Find Your Book’s Hidden Interest, with Audrey Clare Farley

How a multi-published, celebrated author, instructor, and literary agent finds her focus.

Follow what genuinely surprises you.

This is one big takeaway for writing (and maybe for life) in this episode of Publishing Disrupted with Audrey Clare Farley.

We also discussed what makes nonfiction stand out today: a strong hook paired with real substance, the rise of “memoir plus,” how the publishing world seems to reward exposes and could do a better job bringing in nuance and deeper discussion.

A thoughtful conversation about curiosity, craft, and writing the book only you can write.

Beyond her role as a Hyponymous Literary agent, Audrey is a celebrated author, editor, and literary scholar with a PhD in English literature. Her two nonfiction books, The Unfit Heiress, and Girls and Their Monsters, are both standout stories of suffering, injustice, and betrayal, the latter of which became a New York Times Editors’ Pick. As an instructor for Mount St. Mary’s University and Narratively Academy, her niche is narrative nonfiction, especially memoir, biography, history, and cultural criticism.

https://audreyclarefarley.substack.com/

https://www.hyponymous.com/team-1

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/audrey-clare-farley/the-unfit-heiress/9781538753361/

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/audrey-clare-farley/girls-and-their-monsters/9781538724484/

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Okay, so hey, hey everybody. Welcome to Publishing Disrupted Podcast again. My name is Mick Silva.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

And I'm literary agent and publisher David Morris, and you're an editor, Mick Silva.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

I always forget that part, yes. I am an editor and we are exploring the ways in which books publishing is changing and trying to help authors uh navigate that change. And uh, you know, so I mean we always start with something like what's new, you know, what what's going on with you. I could start, I basically am trying to stay out of trouble this summer and take it easy, not work too hard. I was talking last time about like taking walks and enjoying the change, nature that's happening around our yard. And um, so I'm I'm trying to garden and be calm and relaxed and not get too uh ambitious, especially during the summer when we all try to take vacations. But I've got my uh uh frog and toad shirt on in on honor of uh Pride Month, as Marla Taviano pointed out. Um sat with and did nothing. Frog sat with him.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Just relax, be calm, it's good. Um I mean, I'm generally, but it helps to be reminded.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

So many things you can always be doing in publishing. It's like there's never enough to get done, or you never you're never you feel like you're never enough sometimes. I think that's one of the big challenges because the editing could always be more, the marketing could always be more, the dollars could always be more for sure. So uh yeah, you feel it. You do feel it. And you know, you gotta let it go to sometimes put it down.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah, and you wear a lot of hats, I know, as a publisher or anything. Yeah, I definitely feel it.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

I gotta be careful. Yeah. So today we are joined by uh another person who's already nodding away about some of these things. Um, another publishing person, Audrey Claire Farley. Um, thanks for joining, Audrey. How are you how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So I have a I have a little bio. We're excited to have you here. Um I have a little bio here for you I would like to read, and you can um you can comment on it if you want to. But uh Audrey, Audrey, I mean, I'm really excited about this listeners. Uh Audrey is really one of the most qualified, and I I'm not trying to buddy up Audrey, but the word brilliant actually works for you. And um I I really think Audrey is somebody whose books, whose work you should get to know. Audrey is an author, editor, and literary scholar after earning a PhD in English literature. She turned to creative nonfiction, writing two books, The Unfit Heiress and Girls and Their Monsters. The latter won the Michigan Notable Book Award, where I'm where we are in Michigan. Audrey's in Pennsylvania. Um the latter won the Michigan Notable Book Award and was named a New York Times editor's pick. Farley continue currently teaches part-time at Mount St. Mary's University in Pennsylvania and leads creative writing workshops for Narratively Academy, something you should look up, where she has helped many authors to develop book ideas. She's most interested in narrative nonfiction, especially memoir, biography, history, and cultural criticism. Did I get all that right? Is everything in Pennsylvania that I said was in Pennsylvania?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

No, actually the university is in Maryland, but I'll forgive you for that.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

I thought maybe that was off. But you are in Pennsylvania. There's that.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah. There's parts of Maryland that sort of stretch over.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Like this very skinny part of Maryland, right? Or am I thinking West Virginia? No, it's Maryland. No, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

