From Working in Publishing to Entrepreneur (and Author!) with Panio Gianopoulos

Summary

Podcast Summary: Totally Booked with Zibby

Episode: From Working in Publishing to Entrepreneur (and Author!) with Panio Gianopoulos

Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Zibby Owens
Guest: Panio Gianopoulos

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Zibby Owens interviews Panio Gianopoulos, author and co-founder/editorial director of the Next Big Idea Club. They discuss Panio’s journey from publishing to entrepreneurship, his process as a fiction writer, the emotional origins of his work, and how personal life events have deeply informed his forthcoming novel. The conversation offers a candid look at the realities of the creative process, the business of books, and the role of storytelling in healing and self-understanding.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Panio’s Career Trajectory: From Publishing to Entrepreneurship

[04:46 – 07:38]

• Panio details his longstanding passion for books, starting as an assistant editor at Crown (Penguin Random House), his work at Bloomsbury, and his transition into business school at Stanford.
• He reflects on failed entrepreneurial ventures post-Stanford and how they nevertheless revealed his knack for “sourcing talent”—notably, the early work with Kate McKinnon before SNL (05:52).
• Panio met Rufus Griscom, leading to his current work with the Next Big Idea Club, a nonfiction book subscription and curation service. This brought him into nonfiction after a career centered on fiction.

"It's always when you don't want something that it shows up. ...You're not looking for a job, suddenly it jumps in your lap."
— Panio Gianopoulos [07:13]

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2. Crafting Fiction: Process and Preferences

[07:47 – 10:44]

• Zibby praises Panio for his immersive and insightful writing style, especially how he writes about relationships, longing, and subversive behavior.
• Panio explains the isolating nature of fiction writing and expresses appreciation for feedback, revealing it took him twelve drafts to complete the first story in his collection.

"I'm just writing these sentences after sentences and it's just like an empty auditorium. ...Is that good? No one's clapping, no one's smiling, no one's laughing..."
— Panio Gianopoulos [08:24]

• Discussion about writing groups and the potential pitfalls of sharing drafts too early, mainly the risk of being misdirected before the story finds its direction.

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3. On Writing Short Stories vs. Novels

[14:15 – 16:20]

• Panio addresses the central challenges of short fiction: “portraying the messiness and contradictions of real human behavior in a compressed space.”
• His stories attempt to avoid moralism and instead show the nuanced reality of people—good, bad, wonderful, and selfish all at once.

"I've always been attracted in my reading...to a fiction that just shows you everything. Shows you the good and the bad and shows you that a person, at one moment can be wonderful and kind and another moment, they can be petty and selfish."
— Panio Gianopoulos [13:26]

• The motivations for his collection were pragmatic: a busy life made short stories more feasible (“I didn't have time to write a novel...So it was really just the nature of my life.” [16:10])
• Inspiration often comes from everyday incidents twisted into fiction—Panio recounted, at length, his failed attempts to befriend a crow, which turned into a story seed.

"So I got in my car. I gave up on becoming the crow's friend. But then I thought, oh, there's a story there. Like, why is this person obsessed with becoming friends to a crow?"
— Panio Gianopoulos [19:07]

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4. Central Themes: Validation, Attention, and Alienation

[24:38 – 26:38]

• Many stories in Panio’s collection revolve around characters feeling unseen, longing for attention, or validation.
• The title story, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, grew from real family interactions and the idea of adult envy toward youthful charisma (“...we all want this 19-year-old to say we're cool. That's bizarre.” [25:34])
• Flattery and the hunger for approval—universal at any age—drive much of the emotional content.

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5. The New Novel: Family, Grief, and Autobiographical Roots

[27:06 – 34:09]

• Panio candidly shares the deeply personal inspiration behind his in-progress novel, centered on his Greek immigrant parents and shaped by traumatic losses: his mother’s accident and protracted illness, and his father’s suicide.
• Grief blocked his ability to write anything but stories in which someone died, leading him eventually to confront his experience directly through the novel.
• The process has been long (eight years), emotionally taxing, and ultimately therapeutic, allowing him to transform personal pain into a story with enough fictional distance to feel complete.

"Every time I go into it, I'm like reopening the wound, right? ...the first few years writing the book were just like torture. It was awful. But I felt like there was nothing else I could do."
— Panio Gianopoulos [29:10]

• He reflects on the malleability of memory in fiction and the need to document real events separately so as not to lose them to the narrative’s revisions.

