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Zibby Owens
Then I thought, what if I've scaled businesses? What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even Greater meaning@creativeplanning.com impact this is the exclusive table with the view. This is your name on the list. This is three times points on dining with Chase Sapphire reserve and a $300 dining credit. Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding. Learn more@chase.com SapphireServe cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval. Today's episode is sponsored by Nutrafol. Do you know that feeling when you're brushing your hair and somehow it just looks a little thinner than usual, maybe a little less full? And you're like, what is going on here? Well, Nutrafol supports hair health from within, helping you grow stronger, visibly thicker hair so that those moments happen less often where you're worried about your hair. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists and by the way, personally by me. This is the brand that I trust. Adding Nutrafol to your daily routine is easy. Order online, no prescription needed, with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus, with a Nutrafol subscription, you can save up to 20% and get added perks to support your hair health journey. So let your hair be one less thing to worry about. See visibly thicker, stronger, faster growing hair in three to six months with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutrafol.com and enter promo code Zibby Z I B b y that's nutrafol.com spelled n u t r dash a f o l.com, promo code Zibby. Enjoy. 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 ibbeowens. Today is a two in one episode. Carrie Claire is the author of Definitely Thriving, a novel. She is also the author of Asking for a Friend, Waiting for a Star to Fall, and Mitzi Bytes. She was the editor of the anthology the Conversations About Motherhood and hosts the books podcast. She lives in Toronto with her family. I was honored to interview Carrie for Totally Booked Live. Welcome to Totally Booked Live. I'm here today with Carrie Claire, the author of Definitely Thriving. Congratulations.
Carrie Claire
Thank you.
Zibby Owens
Welcome.
Carrie Claire
It'd be lovely to be here.
Zibby Owens
Why don't you tell everybody what your book is about?
Carrie Claire
My book is about a woman who blows up her life by getting into an entanglement with her next door neighbors. And all that happens before the book begins. And that's the end of her lackluster marriage. It was the only way out. And she resolves after that to build a new life from scratch and to become a woman of substance. And so she's only going to do serious things and make good choices. But she's a human being, so. So things don't quite go that way. She has inevitable complications. She decides the romantic part of her life is over, but then finds herself embroiled in attractions to two very different curious men. The book is about a woman who is determined to make her own choices and follow her own path instead of doing what she's supposed to be doing. You know, the marriage and the motherhood. And she decides she's going to listen to her heart for the first time. And comedy ensues.
Zibby Owens
It does. The writing of the book is so clever. I mean, it's funny. Like even ordinary moments become hilarious with your wit that like, kind of understated, almost like a British wit. What I love about the book is you're. It's such a strong sense of place. So when the book opens, we have her moving into her own apartment after years of her married life. And here it is. And it's on top of this sort of dilapidated building, but it is hers and she is free from her marriage and she does not care. She loves it. She's relishing it, even though her family and her friends are like, it's kind of smelly. And she's like, it's fine, you know, it's totally fine. And we watch as she then grows and she literally, we watch her wander out like a, like a newborn as she starts introducing herself to the local shopkeepers, which ends up completely changing her life. Talk a little bit about that and I Noticed that you dedicated it to your neighbors, which is so sweet.
Carrie Claire
Well, it is sweet, but sometimes I wonder if they might take it the wrong way because not everyone she encounters, you know, is true. She has all these cozy ideas of who other people are. And then when she goes into the neighborhood and meets them, she discovers that everyone has their. Everyone's the main character in their own story. And she has to sort of grapple with that. And I think that is a challenge that a lot of us have to understand that the ideas we have about who other people are and how they should behave, they don't always comply with it. And that can be frustrating. And so learning to accept. Accept other people and our neighbors as who they are rather than sort of fighting against it, that's something that I've had to work through in my experience. Just understanding I can't control everything and that people are who they're going to be and sort of finding the beauty in that is maybe the key to having a bit of mental health and, you know, finding some harmony. So, yeah, she connects with some eccentric people and they end up being really important to her.