You're right.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah. You could be like in Pennsylvania, drive through Maryland, and be in like Virginia very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Very quickly. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Um Yeah, well, it's it's been great to get to know Audrey myself um through we first met online, I think, in the sort of exvangelical Twitter days.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

And um connected with I'm not an ex evangelical, but I was interested in that space. I was writing about it um for the new republic. And so that is, I think, how I connected with you. And then I did a little bit of work for you for Lake Drive.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

And and we stayed in touch.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah. And uh so you have been um a professor or instructor part-time, um a writer almost full-time, it seems. Uh let's not forget mom and family person, uh raising a few kids, a couple kids. And um you've also been, and you just mentioned it, you've been submitting articles out there too.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, not as much lately.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Um where have you been published in the past?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

I have written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and I've done most of my work for the New Republic. Um now, freelance work, like the wider publishing industry, is a crapshoot. It's very little pay for a lot of work. So the more that I've gotten bylines, the less pressure I feel to be doing it. So I I probably only do a few stories a year. Um just because they are so time intensive.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yeah. Yeah. Do those wind up being in print or just online only, some of them?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Mostly just online.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Interesting. Yeah, that's what I thought. I I don't think writers quite realize that that a lot of publishing goes on only online.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

But it's still a byline.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

It is, yes. And I'm I'm grateful for them. I'm glad to have them. I just don't feel pressured to chase them anymore.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Did you have those bylines before you got your first major book deal or after?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Um, that's a good question. I think I had one or two. Um, and actually the book deal grew out of a an article. Um, so my first book was about the heiress Ann Cooper Hewitt, whose mother had her forcibly sterilized back in um the early 1900s, and it sparked this very sensational case. Uh it was like a kind of Kardashians, the mom and daughter fighting in public. And um, I wrote a story about it for narratively, and it this it very quickly went viral, and it caught the attention of a prominent actor who was interested in the film rights. And so it was her people that actually connected me with my literary agent.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Wow, what a path to publishing, huh?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah. Um, especially because I had queried a ton of people already with that story, and um it hadn't really gone anywhere. So I do wonder, you know, if it if it hadn't been for the article, would it have ended up a book? I don't know, but it it goes to show how hard it really is to get out of the slush pile.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Did it end up a film as well?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

No. So supposedly it's still in development. Um, it moves very slowly. I don't know if it'll if anything will happen. Um, I, you know, if it does, that's great, but I'm not really expecting it.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah, certainly an intriguing story.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

So you you you didn't start out and go, I'm gonna write a book about this, about I wanted to write a book.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

And I was kind of like feeling around for what topic could get me a book. Because at that point in my life, I had had recently graduated with a PhD, but I didn't have a tenure track job. My family had moved back to our hometown um for other reasons. And so I was kind of looking for a second act, like, okay, I'm not gonna be a tenure track professor. I've got to do something else. Wanted to write a book, was feeling around for things. Um, so yeah, I was very grateful that this did take off and I was able to get my foot in the door.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

So, what led you to like t tell us about Audrey Farley? Like, what leads her to be interested in this person named Cooper Hewitt? Because I just I want to I kind of want to get at like that creative side that we all try to nurture. And, you know, when I when I look at your books, I think, man, I I had no idea about any of this. And I think most people have no idea about any of this. But Audrey clearly became super fascinated and learned everything, everything about it, it seems. Um what I mean, that that to me is just to me, that's mental health, actually, because you're just so, you know, absorbed by your topic. Um, talk about that a little bit. I'd love to learn more.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah. Well, actually, um, I had started with an interest in eugenics because my daughter had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I was reading about the history of insulin. Insulin's only been around for a hundred years, and I read that diabetics were actually part of forced sterilization campaigns, which really surprised me. And I I thought, well, what was eugenics? What was this movement? And um that caught you.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