"My memories of what actually happened have been overwritten a little bit by these fictionalized versions."
— Panio Gianopoulos [34:09]

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6. Building Community: Author Insider and Publishing Advice

[35:52 – End]

• Panio plugs his newsletter, Author Insider, a Substack for writers to discuss craft, the publishing business, and to counter writers’ isolation.
• Zibby credits Panio’s author insider guidance for influencing her own thinking about book publicity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the need for feedback in writing:
  "Writing, storytelling. It's a kind of communication ... It's unreasonable as a pursuit to talk to somebody for that long and not get some sort of feedback, get some sort of connection with them."
  — Panio Gianopoulos [08:57]

• On why he writes fiction, not nonfiction:
  "I feel like I've sort of done both now so deeply that probably the next thing would be for me to actually write a nonfiction book. But I don't want to. I like novels too much. I like making things up."
  — Panio Gianopoulos [07:11]

• On writing through grief:
  "Once you put the trauma down on paper, it frees up your brain...It literally is out of your brain and your brain doesn't feel like it has to remember it all the time."
  — Zibby Owens [33:30]

• On memory and fiction:
  "If you're going to write something that is heavily autobiographical, just take a weekend and ... bullet point what actually happened in your life. So you can just go back when you're done with the book and be like, okay, but these are my memories. Right? The book is not my memories."
  — Panio Gianopoulos [34:09]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:46 — Panio recounts his publishing and business journey
• 07:47 — Zibby’s praise for Panio’s immersive writing; discussion on feedback and writing groups
• 10:44 — On reworking stories, the complexity of short fiction, and authorial intentions
• 14:15 — Exploring character contradictions and the purpose of fiction
• 16:10 — Why Panio chooses the short story format
• 19:07 — The “crow story” and how real incidents inspire fiction
• 24:38 — Themes of validation and origin of the title story
• 27:06 — Emotional roots of Panio’s novel: grief and family loss
• 33:30 — Writing as therapy, remembering vs. rewriting personal history
• 35:52 — The Author Insider newsletter and supporting the writer community

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Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, warm, and thoughtful. Both Zibby and Panio speak with humor and vulnerability, sharing both the joys and the difficulties of the writing life. The tone alternates between conversational, introspective, and practical—a reflection of two industry insiders keenly aware of both the art and business of books.

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Transcript

[Zibby Owens]

Hey everyone, it's Zivi. I am so excited to tell you about something I've created just for you, the Zip Membership program. Zip stands for Zivi's Important People. It's for anyone who loves books, stories and wants a little peek behind the scenes at what I'm up to and what's on my mind as a Zip member. You'll get exclusive essays, a new podcast called Zivvy's Voice Notes. No interviews, just usually discounts at Zibby's Bookshop, a free ebook, and more perks. I wanted to create a space to connect authentically and deeply, and I'd love for you to be part of it. If that sounds like your kind of thing, become a Zip today. You're already important to me. Now let's make it official. Go to zibioens.com and click subscribe. And if you already subscribe, you can upgrade to the membership program. And now onto today's episode of Totally Booked with Zibby. Thanks for listening.

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[Panio Giannopoulos]

Foreign.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Hey guys, I'm Jenna Bush Hager from the Today show and I'm thrilled to bring you my podcast, Open Book with Jenna. Every week I sit down with fascinating people, authors, celebrities and friends to talk about life and the books that shape them.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

If you love great conversations and discovering.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Your next favorite read, join me on Open Book with Jenna. Listen now wherever you get your podcast.

[Zibby Owens]

Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know, get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram Ibbeowensk Panio Giannopoulos is the author of how to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, a short story collection, and the indie bestselling novella A Familiar Beast. His writing has also appeared In Tin House, McSweeney's Northwest Review Weekly, humorist and Literary Hub, among others. A veteran book editor, Panio has worked with authors as diverse as Anthony Bourdain, who taught him how to make linguine Vanglay Chelsea Handler, who made him blush, and and J.T. leroy, who turned out not to exist. Currently he is the co founder and editorial director of the Next Big Idea Club, a nonfiction subscription book club. He lives in New York where he is writing a novel about a multi generational Greek American family. It's a long book, it's taking a while. Welcome Panio.

[Interviewer]

Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about your whole career, your books, your business, everything, including.

[Zibby Owens]

How to get into our house and.

[Interviewer]

Where we keep the money, our collection of short stories.

[Zibby Owens]

Congrats.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about books, my book and just books in general because my whole life is about books. Kind of like yours, where every capacity. So yeah, let's do it.

