this. Like, I don't want anybody else to have to make these decisions. These are impossible decisions. And I decided to start a foundation. I did not have a lot of money. Like, I was not in a place where people would think, oh, you should start a foundation. I was like, I need help, too. But I examined the gaps. People are only getting speech and OT in school. And when it's summer, a lot of those kids weren't getting those services anymore. So I raised money so that we could supplement and that we could pay for that. And then we had a lot of couples were experiencing marital strain, whether it's at the very beginning or people who have been in this a really, really long time and are

worn down. We started doing marriage retreats. We also started paying for couples therapy. And then I thought about, gosh, if it's this hard for me and I have a partner, how hard is it for people who our single parents. And then we started programming that was specifically targeting single parents and their entire family, like all of their children. So for me, it was just kind of like a reflection of the gaps that I was seeing. So you're going through all of that and like, what was it like at night? Then you're sitting at a computer and then writing romance. Is that how it worked? You're like, how do we get here? You know, my husband found a job and it took him away, a lot of night. And so it was just me and my son, and this is when he was younger. And a lot of kids who are on the spectrum are fascinated with water. And my son was so fixated on water. He and I would go to this river. Because we lived in Atlanta at the time. We lived in Atlanta for 20 years. You know, that's kind of home to us for the most part. I would take him to this river in Atlanta every evening. And he would frolic, you know. And I, as I was sitting there, this community built around

a river called Rivermont just started kind of in my imagination and it became the centerpiece for the first series that I ever wrote called the Bennett series. That just sitting on the riverbank every night watching my son play in the water, I just started dreaming about this imaginary place called Rivermont and this family and, you know, all of, and it became four books, you know? Kennedy Ryan, thank you so much for this conversation. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. Romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. She's the first black author to win the Rita, romance's highest honor, and she's published more than 20 novels in just over a decade. Her latest novel is called Score. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Freshier's executive

producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Stanishefsky. Our digital media producer is Molly CBNesper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.