You got surprised by something.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yes, I did. I got surprised by that. Um, and eugenics was something I had not really learned about in school, either high school or college. Um, it's kind of like this little-known movement in American history. And so I kind of was got sucked down the eugenics rabbit hole. And um, I was reading a book called Building a Better Race by Wendy Klein. And in that book, she had a chapter on Anne Cooper Hewitt, this heiress who had been sterilized by her mother. And I mean, the wheels were turning as I was reading the chapter, and I couldn't believe that there was not already a book about her, that there wasn't already a Netflix show about her. What really intrigued me, and what I often look for in books and in projects that I want to represent is that it had this really sensational, splashy story, which is necessary today. But it also um was intellectually probing. So um it was, you know, big and splashy and felt commercial, but um, it was also provocative and um really illuminated parts of our history that I didn't know about. And um, so it had those two pieces. That's what really attracted me.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Wow. Yeah, that's that's that's super that's super amazing. Um and so this was like your you know, you you took you mentioned earlier this is sort of like your second act or your other act that you're doing as opposed to the career track you thought you would be on. Right. And you and you found something that was you didn't know about it. It's something you didn't know about. You didn't learn about it in school. That's a that's that there you go. We if you're all trying to write a book, write down ten things that you're learning about now that you didn't know about in school. That's probably a great idea. Um and actually the piece of yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Well, I was gonna say this piece will interest you, Mick. Um the um the eugenicist who testified at Ann's trial in favor of her forced sterilization was the mentor of James Dobson.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

So that was my my big research find in that piece was that um the founder of Focus on the Family actually got his start at a pro-eugenics institute in California. Um and it was not a secret that it was a eugenics institute. Um it was like in the language of the mission statement. That's how James Dobson cut his teeth. And so around the time that the book was published, I had an article about James Dobson's eugenics roots in um Religion and Politics, which is now ARC magazine. And um, that went wider than any any other press piece about the book. Um, I Kristin Cobez-Dumay retweeted it. It's actually cited in her forthcoming book. Um and you know, a lot of evangelical scholars didn't even know about that that aspect of Dobson's history.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Well, yeah, of course, it kept it pretty well hidden.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

And yeah, not gonna talk about anything like that. A little bit like the the Nazi connection, uh in the conservative movement. But um but yeah, it's it's uncomfortable, it's it's deeply uh unjust, right? The injustice, I guess, the part that that intrigues me about your um pursuing projects like this is uh the surprise that happens, the connection to your your personal life with your daughter, and then also just that sense of uh injustice that's deeply there's something deeply wrong that you kind of want to write that wrong or at least learn about it some more as as an act of of uh being uh or doing justice to these people whose stories have never been told.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Say the title again of the book, the title and subtitle, Andre.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

It's The Unfit Heiress, uh, the tragic life and scandalous sterilization of Ian Cooper Hewitt.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

And it was published in 2020 2021 by Grand Central. Grand Central, which is part of his shit. And it did really well, too, as I understand it. So as I think I've heard from you.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah. I mean, I don't think it sold as much as publishers like books to sell, but right.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

But it was like can you can you get a ballpark number for listeners? Like what is that what does that look like here to just throw another?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

The last time I checked, it had 25,000 sales, but many of them were digital sales that come from like when Kindle has a special and the book is 99 cents. Oh I don't know, I don't know what the exact breakdown is.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yeah. Um that's a publisher conversation.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Well, and and scholars can re refer to your work. I think there's there's a thing there with the historical element that allows it to have a longer shelf life often. Uh, yeah, and educational settings, but you know, it might be recommended in some classes. But as you get into deeper themes of eugenics and and obviously with people coming out of uh cults and you know, all kinds of discussions about deconstructing an ex-vangelical movement, um, this is kind of on the rise. So I wouldn't expect I mean, I would expect a lot of people finding new respect for such stories. And that it's been going on so long. I think that's another thing that's really reaffirming, especially uh as we look at like current day. This has been going on a long time. That that these are not new ideas that we're coming up against uh you know, when you're looking at just the political landscape of today. Um there's historical roots to a lot of these injustices.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

And uh so I don't know, my hat's off to you. That's amazing. And digging down into something, I mean you must get a lot of pleasure from that, right? And learning learning more about something.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

