Get Lit: Angela Flournoy's 'The Wilderness' - All Of It with Alison Stewart

Podcast Summary: All Of It with Alison Stewart

Episode: Get Lit: Angela Flournoy's 'The Wilderness'
Date: March 13, 2026
Guest: Angela Flournoy

Episode Overview

In this episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart welcomes acclaimed author Angela Flournoy to discuss her new novel, The Wilderness, the February selection for the Get Lit book club. Their discussion explores the book's deep focus on the complexities of friendship, the intricacies of adult relationships, cultural context, the impact of memory and class, and the broader implications of community. Audience interaction at a live Green Space event adds further layers, as Flournoy answers thoughtful questions about her craft and the world she depicts.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Origins and Conception of The Wilderness

On the novel’s genesis
- Flournoy conceived the book in 2016, a year after her debut The Turner House, aiming to portray the evolution of a friend group into middle age and look slightly into the future.
- She notes that historical events, particularly the political changes in late 2016, disrupted her certainty about the future, making her initial projections feel "ambitious."
- Quote:
  
  "I wanted to write about what it felt like to have like a friend group and what it might look like to sort of age into middle age with those people."
  — Angela Flournoy (02:13)

The Importance of Friendship

Central relationships
- The narrative foregrounds women’s friendships, especially among Black women, as the main love stories of life, countering the literary tradition of focusing on romantic or familial ties.
- Flournoy observes these friendships are akin to "co-parenting" before the term became popular.
- Quote:
  
  "The central love stories of their lives were actually their friends. Those were the relationships that helped me become the person I am..."
  — Angela Flournoy (03:04)
De-centering men in narratives about women
- The book deliberately avoids making male characters central to the emotional lives of her protagonists.
- Quote:
  
  "There was always a way that the stories that were ostensibly about women friends mostly ended up being about the men in their lives. And I really wanted that to not be the case in this story."
  — Angela Flournoy (03:38)

Multiplicity of Perspectives

Writing with multiple points of view
- Flournoy discusses her attraction to networked stories and her reluctance to focus on solitary character sketches. Multifaceted perspectives provide a truer, three-dimensional understanding of each character.
- Quote:
  
  "...I'm very interested in, like, networks. When I think about characters, I immediately think about who else is in their life."
  — Angela Flournoy (04:31)
How friends see each other
- Viewing a character through another’s eyes can reveal uncomfortable truths, and friendships can include deep love alongside critical honesty.
- Quote:
  
  "Sometimes I've had some readers say, do these people even like each other? And yes, but more importantly, they love each other."
  — Angela Flournoy (07:59)

Character Deep Dive

Nakia (Chef, Queer Woman)
- Easiest to write: a character with early certainty about her path, both inspiring and occasionally infuriating to her friends.
- Quote:
  
  "One of the ways that tension can find its way into relationships is the people who seem to know exactly what they want versus the rest of us..."
  — Angela Flournoy (06:01)
January (Designer, Pregnant, Recently Single)
- At a crossroads, January is most afraid that motherhood will close doors to a bigger life, feeling she's moved in the shadows of others.
- Quote:
  
  "She wants a bigger life than getting pregnant in her... she feels like she has spent so much of her life before that kind of playing in the background to her husband..."
  — Angela Flournoy (16:55)
- Portrayal of postpartum experience:
  The novel features a powerful, rarely depicted scene about postpartum prolapse, highlighting gaps in women’s health knowledge even in the internet era.
  - Quote:
    
    "When it comes to women's health, there are just so many things that people still do not talk about..."
    — Angela Flournoy (17:59)
Monique (Librarian-Influencer, Navigates Viral Attention)
- Hardest character to write: Her viewpoint is filtered through her own public writing, making her a challenge to “see around” due to perpetual self-crafting for an audience.
- Quote:
  
  "[Monique] is so aware of an audience... it's a challenge because she is always trying to position herself in a way that she thinks will be useful to her."
  — Angela Flournoy (21:35)
Desiree (Grieving, Searching for Direction)
- Travels to Paris with her grandfather, who seeks to end his life. The city’s significance for Black artists and personal memory plays a crucial role.