[Interviewer]

Okay, well back up. Why is your life about books?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Well, so my career. I've been in publishing pretty much since I Got out of college. I started as an assistant editor way back at Crown at Penguin Random House. And then I was a book editor for years at Bloomsbury. And then I went off to business school, which is kind of a weird angle for literary people. I know. You did that too, right? So I went to Stanford and then. And that got me all jazzed up for entrepreneurial stuff because they sort of indoctrinate you. Like, change the world. So I started a couple media companies with a friend, which sounds more glamorous than it is. Nothing happened with them. We didn't make any money. We lost our investors money. Sorry, guys. Yeah, that sounds very LA glamorous. Yeah, nothing came of it, except we did. This was when the Kindle had just come out. And so we were doing essentially serialized YA novels with these authors. And then the idea was that our investors were a production company so they would get a first look. Nothing came of it. What we were really good at, it turns out, is sourcing talent because a lot of our writers ended up being really big. Like, Kate McKinnon was one of our writers. Oh, wow, right? Super funny, super smart. This is before she got an snl.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my gosh.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

She wrote two of our books. And she goes, oh, hey, I can't write the third one because I gotta go audition for snl. We're like, okay, fingers crossed. And she's like, hey, I got it. Like, okay, I guess we'll never see you again. So we didn't. Anyway, so I did all that. And then eventually I came back to New York. I'd been living in la, and I thought, okay, well, I'm done with publishing. I'm done with books. I'm going to do something totally different. And then a friend of mine who's a journalist in the New York Times, she said, hey, you should meet this guy. I know. He ran Nerve for a while and he's in the media space and he's looking for a publishing thing. I was like, yeah, I don't want to do publishing anymore. She goes, oh, just meet him. He's an interesting, smart guy. I was like, okay, fine, whatever. I'll get lunch. Never hurts to just chat with somebody. So I went and I sat down with him. His name is Rufus Griscom. And he said, oh, yeah, I'm thinking about doing this, like, nonfictions sort of network for authors. And. And he. And he said, but I need someone who's really editorialist, editorially experienced, and knows the book world inside out, but also has business background. I was like, okay, it's kind of like the Venn diagram. I'm your guy. So I, you know, it's like it's always when you don't want something that it shows up. Like, you know, you don't. Like you're not looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend and suddenly the perfect person meets you. You're not looking for a job, Suddenly it jumps in your lap. Look for a job. You'll spend a year not finding one. So I thought, oh my God, this is great. So I started with that. And so then the past nine, ten years I've been working at a company called the Next Big Idea Club, which is essentially a nonfiction book subscription club. And that's been fascinating because I've always been a fiction devotee. Like I've loved novels. I always published first time novelists. That's been my passion. I write fiction. But for the past decade I've just lived in the trenches of nonfiction. And I mean, obviously it has its strengths and it's got its charms. I feel like I've sort of done both now so deeply that probably the next thing would be for me to actually write a nonfiction book. But I don't want to. I like novels too much. I like making things up. Wow, that was a very long answer.

[Interviewer]

No, it's perfect. By the way, I just bought the next big idea, like three pack for my brother for the holidays.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Oh, I love that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Oh, great.

[Interviewer]

So I'm very excited. He's gonna love it.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Thanks.

[Interviewer]

Anyway, actually I shouldn't. On the offhand chance he's listening. He'll find it, but he won't be anyway. Okay, well, let's go to your fiction for a few minutes because you are actually, I shouldn't say actually, you are a really talented writer. You're a beautiful, beautiful writer. Beautiful sentences, insightful. The way you write about relationships and longing and sort of all the subversive behavior and the things people don't say and sounds like you're such an auditory writer. Like this. Of that. The sound of this. It's a very immersive writing style and you're really good at it.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Thank you so much. That's really, it's nice to hear because I've been working on a new novel for about eight years and you know, writing, unlike acting or performing or musician, like there's no audience until you bring up the book. So I'm just writing these sentences after sentences and it's just like an empty auditorium. Like, is that good? Like no one's clapping, no one's smiling, no One's laughing, like, am I crazy? So it's nice to hear something positive about something I've written.

[Interviewer]

I've interviewed two author pairs this week, actually, and both of them said the main thing, because they've all written separately, is that there's finally someone there to.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Be like, that was great.

[Interviewer]

What a great chapter.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

I know it's really hard to just. I know it sounds so childish, like, oh, you know, I want someone to clap for me. It's not that. It's just writing, storytelling. It's a kind of communication, you know, It'd be like, imagine you're sitting down with a really good friend and you're gonna tell them an anecdote. It's gonna take you three years, and they're not gonna say anything for three years. They're not gonna be like, wait, tell me more, or really? Or what? It's just. It's unreasonable as a pursuit to talk to somebody for that long and not get some sort of feedback, get some sort of connection with them.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you might want to join, like, a writing group or something. Just saying.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

You're right. No, I actually. I did start a writing group myself in my hometown about six months ago, and that has been really wonderful, actually. That's been great. I underestimated how incredibly helpful that is.