It's curious. Yeah, I I love to research. Um, the research and the conceptualization is my favorite part of book writing. Um, because I am trained as an academic, I think I have um much more tolerance for the historical asides and the kind of deep research in a book. And that's something that like readers complain about if I go on Goodreads. So like stay on topic. Oh you know, like they want just the main narrative and none of the context or very little of it. Um I want all the context to all the history.

unknown 17:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

How many words have patience? How many words was that first book? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Uh about 73. Not not terribly long.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

You couldn't have meandered too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

And then and then you had you had some that I mean, that's a pretty good number, even if it was a lot of Kindle special sales, that's still a really good number. They couldn't have been that big of a percentage. Um, but but then you were off to the races and your publisher wants another book, and you publ what what's the title of your second book? And when did that come out?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Um, that came out two years later in 2023. Uh, Girls and Their Monsters, The Janine Quadruplets, and the Making of Madness in America. And that one was about a set of quadruplet sisters born in 1930, who all developed schizophrenia by their early 20s. And that caught the attention of researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health who studied them. And at first they thought, oh, this is proof of the genetics of mental illness, because there's four of them, they have the same DNA, and um, come to find out that they had really lived in a house of horrors. They had been subjected to a lot of abuse within the home and in some of the sisters' cases at the hands of people in the community. But the narrative about the family was so sterling. Like they were just um these picture perfect girls and a picture-perfect family. They had a singing and dancing act and they would tour and sing like these cute little folks y songs about America. And so um, it seemed to me like the community, the people of Michigan, and even the wider nation were very invested in this image of white American girlhood. And so they really became like these screens onto which the public projected all these um these fantasies and um and that really shrouded the reality of abuse within their home and with when many, you know, white Christian homes. And so um what was special about that project is that one of the sisters was still living and she actually agreed to be interviewed. And that was one of the greatest privileges of my life, but also a great responsibility. I didn't have that with the first book because everyone was dead. Um, it's it's a bigger weight to shoulder when someone is alive. Um and what what's really interesting about that book from a publishing perspective is it was much more widely covered by the legacy press. So it was reviewed in the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, even in England in the Times Literary Supplement, but the sales were much fewer than with the first book. So I've always thought that was curious.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah, that might be a mystery you never solve.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Sometimes I think you know, if that first book caught on with the and um you mentioned uh Kristen Dumais, if it if it caught on with sort of the evangelical or ex-evangelical subculture um as a fascination thing of regarding Dobson, that might have been there might have been a stream there because that can be a very tightly knit book community that really gloms onto things. I don't know if that rings true.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm always trying to figure out those you know, little theories as to why a book really takes off as opposed to some others.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Um let me know when you crack the code.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, right. There are some things that you can point to, but sometimes it's still very much a mystery. Um and I don't want to presume too much when I'm especially when I'm talking to the author of that book. Um so so you you so how did you get on to that idea from so you're you're you've just Successfully published the first book. Now, how did you get on to this next book? Girls and their moms.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

I have to give my mom credit for that. She had been reading Robert Culker's bestseller, Hidden Valley Road, which was also about a big family. I think it was 12 kids. Six of them had schizophrenia. And in that book, he very briefly mentioned the quads. And my mom said, you should write your next book about them. And at first I was not interested. I thought, you know, what am I going to say about this nature literature debate? I've nothing to offer. But when I Googled them and saw the images of them, they really look like the Jean Bonet from like long ago, just perfectly coiffed and put together. There was such a pageantry. I very quickly got sucked into the story. And even though, you know, I'm not a scientist, I can't weigh in scientifically about the nature nurtured debate. This was also a story about culture and um about the myths that Americans and specifically white Americans tell themselves. And so that was my turf. I did feel, you know, qualified to speak to that, to the mythology that surrounded the girls.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, to show the the depth of the story. Um, that is not something you're going to see in a uh psychiatric research paper. Um and the connection that the nature, that's the problem with psychology and nature nurture conversations is that they don't, you know, it the weakness I would say is it doesn't always account for the power of culture to affect the the individual mind. Um you know, for example, uh if you study mental illness over the decades and the centuries, mental illness manifests in different ways depending on upon social structure and cultural structure. Um just look it up. It's there. And and I and that, but yet that's not always something you'll find in a statistically significant peer-reviewed experimental psychology research paper.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Right. And also uh culture shapes scientific understanding of the disease. So one of the books that I uncovered in my research was um Jonathan Metzel's The Protest Psychosis, which talks about how over the last century schizophrenia became coded as a black disease in the civil rights era. And it was associated with protest, with antagonists. And in the clinical imagination, it really went from being a white to a black disease. And when it became a black disease, what happened? Well, um, prisons replaced hospitals. And the policy around schizophrenia changed just because scientists had a different understanding of who was afflicted by it. Um, so culture shaping everything.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