Zibby Owens
Wow. Well, as she goes from store to store, she stumbles upon a very dusty, disorganized bookstore, which becomes a central place in the story. In fact, I feel like this would make such a good play because you could just have like a couple different sets, like her room, the bookstore, maybe the place where they have that, you know, the flag sale. What do you call it? The Mayfair.
Carrie Claire
The jumble sale.
Zibby Owens
The jumble sale. Sorry, yes, the jumble.
Carrie Claire
That was a British. Isn't. My editor was like, wouldn't we call that a rummage sale or something? But for the Barbara Pym reasons, I insist, listed on the Britishism. So, yeah, jumble sale.
Zibby Owens
So as she remakes her own life, she is also metaphorically and quite literally cleaning up the bookstore, organizing it. She's dismayed when women fiction authors have their own shelf and are not in the literature section with the other books. Talk about using books and the bookstore as this place where there is passion and growth and plot developments and then the books themselves.
Carrie Claire
Well, you would know. Bookstores are everything, right? The whole world happens in these spaces. And yeah, the one she encounters, it needs some help. It doesn't really have many customers. It's not a very hospitable place. And, yeah, the women are relegated to, like, a second shelf. And she resolves to do something about that. And it gives her a little bit of agency. She gets to reorganize the world a Little bit. Like, isn't that the dream, to be able to organize the world? And so she gets to do that in that dusty little corner, and she finds love there, and she finds friendship, and she gets to set things right a little bit and put the women on the shelf where they belong.
Zibby Owens
And you have a whole other life in book writing about books and your own shelves, so to speak. Actually, there's a joke in here about somebody who color codes their bookshelves, which I do. So I was trying not to take it personally. Not all my shelves, but definitely this one main wall I have.
Carrie Claire
I think if you're reading them, it's fine. It's the people who have them just for the aesthetic. I don't know. I have trouble with that.
Zibby Owens
Okay. I mean, I had read them. I didn't read them anymore. I mean, they just. Anyway.
Carrie Claire
No, exactly. But they're there to be read, and they're beautiful. You get both.
Zibby Owens
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Carrie Claire
It's fine.
Zibby Owens
We're friends now.
Carrie Claire
That's.
Zibby Owens
Take us to your own life and all the writing you do about books and how you got interested in books. Like, what is your life story?
Carrie Claire
Well, like many bookish people, I think I came into the world interested in books and engaging with stories and going to the library and showing a little bit of talent for creative writing. Like when I was, like, seven, and I was like, that feels pretty nice. And so I just kept going with that. And books are my very favorite thing. It's a great way to engage with other people, to connect with other people. Like, talking about what people are reading is my favorite conversation to have. It's just either it's a book I love or I learn something new. Like, it's just those are my favorite conversations. So I think I engage with the world through books and reading, and it's an escape. But also, it's not like they take us deeper into the world. And, like, more so than my Instagram scrolling. Right. Like, when I am wondering about things, like, just, I can go into a book and kind of get a little closer to figuring it out. So books are how I engage with everything. And so to have written a bookish book is kind of a longtime dream of mine because I love bookish books. I love Ann Fadiman's essays about reading. I love books about books because I love books. So, yeah, like, a lot of my favorite authors found their way into this book. And, you know, my house is full of dusty bookshelves, too, so I didn't have to reach very far for those References.
Zibby Owens
The main characters, the leading men, so to speak, are quite different than what you might expect in a rom com or a book. They're not necessarily, well, maybe one more than the other, but one of them in particular is just someone who, when she finally. Well, I don't want to give anything away, but when someone else meets this gentleman, they're like, wait, him? This guy is the one? He looks like an undertaker. Talk about making a leading man who is not particularly social, like very introverted, allergic to literally everything under the sun. It's hard for him to sort of exist in the world. Like he is thin skinned to a fault and also not particularly friendly or attractive. So anyway, talk about making him the leading man.