[Interviewer]

I'm always a little afraid to share, though, because until it's done, it's like jinxing it.

[Zibby Owens]

I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel that way?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Well, that's a different thing. Jinxing. I just worry that it takes me so many drafts to get where I'm going. Like, the first story in my collection almost didn't. I almost didn't include it because it took me, honestly, 12 drafts to get it right, or as right as it gets. And I kept writing it and rewriting it, and I thought, no, this isn't right. The tone's off. No, the ending doesn't work. And I was about to give up, like, draft 10, and then finally I got there, but I just muddled through it myself. And so I thought, what if I gave draft three to somebody and they're like, oh, you should bring in a mother figure or something? And then I'd think, oh, gosh, should I bring in a mom? And I just. I guess I worry about being misdirected. Like, I feel like the struggle and the wandering and the false starts and the weird turns are sort of all part of the process of getting there, because it's so intuitive to me, like, the process of writing. And sometimes I just don't want to be overly influenced.

[Interviewer]

I loved your first essay, by the way. I mean, I loved. I mean, not essay, story. I loved many of them. But was there something different with, like, the plot aspects? Like, was, like, what did you rewrite? Now I'm so curious. How could there be 12 drafts of this, right?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

It's funny because I don't. I mean, I'm glad you liked it because I really. Afterwards, you're not supposed to, like, express your regrets.

[Sarah Gibson Tuttle]

Right?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

But I'm going to. I thought, oh, I shouldn't have put that one first.

[Interviewer]

No, it was really good.

[Zibby Owens]

Really?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

It was okay. I thought it was just too, like. Not to say complex. But some of the other stories are much more straightforward, you know, like Murmur, which I wrote later, is just kind of almost like a coming of age story. It's very sweet. It's very, you know, like, you know what you're getting. And that story, you're like, wait, like, is she good? Is she bad? Am I on her side? What's happening? I just worried, like, is it. It's not like a. Like, Come into My house. I mean, that's the title of the book, right? How to get her. It's not like, come in, come in, welcome. Like, Venus and Fur is like a funny story about a guy who's competitive with his girlfriend's tiny little Pomeranian. Like, that's a very straightforward, like, entertaining. And I guess I worried that this story, and that was my struggle when I was writing. It was like. It almost felt like it needed to be a novel because you needed the emotional complexity of, like, here's this woman and she's like, muddling her way through her life. She's, you know, not to give anything away. I mean, you find out she's having this affair with this guy she meets. She doesn't really know why she's doing it. You don't really know much. Cause you don't get her husband's perspective, right? You just get her interior life as a mother. And then there's this twist where. Cause I always thought this was interesting when you. Cause I did see this in real life around me, I'd see people where, like, they were happier when they were having an affair. Like, you're not supposed to say it's like a dirty secret, right? Because it's sort of like. It's like a steam valve. Like whatever resentment she has towards her husband or her family or her situation, kind of get relieved by this exciting thing she's got going on. So I thought, what an interesting kind of reversal or inversion. It's like, here's this woman, and actually her life is going better because this is going on. She's not wracked with guilt, I guess I worry a lot about stories that feel like they're kind of moralistic fables. I don't really feel like that's what fiction's about. I feel like there's kind of two different kinds of fiction. And I know that's a guaranteed bad idea to say. But I feel like there's fiction that represents the world and human behavior and all of its contradictions and messiness and dirtiness and beauty. Don't get me wrong. And all the wonder. And then there's fiction that's kind of like how we want the world to be, right. It's like this is a fantasy version of it. I don't mean elves and dwarves. I just mean, wouldn't it be great if we behave like this? And wouldn't be great if, like, the good guys win at the end. Wouldn't it be great if all this happens? And I've always been attracted in my reading as a. You know, to a fiction that just shows you everything. Shows you the good and the bad and shows you that a person, at one moment can be wonderful and kind and another moment, they can be petty and selfish. And all those contradictions we have are so challenging to write in short fiction because you have very little time to establish enough of a pattern of behavior. So someone says, okay, I know who this character is. She's the kind of person who does this. And that's got it. But then you need to throw in the contradictions because we are not perfect little machines. And we have all these strange turnabouts within us. And it's really hard to do it. So with that story specifically, I thought, how do I create this Persona? How do I show this person who is really multifaceted and there's so much going on in her life and she's all these different people and make it believable. And you still kind of sympathize with her to some degree.