So, so I want to get to the next book that you, the next project you want to work on, as much as you're comfortable sharing about it.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Okay, sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

But what what do you think at this point in time, at that point in time, after the second book had been out for a while, what was your understanding of publishing? Or what what were some takeaways you felt like you were working on?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Um, well, I I think that I intuited how much scale and sensation matter. And I have conflicting feelings about that.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Um scale scale meaning scale meaning what?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Like a big splashy story. A mom who sterilized her daughters, four sisters who are abused and develop schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

A sensational story that can scale, that can catch on.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yes. Um, yes, and I think that um there is a lot of emphasis on nonfiction that unveils or exposes or pulls back the curtain. And um, that's what those two books do. They both like pull back the curtain on American history in a way that is revelatory for a lot of people and was revelatory for me as I was writing. I think like the further we get into Trumpism, I have questioned how much um unveiling really changes things. Like, is it enough to point to American history and this history of violence? Does that is that enough? I think my mind has changed about that since those two books were published. Um, and that's it's not enough to point. Um, that nonfiction often needs to do more. And I don't know that traditional publishing is is prepared to support the more.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Whoa, that's pretty that's what do you think, Nick? That's pretty heavy.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

That's super provocative. I just want to dig down on that. What uh say more. Why do you think that is? What I mean, what evidence of that do you see?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Um I think that have you guys talked about that novel yesterday?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

We haven't yet.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Explain what it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Okay, so that is um a viral novel about a trad wife, which seems to be very thinly veiled um character um inspired by Ballerina Farm, um, a woman online who has like millions of followers. Um, I think that the book um is beloved by many people for supposedly exposing the trad wife life. And there's a lot of criticism of it too. I think The New Yorker did a piece um about how it's just like rage bait, doesn't really help us to understand Christian women or understand trad wives or anything like that. But I think the book speaks to the appetite among many progressives to see conservatives humiliated, uh, to see them exposed.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yes, there's this there's a stream of those kinds of books in the broader market publishing. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Um not that we're trying to defend conservatives, but that there's also not at all. There's also a train wreck desire to work.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And I I think that like if we're really gonna climb out of this mess, that we need to move past exposing, humiliating, and do the harder work of dialogue and encounter. I really believe that. Um and I think that there are not enough books being published that encourage people to do that hard work of dialogue and encounter. And for that reason, I don't really look to the publishing industry as a counterweight to Trumpism. I think it's doing more of the same.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

It still wants the sensation that will scale.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Exactly. And that's what Trumpism is. It's like scale sensation, always exceeding yourself.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

Um bicycle jumps on the front lawn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah, exactly. Bicycle jumps on the front lawn. Um I think like how do you how do you counter that? You counter that with stories that are quiet, with voices that are tentative and questioning. Um, and to ask a question is actually a really radical thing. Um, I don't think there's enough nonfiction being published that is curious, that's exploratory. Um, you know, people are publishing from a place of certainty.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Um, which and with a kind of like table pounding authority, um, I don't think that's enough to counter Trumpism.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

In your in your books, you were, you talk about how you were revealing, you were pulling back the curtain. If you were with with what you're saying now, would you how would you have approached them differently than you did before? Not that I'm asking you to feel regrets or anything. It's just just to give us an example of what you mean by quieter voice, which is really cool. Uh dialogue, being curious. What ideas come to mind as to how you might have or how you might do things different going forward? Either way.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Um that's a really good question. Um because I don't think that those books, as proud as I am of them, and and as important I think the work is of educating um people about the past, I don't think that they really changed minds. You know, like um I think especially with the second book, Girls and Their Monsters. Um I should have brought um more to for how much her faith, the living quadruplets faith, um was a means of survival for her.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Despite it being perhaps a conservative and subverted.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Exactly. Yeah, and I mean it's nodded to in the book, and there's there's um there's some parts in the conclusion about how her faith meant how much it meant to her. Um, but I think I could have done more.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