Carrie Claire
So my main character is called Clements and this is a moment in her life where she is in firm ownership of making choices that other people don't agree with and doing what feels right for her. And like, she's not committing her life to Toby, this questionable character. And she knows the ways in which she's not necessarily good for her, but she's just following her heart and doing what feels right. He was sort of inspired by Tibby from Howards End. He was. When I read Howard's End, it had the word dyspeptic in it. And that's how I remember learning that word. Because, yeah, he was, he always had like a stomach problem and he was just really annoying and pale and whiny and I think he is a little bit a tribute to the questionable men that I found myself having crushes on when I was younger. And also maybe not making the best choices, but there was just something about like, their neediness that, I don't know, I was like, I can take care of you. And then I grew up. So that was good. But you know, I just, I don't know. They talk about in the book, I talk about him being like Keats because he's like, he kind of looks like he might have tuberculosis. And I don't know, maybe there was a time when I was into that. It's very literary. So, yeah, you know, when I resolved, I was like, I'm going to write a normal book. I'm going to write a straightforward rom com. And then like five pages in, like, I just steered right off the road. And so this book is a little off the beaten track. He's a weirdo. But this book also is about embracing weirdos and like understanding that the strangeness of other people, like, isn't a problem that needs to be sorted out. And he doesn't Treat her badly. In the end, I think he does redeem himself. He shows up for her, but, yeah, just sort of making choices that are a little less straightforward than we're meant to do. That's what she does, and it pays off for her. And, you know, I think she gets a good story out of it.
Zibby Owens
Oh, we definitely get a good story. So that's nice.
Camille Pagan
Yeah.
Zibby Owens
You also show us through her two close girlfriends, we get a lot more perspectives on things and we have a foil with a family that seems absolutely perfect. And then what happens with that storyline as well. How did you use friendship as a tool to drive the story?
Carrie Claire
So I find friendship such an interesting tool as a novelist, because characters, friendships are the greatest way to establish who they are and who they've been and what they love and what their conflicts are like.
Camille Pagan
It's just.
Carrie Claire
It's a wonderful character development tool. But also, friendships are just the best relationships in general. And so I have so much fun writing about that. And I have two very close friends in my life, and all my characters end up having two very close friends. And in this one, my friends were quite thrilled because they were like, that's not us. That was nice. But I think friendships are as interesting to write about as romantic. I think they're more. Because they're enduring and they change and they grow. So, yeah, writing about friendships is. I love doing it. And writing about Clements's friends who all, like, there's three of them. They've all made very different choices in their lives, but they find their way to connect with each other and to try to understand each other and then try not to talk to the other friend behind. Because there's three of them. Right. They try, like, when one person's doing questionable things, they. They try to refrain from. From gossiping because.
Zibby Owens
And siblings, too. I mean, it's like all these little tiny ecosystems of gossip and, you know, concern and where is the line?
Carrie Claire
It is. It's data. People are so interested. That's how I justify, I think, my passion for gossip. You know, I'm just very interested.
Zibby Owens
Yes. I have a curiosity about.
Carrie Claire
Yes, isn't that honorable?
Zibby Owens
So funny. So when you think about some of the messages of the book and about starting over and is it ever too late and all that is one of the takeaways here, that it is never too late to rewrite the story? Or is it that in so doing you may find that the outcome is just completely different than you had planned or. Or both?
Carrie Claire
I think it's both. And this is the first book I've written where the character's life is so different from my own. I have two children. I've been married for 20 years, and I. So what Clements does isn't a prescription for what a woman should do to fix her life, but it is in a way, because what she does is she just thinks very deeply about what she's done and what she wants. I think so many women don't know what they want. And so we think about what our children want and we think about what other people want, because focusing on what we want and what we desire is like, sometimes it's like staring into an. It's staring into a void. And that's. That's a really hard thing to grapple with. And so I think, you know, I've made more conventional choices in my life than Clemens, but I feel like the same deliberateness is there, being thoughtful about it rather than just doing it by rote. And so the prescription is don't have a threesome with your next door neighbors and blow up your marriage. It is figure out what your desire is and, you know, and prioritize that. I think women also are not meant to prioritize our own wants and needs. Like, Clements is a woman of appetites, and I think that's really beautiful and inspiring. And so I think consideration what your own appetites are and what you're desiring and follow that. And, you know, there's so many advice books in the world about, you know, how to. How to lose weight and how to read more and how to write. I don't think there is one answer ever. I mean, those books are helpful and we can read them, but in the end, you have to find your own way.
Zibby Owens
Any advice to aspiring authors?