[Interviewer]

Well, I think you totally did that, by the way. And I feel like in showing all these tiny scenes, like, I'm trying to analyze what it is you did that made that happen. Like when she's hiding in the bathroom and she's on the phone and she doesn't know how to deal with, you know, her old friend. Does she tell? Does she not when she was feeling so frustrated. And it's like, I'm like, to your point, Like, I was a better mom before. Now I'm snapping at my kids because of this. I mean, you have us go through all of her doubts and the longing that she feels because at our core, most of us want to be happier than we are.

[Zibby Owens]

Right.

[Interviewer]

That is a driving force. And that's, like, what she's after. And so you're kind of rooting for her even though it feels wrong a little bit.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

I don't know.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Right. If you feel a little guilty. I know. Me too. I cared for her. It's weird. You care for your characters even though you invent them. And also, I mean, the story is about. It's called Another Life. Right. And I mean, who hasn't had that thought of, like, oh, what if I totally changed my life? What if I just blew it up and then went off and just did this instead? And then, of course, there's the what if I hadn't done this? What if I didn't move here? What if I went to school here instead? And, I mean, that, to me, is the heart of fiction. It's like the what if? That's what always compels me as a writer.

[Interviewer]

I mean, I actually did blow up my life and change it completely and a completely different life. So maybe I'm relating to some of this.

[Zibby Owens]

No, I'm kidding.

[Interviewer]

But, yeah, because you never know. I mean, and it doesn't have to be set until, like, there's no. There's no one who says it's ever too late.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Right.

[Interviewer]

That you can always take a new path. And so. Yeah, yeah, but why? I mean, you're saying, oh, I felt like it was hard to fit these characters into short form. Like, I don't. Short fiction is the thing I haven't done since, like, high school, basically, because it feels like it's so much harder, actually, as you said, to get it done quickly. So why. I mean, it's not like this was.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

An assignment for you.

[Interviewer]

You, like, chose to do this. Why did you choose to make a collection of short stories rather than a novel at this point? What compelled this collection to begin with?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Okay, well, the truth. So, honestly, as a writer who works in publishing, I knew that publishing a story collection was really stupid tactically, because it's very hard to sell short story collections unless you're, like, George Saunders or Jhumpa Lahiri. Like, you're not going to sell many copies. So I thought, okay, like, career wise, this is dumb. But the truth is that I wrote one novel, like, in my early 20s, tried to sell it, couldn't sell it. Fine. Then I wrote a kind of a second novel after that, which was really tepid and boring because my first book kind of got rejected because there was, like, too much sex and violence. And it was kind of. And the guy's like, no, no, I'm not interested in this, like, angry young man novel. It's like, okay. So then the next one, I was like, oh, I'm going to. I'll show. I'll make this really boring. Nailed it. Nothing happened. It was like, the tension wasn't great. So then that didn't sell either. And at that point, I was in my early 30s, and I had a career, I had a child. So I didn't have time to write a novel. I mean, that was the truth. I thought, okay, I just have to stick with these little things I can actually work on on weekends. So it was really just the nature of my life. I mean, if I could have taken six months to work in a book, I probably would have tried a novel again. But what I found was I liked stories because they let me pursue a question or an idea or just a hunch and then follow it to its end. Whereas with a novel, as, you know, you've written novels, it takes a few years. It's such a commitment. It's like, oh, if writing a story, you can think. Here's an example. There's a short story I want to write, but I started it. But then I put it aside because I've been busy with a novel. But the idea was, I was picking up my daughter from soccer practice. She was 14 at the time. And I pull into the parking lot, and I'm early, so I'm just sitting there by myself. It lives in a small town. And suddenly I see a crow. Okay, the bird, right? And it just lands, like, in a tree nearby. And I get really excited because I think, oh, everybody says crows are really smart. And if you befriend a crow, then it tells other crows. And then suddenly, all the crows love you, and you're just like, a crow bestie. And so I thought, I'm gonna befriend this crowd. And how do you befriend a crow? You, like, give it snacks, right? That's how you befriend animals. So I'm looking at my car, and I'm looking. I was like, God, I need snacks. I need snacks. All I have is, like, a power bar. So in, like, one of those, like, quest bars are all, like. They almost look fake. And we're like. So I was like, all right, whatever. So I break off a piece of chocolate chip cookie power power bar. I get out of the car and I put it on top of, like, this little, you know, this little, like, stair. Little stone staircase. And I back up enough so it's not intimidated by me. And I'm like, hey, crow, here's your little snack. The crow waits a little bit, flies down, looks like, observe. Looks at the thing and is like, nope, flies away. And I was devastated. I was like, ouch. I just got rejected by a crow. This sucks. So then I spent the next few days, like, looking, panning the skies, looking for a crow, thinking I want to redeem myself. Like, I started. I had crackers in the car. Now I'm like, I'm going to make friends with the crow. About a week or two later, I'm in a totally different town again. Pick my daughter. You know, this is. As a parent, you're always driving your kids around, especially in the suburbs. And I see a crow, I'm like, oh, great, great. A bunch of them, they're all on this rooftop. So I start flinging crackers like they're Frisbees. Just, like, flinging them on this rooftop. And they just could not give a crap. Like, they were just not. I was like, crackers? You're turning down crackers? So I got in my car. I gave up on becoming crows, becoming the crow friend. But then I thought, oh, there's a story there. Like, why is this person obsessed with becoming friends to crow? Like, so then I wanted to back into, who is this guy or girl? I mean, I don't know what the gender is yet of the character. What's happened to them that, like, this is their last chance. Like, how socially isolated that they need this. Then I started developing this guy, and he plays video games a lot. And his son is going to leave for college soon. So it's a bit of, like, a preempty nest thing. And maybe he's a little estranged from his wife. And I started putting together the story. Long answer your question. That, to me, is where stories come from. I thought, okay, I can spend a few weeks and just figure out, who's this guy? Why is he obsessed with crows? The guy is you, but he's not anymore. That's the thing, though.