It's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I I I I agree with that. Go ahead, Nick.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah, I know it's a lifeline to for a lot of people, and I think it's it's misunderstood by the people who are often um maybe on the stage or in the forefront of people's minds as representatives of religion or even faith in general. Um so in in some ways it's doing a disservice to those who have either left already or just are unaffiliated because they're getting a wrong idea of what faith actually is.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Exactly. Exactly. And you know, um I got to see Kristen Comas Kristen Cobez-Dumay speak when she came to Pennsylvania, and you know, she made the point that Christian nationalism is theologically rooted, and so um the antidote needs to be theological. And I really do believe that. I really think the people who are most equipped and who have been most successful um at combating Trump do so from a position of moral authority. Pope Leo, um, this man who speaks softly um but just stands in the gospel. He has managed to um to undermine Trump in ways that the left could learn from.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

It's quiet.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Yeah, it's hard to argue with it. Yeah. Well, I think the point it's it's hard to argue with someone who's just speaking confidently and quietly and knows their stuff.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, and I think like you know, it's I have such a complicated relationship with um the Catholic Church, which is where I come from, because you know, I don't believe a lot of the doctrine, but I pay attention. I read everything that Pope Leo and Pope Francis before him wrote. Um, and I I really think that the Pope's language of disarmament is like the word we need right now. Um, and I think about it and not to veer too far from this question of publishing, um stories that disarm. Like what does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Um stories that can ask questions that don't profess to have all the answers. I think that that's what we need more of. I really do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Yeah, there's a peaceful approach. There's a there's a non-violent approach, right to to capitalism.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Yeah, a lot of what you're pointing to is the deep discomfort that David and I had with the risk-averse sort of publishing tradition. Um that it says we need it to be sensational, we need it to to be loud and and and proud. And uh what about quiet and peaceful and nonviolent and reflective question-asking, uncertain even mystery, right? And wonder and uh it's like those those are given nods, maybe once in a while. Um but yeah, to actually make that front and center in a in a publishing program would be amazing to see.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yeah, I mean, I really think there is a vision of the human person embedded in the acquisitions process, and it is not morally neutral. When people acquire projects that are risk averse, that they think can be scaled and um reproduced and they're predictable. Um, that's not just shaping the art. It's actually like putting forth an idea of the human person, that the human person is um efficient. It's a it's an author who already has visibility. So there's a measure of value that is attached to visibility, um, that the process of creation is not messy and full of friction. Um and so again to quote Pope Leo, one thing he said in his recent encyclical is that the problem with AI is more anthropological than technological. And I think like that that logic applies to publishing. Like the problems are anthropological as much as they are aesthetic or anything else. And a lot of the discussion about the publishing industry talks about like bad art or you know, bad whatever. It's like there is a vision of human of the human person that is being put forward by these publishing houses, and it has real material consequences for human beings on this earth.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

We absolutely experience that in evangelical Christian publishing, which is very much about um dil derivative content, who's saying who's repackaging the same, the same tropes over and over again in new ways. Um, it's it there's just so much stuff that is just a copy of something else that is being pushed by the person who's got the is now using TikTok the best, or person who was using Twitter the best a while ago, or the person who is creating church, structuring churches and popular churches the best, or who's doing women's conferences the best. Um, it all kind of shifts, but you look at the content, it's the same stuff they've been saying 25, 50 years ago. Um and and it it's it you you really feel that what you just said about how like the anthropology of that. What is what is the commentary on the human person? Uh, I think that's why Mick and I aren't part of the reason why Mick and I aren't in it, whether by choice or not, you know, we're you know, I think I think uh most of us, whether we're in evangelical publishing or not, we really want to get at the human story. But the systems don't always show it to you, and you've gotta go find it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