Carrie Claire
I became an author based on being a blogger, and I learned that you can write a little bit at a time and little pieces add up to something whole. And so I think that's my favorite piece of advice. You don't need like eight hours to sit down and craft your book all day long. If you can write 200 words in a little period of time and then return to it, it will add up to something. So just do that.
Zibby Owens
Amazing. Kerry, thank you so much.
Carrie Claire
Thank you. This has been great.
Zibby Owens
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Camille Pagan
Oh, thank you Zibby.
Zibby Owens
Dog Person, tell us what it's about.
Camille Pagan
Oh, it is the story of Harold. He's an aging mutt based very much on my own aging mutt and he was adopted by a romance novelist, gosh, 13 years earlier than when the book begins and she has passed. And so he is trying to help his now owner, which was the romance novelist's partner, find love again because that was the last thing that his owner told him to do before she passed. It is very much a weeper, but it's a witty weeper. Writing this book took me through a very difficult time and was just a wonderful experience. Very proud of this one.
Zibby Owens
What was your difficult time?
Camille Pagan
Oh, well, coming out of the pandemic. But I lost a dear. Basically a father figure to me who was the person who encouraged me to be a writer. I grew up in a blue collared town. My family said go be an engineer. Do something very practical. And this person in my life said no, go do what you want to do. So I became a journalist and When I was 30 I started writing novels and he died by suicide. And it was really rough. Yeah, really hard. Different kind of pain than I experienced. I'D lost people.
Zibby Owens
This was different.
Camille Pagan
And my dog, who's actually a female, not a male, I had had her. I'd adopted her, gosh, 11 years earlier when this all happened. And she seemed to sense my pain in a way that was. I know dogs get us, but this was different. She would come sit on my feet. She would. If I was working too much, because I tend to lose myself in work as a coping mechanism, she would put her head under my hand where I was using the mouse, and lift it up. She really just seemed to understand what I was going through. And I had already been thinking about writing a book about a dog, but this inspired really, the story that became Dog Person. And it turns out I did a deep dive in research. Dogs know a lot. In addition to words, they smell our emotions. They really understand humans in an interesting way. And so it became a book.
Zibby Owens
Yeah. I'm so sorry for your loss. Complicated.
Camille Pagan
Complicated Grief. Yeah.
Zibby Owens
What do you mean, smell our emotions? Tell me the research. I need to know what my dog knows.
Camille Pagan
So, you know, not a vet. I read a lot of research. My background is in health and psychology, and I just go down a research rabbit hole. But the way that we sense other people's pheromones, you know, looking for mates, they can smell anxiety, stress, grief, joy. They can actually smell the way that we are feeling. And of course, they also pick up on other cues. But I just thought that was fascinating because I'm thinking, how are you understanding what I'm going through? And in a way that their sensory experience is very different from ours. So that was a lot of the editing I did was going through and thinking, well, this dog is narrating a story. He can't tell it like a human. I had to go back and put in a dog's way of looking at the world to the best of my ability, obviously.
Zibby Owens
Wow.
Camille Pagan
Yeah.
Zibby Owens
Well, the way the dog internalizes the grief and the way you have him sort of notice, like, oh, you know, it hasn't been since my person did this and this, like that, you know, he would smile or just like the way that he told the events of the world made us realize, like, oh, well, that's. Cause this. He hasn't been shaped. Or, you know, whatever. All the little details. I'm not saying that very clearly.
Camille Pagan
No, I'm following him.
Zibby Owens
You're. It's a different way to show don't tell in writing when you have a totally different perspective.
Camille Pagan
Yeah. Oh, I love that. I wasn't really conscious of that, but yes, the dog is Observing everything and seeing Miguel, who is his now owner, owns a bookstore. So this book is really all of the things I love. I think a lot of people I work with writers, it's like the second half of my day and I just noticed I wasn't the only one going through a hard time. I think the last couple years have been tough on a lot of people for many reasons. And I kept losing myself in books, which you do all the time, but I just really was reading a lot of romance, a lot of uplifting self help, and going to a lot of bookstores. And so in addition to my dog, there's these couple things that were really getting me through. And then I was like, I'll just put them all in a book. It was like all of my favorite things. Yeah. So I want my readers to get that too.