[Interviewer]

But I'm interested in, like, why were you trying to get the crow's attention so badly? Like, let's. Let's go there.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Let's go on to the crow. I mean, I don't know. I've always wanted a Crow as a friend. You know what? It's the same. Okay, here it is. It's probably a desire for some kind of validation, right? Like. Like, you know when you go to somebody's apartment for, like, a dinner or something, and they have a dog and the dog comes in and everyone secretly wants the dog to like them the most? Everyone's, like, petting the dog. And then when the dog, like, goes over to somebody else, you're a little bit like, oh, I'm not enough for this dog. Right? The dog loves this person more. So I'm sure it's some spin off of that. Like, I mean, you're not my therapist. I don't know what. Where that crow friendship desire comes from, but a lot of my stories come from that. Like, I'll have a weird little impulse, and then I'll think, and then I'll back it. I'll back up, think, well, where did that come from? And then I'll fictionalize it. And then, as you know, you change enough things, and then suddenly this person's not you anymore. You change their history, you change their dating history, who they're married to, they have kids, their gender, sexual orientation. Eventually, it's like, it's just a. You're just a. A faded memory.

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[Sarah Gibson Tuttle]

So.

[Interviewer]

What was the spark for the story how to get into our house and where we keep the money? Was it the nephew? Was it another kid? Was it?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

So a lot of the stories in the book are really about characters who. God this is really embarrassing. I feel like I've made more progress with you emotionally than I have in therapy. But I realize now this is what I'm here for.

[Interviewer]

This is what I'm here for. I do this all day.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

I feel like a lot of the stories about people who don't feel like they're seen, they feel alienated or neglected and they want attention, they want validation. Right? And so many of them are love stories or sort of flawed love stories because that's so Much what we look for in love, we look for that person to complete us, for better or for worse. So that story was based on when my wife and I were living in LA and we had, I think we just had one kid at the time. Our daughter Matilda and her nephew came to stay with us for a little while. Very sweet guy, by the way.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

Not like, I mean, I guess not like this guy.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Not like this guy, he's a sweet guy, but he was into graffiti, which this guy is. He's like a graffiti artist. And he stayed with us and suddenly everybody was like, oh, he's so cool. Everybody, everybody just thought he was the coolest guy. Like, all of our friends thought he was cool. And I remember stepping back and thinking, it's crazy. Like, we're all in our 30s and some of us in our 40s, and we all want this, like, 19 year old to say we're cool, you know? And like, that's bizarre. Like, why, like, why is our obsession with, like, youth culture, like, so pervasive? And then I thought, oh, this would be great. Like, let's have him be jealous of his nephew and let's have it escalate into this almost like farce where he's just stumbling over. So that's where it came from. I mean, it's really not about her nephew, but.

[Interviewer]

Right. But the validation when, like, the nephew thinks it's cool that he likes Neil Young or whatever.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Yeah, I was like, why? It's kind of like, you know, like everybody tells you, like, flattery will get you everywhere. Flattery will get. Flattery works on you, even if, you know it's just a technique. Even if, you know someone's, like, saying it, you're just like, oh, stop. You're like, actually, I kind of like this person more now that they flattered me.