You mentioned cultural myths and uh narratives, right, that we we are telling ourselves. And I think of them, I mean, this is simplistic and generalized, obviously, but just quickly the cat to encapsulate that the story that's being told, maybe about the quadruplets or you know, people with uh any any uh you know marginalized status, right, is is this narrative, this cultural narrative. And if you dig down on that a little bit deeper, you find out there's a lot of deep injustice that they're suffering. And you start to learn the person underneath that uh whitewashed narrative, basically. And uh what I see uh publishing at at the highest levels in traditional houses typically is not willing to look at they want to keep the cultural narrative, just go off of the extra uh you know, splashy, like you said, story, um, and and not dig down on things, not find that one person or the the particular detailed stories. And yet readers are people who love a particular specific detailed story. And so there's this tension, right? Uh that all is always at work. And so I I just love the language you're putting to this too, because to me, exactly what David is saying, the problem that we see in publishing is that they're trying to duplicate success. And obviously that's that's they never can duplicate success, right? Don't know why something's sold. It's not gonna work. So and it never works.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt. If you go to certain sections in a bookstore, like a broad market bookstore, you'll see a lot of you'll see like, oh wow, this is all this one topic area, even might even be like uh really niche fiction kind of thing. Like romanticy is really driving a lot of the industry right now. In fact, there's bookstores opening now more than they ever were, indie bookstores, but it's because of the romanticy interest, the you know, the romance and fantasy genres, but also the hybrid of them. Um, or I'm thinking of another author right now that I've been working with who's publishing to a particular category area that you could see it on the bookshelves. I'm not gonna name it right now. And and this author has pitched something to a publisher who's who's taken it, but but the publisher is pushing back, saying you've got to fit better in the category. And this author's like, no, I know that category. I know it backwards and forwards, and I have for years and years. I'm trying to do something within it that's different. And so there's that, there's that pressure. I think, I think the as publishing people, we feel that pressure a lot. And we don't always, you know, it's it's not it, you know, there's this sort of idealistic idea about what an editor and an acquisitions team might be doing. But but, you know, I was a publisher, so you know, I I gave Mick worked with me. Mick had 12 titles he had to acquire a year, he had to drive $3 million worth of revenue a year, you know. That that's how those conversations start on performance evaluations. And if you don't think that's not driving the way that you acquire things from a humanity anthropological point of view, you know, you're wrong. They do drive it quite a bit. I'm sorry, I'm going on and on now. So you talked about your your background a little bit, Audrey. You grew up Catholic, a pretty strict Catholic background. And that has something to do with your next project. What, what, what's where are you right now with that? Uh, how are you feeling about that? Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Well, that one has evolved so much, I think, even since you read parts of it. Um, so I grew up in the Lamb of God community, which was a covenant community in Baltimore, Maryland, that was part of what was called the wider Catholic Charismatic Renewal. And um, the charismatic renewal actually started as a progressive force uh in the wake of Vatican II, which was um a council that really modernized the Catholic Church. So, for instance, um Changing the language of the Mass so that it wasn't in Latin, but it was in people's vernacular, uplifting lay people, saying that lay people have a greater role in the life of the church. There were all these reforms, um, changed attitudes towards um toward Jewish people, um, because people understood what had happened with the Holocaust and the theological roots of anti-Semitism. Um, so that started as a really modernizing force in the church. Um, and I think it's a good thing to empower the laity. But what happened is then these lay figures kind of became like priests then, where they were um very authoritative and dictatorial. And so I was part of this community um that I think my parents joined because they kind of liked the hippie culture and everybody relying on each other, having this built-in family, um, but that quickly became um very rigid ideologically. There was a keen sense of like insiders versus outsiders. So even as a young person, I I knew that like we were sanctified in a way that public school children weren't. And um it was really familiar, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Yeah. And including the hippie part. The hippie part.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Yeah. Um, and the the priest who was part of this was eventually exposed, um, or incredibly accused of molesting uh some women and children. And so I began it as a memoir of that community um that really was doing that work of unveiling, exposing, pulling back the curtain. But the more that I really began to study um Pentecost, I really was drawn to its like really disruptive hermeneutics. And I was surprised to find out how much Pentecost shaped even secular thinkers and movements.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