Structure and Time

Nonlinear narrative
- The story jumps between the aughts and 2027, reflecting how collective and individual memories of friendship are often non-chronological and prismatic.
- Quote:
  
  "If I asked you and three of your good friends the story of your friendship, it might begin chronological, but it would soon not be chronological anymore."
  — Angela Flournoy (10:25)
Near-future setting
- Choosing 2027 emerged organically from the long creation process and the altered sense of time caused by the pandemic.
- Quote:
  
  "It just feels like time has always felt elastic, but it feels like time is both accelerated and not really moving at all."
  — Angela Flournoy (12:01)

Key Themes

Twenties “messiness”
- Capturing an era before everything was recorded, when self-discovery and mistakes happened in relative privacy.
- Quote:
  
  "In my 20s...you could really be in the club...you could go with your hair straight and then end up with your hair in a completely different hairstyle, cause you sweat it out, right? But now I feel like people would be too self conscious."
  — Angela Flournoy (09:03)
Class and adulthood friendships
- The emergence of class difference in friendships as people reach new adult milestones (buying a home, parenthood, inheritance) that increasingly set friends apart.
- Quote:
  
  "...your expectations for what it looks like to have made it start to diverge from your friends."
  — Angela Flournoy (13:43)

Place: New York vs. LA

Flournoy reflects on living in both cities—the contrast in artistic community, cost of living, and creative energy.
Quote:

"They feel completely different and they operate very differently...I love LA, but I prefer to live in New York."
— Angela Flournoy (28:14)

Notable Audience Q&A and Memorable Moments

Memory and perception in friendship
- Audience asks how Flournoy treats memory and perception.
  - Quote:
    
    "We are repositories of our memories...the backstory is a story, right?...When I think about building [characters], that is probably the most important part more than, like, where they're going is how it is informed by where they've been before."
    — Angela Flournoy (24:06)
On personal core desires
- Flournoy candidly shares she always only wanted to write books, unlike some of her characters who grapple with conflicting ambitions.
  - Quote:
    
    "You know, I am really boring. I really only wanted to do this. I wanted to write books."
    — Angela Flournoy (26:13)
Comparing New York and LA
- She sums up her loyalty to New York despite appreciating LA's overlooked creative community.
  - Quote:
    
    "If you're going to pay New York rent, you should be in New York, in my opinion."
    — Angela Flournoy (29:25)
On community and the broader arc of the novel’s ending
- Flournoy hopes readers look beyond the “shock” of the ending, recognizing the novel as a meditation on community—who is included, what sacrifice means, and the need for a more expansive view of belonging.
  - Quote:
    
    "Who are you willing to have be a part of your community and what are you willing to sacrifice to protect those people in your community?...people are going to have to figure out a way to have a more expansive view of that."
    — Angela Flournoy (31:05)

Timestamps for Major Segments

Introduction & Book Overview: 00:29–02:07
Novel’s Origin & Friendship Themes: 02:07–04:15
Multiple Perspectives & Character Construction: 04:23–05:51
Deep Dive on Main Characters: 05:51–08:57
Portrayal of Young Adulthood: 08:57–10:15
Structure & Nonlinear Timeline: 10:15–12:01
Class Themes: 13:11–15:12
Desiree & Paris, Black Artists: 15:12–16:42
January’s Crossroads & Postpartum Realism: 16:42–19:14
Monique’s Voice & Writing Challenges: 20:08–22:51
Audience Q&A (Memory, Desire, Place): 22:51–30:05
Community, Conclusion, and Reflections: 30:05–32:01

Notable Quotes

On capturing friendship’s complexity:

"But more importantly, they love each other. And that means sometimes they really see some things about each other that of course, the character in question would not like."
— Angela Flournoy (07:59)
On the necessity of including culture in fiction:

"It is really important to me that characters actually listen to music, actually read things...it's flat, it doesn't feel like a real lived-in world otherwise."
— Angela Flournoy (20:19)
On the unsettled feeling of the future:

"You can tell me a lot of things are going to happen next year, and I would believe you."
— Angela Flournoy (12:01)

Final Thoughts

Angela Flournoy’s engaging conversation with Alison Stewart offers deep insight into her writing process, thematic ambitions, and the lived realities of her characters. Through candid storytelling and audience dialogue, Flournoy paints The Wilderness not just as a story of four friends, but as an expansive meditation on memory, class, adulthood, and the evolving nature of true community.

The episode is a must-listen for readers interested in contemporary narratives about friendship, culture, and the ways our stories—and lives—are inevitably intertwined.