[Interviewer]

Well, I feel like your use of short story to investigate some of these moments in life is why people write. Right. Isn't that like, aren't we all just trying to make sense of what's going on around us and the issues that we all face and all of that? So when you are taking all of those questions to your new novel, tell me about that and what has propelled.

[Jenna Bush Hager]

You to keep working on it for eight years?

[Interviewer]

What were some of the inspirations for it?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Right. Well, the new novel is very different than anything I've written because even though, as we've talked about, a story might be generated by an idea or an anecdote or something happens to me, this one is very, very autobiographical in the sense that it's based on my parents. And my parents were originally from Greece, and they came to America, my dad, when he was 19. And so I always wanted to write about them. I thought it was an interesting story, but I didn't really know the way in, because, as you know, like, you can have a great story, but you're like, how do I start it? What's the drama? And then, very sadly, my mom. My mother had a terrible accident. She fell down the stairs, which is so, like, pedestrian. You think, like, oh, people die from, like, cancer. They get hit by a car. But my mom just fell down the stairs. Nobody knows how or why, and she hit her head. She had this traumatic brain injury. This is way back in 2011. And from then on, she was really, really incapacitated. She was in the hospital for a month. I flew to Greece to be with my family. My sister already lives there. And anyway, that was what happened personally to me. And then she started to get a little better, but not really. She was still struggling. And my father, who'd always battled depression but had kind of managed it, then he killed himself two months later. It was obviously devastating. And I felt terrible. I felt guilty. I felt. I was so focused on my mother and her recovery that I felt like I was. Not that I was dismissive of my father. I mean, I was sympathetic to him, but I didn't really understand the intensity of what he was going through. And so I don't know if you've ever survived suicide, had somebody who died. It's a different kind of grief in the sense of, like, you know, somebody dies who's close to you, and you miss them, and you love them and you care about them. But when someone takes their own life, in my experience, you do feel this constant, like, what if. Like, oh, what if I talked to him more? What if I'd stayed in Greece to spend time? So I felt so racked with guilt. And so that from then on, I found that I couldn't write anything. Actually, anytime I would start a story. Cause I was still writing stories, it would constantly veer into. Somebody would die. I mean, it's like, very. I'd start a story about one thing, and then by the end, like, the sister would die, and then I'd start another, and the kid would die. And I'm like, oh, my God. Every time I'm so preoccupied, just unconsciously, that I'm either gonna write nothing or I'm gonna write about this. And so, to be honest, another year went by before I wrote anything, because it was so devastating. And then I started writing this book. And the hard part about it is every time I go into it, I'm like reopening the wound, right? I'm writing about my mother's injury. I'm writing about my father's death. And it's so unpleasant. It's terrible to say. I mean, look, every writer I know says writing is hard and they struggle with it and they kind of hate it and they like it when it's done. But the truth is, I like writing. Or at least I used to. It's music. It's a kind of music, but it has a meaning in it. And you're trying to mix in story. And so the first few years writing the book were just like torture. It was awful. But I felt like there was nothing else I could do. There's nothing else I could write. And then finally, once I got to my second draft, my third draft, years went by and then it just felt like something I just had to get out. Not like it was a poison or a toxin, but it was just. It kept changing my relationship to. It kept changing. And then finally, in this last draft, and I really swear this is my last draft, I'm close. I'm on the last two chapters, I finally had enough distance where it had changed, enough where I could think, okay, this actually isn't me anymore. This isn't a memoir. At one point I thought, should I just write this, his memoir? But I decided against it. You know, I. I changed it enough that I could suddenly start making big alterations that would help the story because I no longer felt personally connected to it. So the mother was really no longer my mother. The father was. No, I was. You know, I break myself into two brothers and I thought, oh, I can make one of these brothers really awful and not feel like I'm, you know, outing myself as a bad person. Because this is a different character for me. And I pray I never have to write another book like this because it has been just like heart wrenching and devastating. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of it. I like the book, but I would love to write something just a little less close to home and a little less about grief. Wow.

[Interviewer]

First of all, I'm so sorry that that happened. And second of all, wait, what happened with your mom after she. What?

