For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Description:
Barbara Kingsolver got the offer on her first novel the same day her first daughter was born. She came home from the hospital to a blinking answering machine, and the book came out the week that same baby learned to walk. Almost forty years later, she has a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Foundation’s medal for a lifetime of work, and a recovery house for women in Lee County, Virginia, built with her Demon Copperhead royalties. She has been one of my literary heroes and true life mentors for decades, and I still cannot believe I got to talk with her.
We talk about what publishing looked like in 1988 versus now, why a slow-building career was a gift to a young mom, and the stubborn hand condition we both live with that ended her public book signings. She walks us through October on her farm in southern Appalachia, where the tomatoes are canned, the peppers are roasted, and she is the one who gets the call when a lamb gets stuck. And she makes the case that rural people are close to half of this country but almost none of what we see on screen, which is why she writes books that work as mirrors for her neighbors and windows for everybody else.
Then we get into Partita, her new novel. Livia was a piano prodigy from east Tennessee who became a small-town piano teacher instead. In her fifties, the first love who derailed her calls and asks to see her, and she has seven days to decide. Barbara built the whole book like a Bach partita, with movements named for old dances and a listening list in the front. She tells us how a small-town girl fell for classical music on her living room floor, why nobody in America wants to talk about class, why revision is where art lives, and about the practice room scene her pianist friend had been waiting her whole life to read.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
I became a novelist and a mom the same day. (Barbara Kingsolver)
I need my hands to write books. If you let me keep them, I will write you more books. (Barbara Kingsolver)
Rural people are close to half of the population of this country, but we are just about zero percent of what you see on television, in the movies, or in the news. (Barbara Kingsolver)
I want to write these books that are both mirrors for the people who need to see themselves and windows for the people who don’t know. (Barbara Kingsolver)
When you’re in the flow state making something beautiful, that is love too. It’s another kind of love. (Barbara Kingsolver)
I love revision. I feel like revision is where art really lives. (Barbara Kingsolver)
When I’ve finished a book to my absolute satisfaction and send it out into the world, the work of it is only half done. (Barbara Kingsolver)
When I closed Demon Copperhead, I remember thinking, I have just read a masterpiece. (Jen Hatmaker)
Some people ask me, how can you be optimistic in these times? And I say, look who I’m dealing with. (Barbara Kingsolver)
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Partita by Barbara Kingsolver - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063577541: Barbara asks you to buy it from your local independent bookstore. The listening list is in the front of the book.
Labor: One Woman’s Work by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari - https://bookshop.org/book/9781668015407
Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Pennington Gap, Virginia, founded with Demon Copperhead royalties
Barbara’s earlier books we talk about: Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Veg ...

This month’s Jen Hatmaker Book Club pick is The God of the Woods, and Liz Moore joins Jen straight off the set of the Netflix series she is co-showrunning in the Adirondacks. Liz talks about the family cabin with no TV and no internet where she read every old book in the house, her early years singing in New York clubs while working weekends at a guitar store, and the practical family that taught her to keep a day job. She explains the difference between a TV writer and a showrunner, why she loves casting local square dancers and first-time actors, and how the cast is deepening the characters she wrote. Plus how she starts a four-year novel knowing only the people, the place, and the first problem, her worries about what AI will do to developing brains, the title her publisher vetoed, the hand-drawn map at the front of the book, and what she is reading right now.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
You have to know people, you have to know place, and you have to know problem.
You just sort of whittle down what feels right emotionally until you get to a place that feels right emotionally, and then that’s the end of the book.
You have to experience frustration in learning and then get past it in order for the brain to grow.
I want the title to have multiple meanings, and for those multiple meanings to become apparent as the reader moves on.
I have too many jobs that I love, which is a huge blessing in life.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (and the Peacock series)
The Words of Every Song by Liz Moore
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Get Down by Asali Solomon
Sing Sing (film)
Louis L’Amour westerns
Temple University MFA in Creative Writing
Guest’s Links:
Website - https://www.lizmoore.net/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lizmoorebooks/
Twitter - https://x.com/LizMooreBooks
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/lizmoorewriter/
Connect with Jen!
Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/
Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker
Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/
Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker
Jen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker
The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.&nbs ...