Zibby Owens
Well, one of the things that happens is in this bookstore there's a big deal author who's going to come speak, and Miguel gets the whole, you know, sells out the tickets and there they are waiting, and the big deal author never shows up. Right. And so Miguel decides he has to figure out what happened. And he's not content because he needs the money from the tickets to save the store, which was, you know, his beloved's dream. So he can't afford to let this happen and he wants to go track her down. And we end up in this, like, adventure situation in downtown Chicago, I think. Is that where it was? Yes, where he's trying to follow clues and figure out who the author is. And so it's also like a mystery. Yes. We have the heaviness of the grief and the creative of having a dog narrate. But it's also figuring out, like, what. What happened? What ha. What. What does it mean to be a talent? What does it mean to be an author? What do we have to do? What do we have to show up for?
Camille Pagan
Yeah, discuss. So the book is set in 2003, and I've worked in publishing my whole career. And during that particular era, there was kind of the male wunderkind, literary genius moment going on, which we still see today. But it was very much a thing then. And that was when I think a lot of authors had to reckon with the fact that you are a public person in the age of the Internet. I remember a land before email, so it's very, very different. And I just began thinking about who has the right to tell a story, who really has the right to be visible. I don't want to give away too much, but this book Is about a male dog following a man around. A man around. But it is about female voices in literature very much.
Zibby Owens
What do you make of Freda McFadden's recent
Camille Pagan
reveal that I only sent that article to a million people.
Carrie Claire
Right.
Camille Pagan
Oh, I mean, good on her. I hope she didn't feel pressured to reveal that. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah.
Zibby Owens
Yeah.
Camille Pagan
A lot of my writers who use pen names are the happiest, I've noticed, because there's a layer between fiction authors in particular, there's a layer between themselves and the world. I did not use a pen name. And sometimes I think about that, like, wouldn't that be nice to just have a remove?
Zibby Owens
But then you couldn't post all the time, could you?
Camille Pagan
A lot of them, they become their public Persona. Yeah. At least within social media, which I think is fascinating.
Zibby Owens
Well, I'm referring. You all know Freda McFadden and how the author, she was like, wearing a wig and with a different name. I don't know. Anyway. All right, we off topic. But on the discussion of authors in hiding, so to speak. Anyway, just came out. Okay, so when you were tracking down the author and plotting, you know, who are the co conspirators and who's going to come on this ride and how is Miguel going to change throughout the course of this story? What was his path for you? Like, where did you want him to start and end?
Camille Pagan
My agent kept telling me, make him more likable, which I think is fascinating, because if there are any female novelists in the crowd, that's something that we're often told about female characters. And I write away from that. In general, you'll find in all my books, I write very real people. Readers will often say, like, I wanted to shake her. And I'm like, I'm against violence, but I'm glad you felt something. And so the process in Miguel was very raw. It very much mirrored my own grief, but also just, you know, again, I have this privilege of working with a lot of novelists and hearing their stories. And as a journalist, I talk to a lot of people. And so just seeing what grief manifests as. We often think it's supposed to look a certain way and it rarely does. So putting in his confusion how everyone around him could see the most obvious thing to do when he couldn't see beyond his own nose, which I think is really common.
Zibby Owens
He also had a complicated relationship with his in laws.
Camille Pagan
Right, Correct.
Zibby Owens
His late in laws, which always makes things a little harder. But very close with his sister. So that was Good. Yes. It's interesting to see how family comes into play during times of stress. How did your family help you through that time?
Camille Pagan
So, interestingly, I relied more on my found family, which I think you'll find in this book, too, than my immediate family. I'm very close to my two sisters, so they showed up a lot for me. But it was my book community, my community in Ann Arbor, where I live now. People just showed up for me in ways that I didn't know that I needed. Bringing meals over, and I'm not like, oh, bring me food person. And they'd just be like, I brought you something. And just acts of kindness, something that Harold the Dog observes, too, is the gift of listening to someone. And I just noticed people were listening to me. I'm usually the listener, and that was really moving to experience.