[Panio Giannopoulos]

That's also sad. In fact, I really, I had to change it for the book. Cause it was too depressing. There's only so much sad to see. So she got a little better. And then she had like A stroke, like a seizure, and then got worse and worse and she just kind of got like worse and worse until eventually she just, she died like two and a half years later. So those last three years were really grim and miserable and really hard on my sister. I will say my sister and I are very close and we're even closer now after having gone through that where, you know, my mother lived with her for a while. We had a live in nurse stay with my sister. And then eventually we put her. She just needed more medical, around the clock care and then she died. And actually that's one of the changes I'm making in the book. And maybe I'm wrong. You can tell me is I thought, I can't have the mother die at the end. That's originally how I ended it because it's just such a bummer. I mean, yeah, I lived through it, but I don't want my readers to live through that. So she's not in great shape at the end of the book anymore, but she's not dead. I just, I can't do it to the reader. You know, obviously the father still dies, but he dies pretty early in the book because that's one of the big moments that kind of brings the children together, the adult children together. I've been calling it like the Greek American Corrections. As a shorthand. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, as a book it sounds amazing. As a life, it sounds really hard. So I'm sorry that you and your sister had to go through that and your family, I mean, of course that's what you want to write about, right? How can you. I mean, you have to process, like writing is a tool, right, for all of us to make sense of everything.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

So it is. You know, people say, oh, you shouldn't write, you know, it shouldn't be your therapy. And I get that. I mean that. I think that's why it took me eight years to do it. Right. Because I do feel like that first version really was just therapeutic, just getting it out and then. And then you have to go in and think like an actual storyteller. Like, okay, what helps the story, like what makes sense. You stop thinking about what feels good and what actually moves things along.

[Interviewer]

One thing I learned from a trauma therapist, this woman, Megan Reardon Jarvis, is that once you put the trauma down on paper, it frees up your brain. And like, I'm sure you know this. Yeah, I'm sure you've read enough nonfiction, but like, it literally is out of your brain and your brain doesn't feel like it has to remember it all the time. So it stops, like, replaying it. It's like it fixes the glitch in the DVD or whatever.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Absolutely. But, you know, a weird little corollary of that I found is I never keep journals. I mean, I'm very inconsistent. And so now my memories of what actually happened have been overwritten a little bit by these fictionalized versions.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

So this, like, the moment I had with my mother in the hospital when she finally woke up from the coma, she was in a medically induced coma for a month. So when she woke up, she looked at me, and she was startled, and she looked around. She had no idea where she was. Right. The last thing she remembered was, I guess, being on the stairs. And she looked at me, and I held her hand. I'm like, hey, mom, it's okay. It's me. You're in the hospital, but you're gonna be okay. And, like, slowly saw the pan subsided in her eyes, and she calmed down. And then she shut her eyes, and about 15 seconds went by, and then she opened her eyes again, and the same thing happened. She looked around, she didn't know where she was. It was like Groundhog Day. And I had to just keep reassuring her and reassuring her, and I'll never forget that. I mean, talk about a core memory. Like, it was devastating. And I was so worried about her, but I was also so grateful that she finally woke up. And then I changed that scene for the book at one point. I kind of changed it back eventually. And I remember thinking, like, wait, what happened? Like, what happened in my life and what happened in the book? And that's one of the dangers of. Personally, I feel like if you're going to write something that is heavily autobiographical, just take a weekend and even just bullet point what actually happened in your life. So you can just go back when you're done with the book and be like, okay, but these are my memories. Right? The book is not my memories. The book is a fictionalized, modified account. Because memory is so plastic and so impressionable that it's a little scary to think, like, oh, yeah, I can rethink my way into different memories.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so basically, I could talk to you all day about the stuff. We've, like, barely scratched the surface, and our time is already up. Oh, my God, our therapy session is over. Penny, I'm really sorry to say I hope we've made some good work and hope to meet back here another time. But, you know, all that you've done with Next Big Idea Book Club and, like, all the authors you've helped and your Author Insider, like, all the stuff you do is so awesome and so helpful and it's just nice to see you as author in this little thank you session.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Oh, yeah, can I give a little shout out to Author Insider? It's this yes, of course. Newsletter substack that I've been running for about six months now. And it's just for, it's for authors. We have about 3,000 members. And I talk to people in the publishing industry, I talk to writers and some craft stuff. And it's been really nice because as I said earlier, like, it feels very isolating. So it's been a place for me to kind of share and create this big author community. So it's called Author Insider. If anybody wants to talk, I love.

[Interviewer]

Your thoughts on book publicity. I'm like, okay, I'm going to change my strategy here. Thanks to interview.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Yeah, I was, I was like, okay.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, good to know. Very good to know. Penyo, thank you so much. And I can't wait to read that novel. Good luck. Keep going. Okay, thanks. Okay, bye.

[Panio Giannopoulos]

Bye.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram, Iby Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

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[Panio Giannopoulos]

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