Zibby Owens
Wow.
Camille Pagan
Yeah.
Zibby Owens
Well, after reading your book, I now feel even more guilty anytime I don't bring my dog with me anywhere.
Carrie Claire
Me, too.
Zibby Owens
Right after writing it, do you feel like you were in a moderately better place with.
Camille Pagan
Oh, by far?
Zibby Owens
Yeah.
Camille Pagan
Yeah. I mean, there was a lot. I'm a big believer in therapy. I think if you're struggling, go see someone who is trained in that. But I very much wrote that book for me, all of my other books, I've thought about one person that I don't know, a faceless person. And I think because my books are really about making the most of life, even though they're fiction. And I always think, someone's going to need to read this. And this one, when I was through, I think the second or third draft, I thought, oh, this one is for me, it was very healing. Yeah.
Zibby Owens
How many novels have you written now?
Camille Pagan
Eleven.
Zibby Owens
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I love it.
Camille Pagan
It's a compulsion. Compulsion.
Zibby Owens
I can't stop it.
Camille Pagan
Yeah.
Zibby Owens
What are you working on now?
Camille Pagan
My next one is called About Last Summer, and it's out next April.
Zibby Owens
So what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
Camille Pagan
Wait for the voice that you can't ignore. Every one of my books that I've written has been some little nagging character speaking to me. And I do believe Voice is the piece you can't teach. I think you can learn plot. I have to relearn how to write the middle of a novel. Every book I write, it's so hard. You can learn structure. You can unlearn the passive voice. I had to do that, too. It turns out. I don't ever use that as a journalist, but in my fiction, it's just littered with passive voice. But voice comes from your worldview and there's no one who can teach you that. And so I think if we're willing to listen. This book, I think is a bit of my own unlearning, having been raised in a certain era where male voices were elevated.
Zibby Owens
How many do you have in a drawer? So are we thinking like 20 novels at this point?
Camille Pagan
At least five in a drawer that will never see the light of day. Unfixable.
Zibby Owens
Yeah, but how do you then move past those and not feel dejected and discouraged?
Camille Pagan
I didn't go to an MFA program and I went to a school where I took maybe two creative writing classes. It was all just studying literature and kind of that path. And I really do think of those drafts as my one woman MFA program. Yeah, that no work is wasted, which is so painful when you are, we've all been there, sitting there, working on something, thinking, this is it. And you get to the end, you're like, this is not it. But that's just part of the job.
Zibby Owens
And yet it's a job that only the brave hearted can really stick to.
Camille Pagan
You know, truly, it is like running around a neighborhood in your underwear and asking everyone to tell you what they think of your body. It's terrible.
Zibby Owens
Oh my gosh, Camille, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, thank you, 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 ibeowensk and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books. Then I thought, what if I've scaled businesses? What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even greater meaning@creativeplanning.com impact. This is a vacation with Chase Sapphire Reserve. The butler, the spa. This is the edit, a collection of handpicked luxury hotels and a $500 edit credit. Chase Sapphire Reserve. Now more rewarding. Learn more@chase.com SapphireServe cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.
Camille Pagan
I'm Dr. Susan Swick, a child psychiatrist and the host of Talk about Able. This season, I'm talking with parents and experts about how we tackle the everyday challenges of raising kids. We'll get real about those pebble in the shoe issues we all face as parents and how to build resilience and community through our own experience. Experiences. Talk About Able Season 2 from Lemonada Media, in partnership with Montage Health and their Ohana center for Child and Family Mental Health, is out now.
Totally Booked with Zibby — Episode Summary
Kerry Clare & Camille Pagán (May 27, 2026)
In this special two-in-one episode, host Zibby Owens brings listeners insightful, heartfelt conversations with acclaimed authors Kerry Clare and Camille Pagán, delving into themes of reinvention, the transformative power of books and community, processing grief, and writing as both craft and healing practice. Both interviews were recorded live at Totally Booked Live, featuring two authors who foreground women’s voices and unusual perspectives in their new works.
(Interview starts at 03:08)
(Interview starts at 21:24)
For more, follow Zibby Owens on Instagram and visit zibbymedia.com. And, as always: buy the books!