You're saying disruptive hermeneutics of Pentecost itself.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Not a movement. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Right. So, um, you know, Pentecost, of course, is from the book of Acts. Um, after Jesus has ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit comes down, people are like speaking in tongues and on fire. That image, that idea of Pentecost has really inspired a lot of revolutionaries um across history. And if anything, Pentecost has been more associated with revolution than what I experienced, which was this very rigid insular community. Um, so Pentecost influenced, for instance, somebody like Hegel, um, the German philosopher who really radically reconceptualized history and left an impact on philosophy that was picked up by Karl Marx and friends. And um, and even like there's a uh Slovenian philosopher today, Zizek, right? He's like a neo-Marxicist who's picking up on Hegel, who's picking up on Pentecost. So Zizek is an atheist, and he nevertheless, standing outside Occupy Wall Street a decade or so ago, called upon the Holy Spirit to come galvanize the crowds outside Wall Street. And that's so curious to me. Why is this atheist neo-Marxist um invoking the tradition of Pentecost? That's just one example. I've found so many. I think also about Reverend William Barber at the 2016 National Convention. He gave a speech and he ended his speech um by calling for fire from above. Um, so Pentecost had a part at the DNC convention. Um, so that's the the book has gotten bigger than just thinking about my own experience in the Lamb of God to being a wider history of Pentecost in the way that it has inspired both believers and non-believers. Um and I'm it's slow going, but that's that's my writing project.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Sort of like where where the that inspiration can take you and how how it could be used maybe in exploitative ways versus revolutionary good good disruption ways.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah, I think the image of people speaking in tongues and that are kind of like spilling out of their bodies is a really radical one. Um like just this idea of bodily difference of a body that is not contained, that is on fire. That's radical.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Yeah. Sounds mystical. It sounds connected to psychedelic movement right now, in a way, in my mind, anyway.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Yeah, I'll have to look into that.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 49:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

There's a lot of function there. I mean politically, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

And you've pitched this book too already, right? With an agent.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yeah. So that was an earlier version of it. Um, and the feedback was really wonderful. And people were very moved by it. But they, as we've been saying, they're like, well, I don't know where this fits in, or you know, I don't know how we would begin to market this. It's too unruly. Um, it's not something that they could easily figure out how to market or position. Um, so it's probably bound for a university press or um an independent press, and I'm fine with that.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

But you would still call it narrative nonfiction, or you used a phrase with me once a long time ago, and I'm not gonna remember it, but it was more like Was it creative nonfiction? No, it was more like you used the word reportage.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Or even journalistic deep journalism.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Okay. Huh.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

I'll have to think what that was.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

So so you maybe started with this book with the idea of trying to do a revealing and a sensational story that scales.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

But now you're asking a bigger question, a more curious vein of thinking of what is that right?

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah. I mean, maybe it's a conjuring, uh, you know, a come holy spirit. Um I think that what has changed is realizing um that people really do need to feel inspired, um, to use the ghostly word here. Um they want to feel sparked, they want to feel on fire and like run excitedly acros over the mountainside with good news. And um I think so many people um are bombarded with like catastrophizing headlines, um, with this sense that our enemies are damned forever, never to change. They're terrible people and they always will be. Um, as somebody who came from the Christian right and is no longer, I can't accept that kind of fixity of personhood. It's not um the story of my life or you two or many other people that I've met. I believe in second chances, third, fourth, fifth chances. And so I want to tell a story about people who are transformed. Um, and I also want to like tell a story that finds a common language between secular and religious, sacred and profane. And that's another thing that attracts me to Pentecost, is it it already is a shared language. Um and and so that's what I'm hoping to do with that.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

Yeah, well, in shared language we're always trying to come up with ways to simplify that, and then of course it gets complexified again. I love that word, complexified. Uh in inspiritus being inspired, that's another word I always couple, right? Absolutely. We we have this long tradition in Christianity of God with us, and often that's not enough. We want God in us. And I I've really felt uh recently that there is an absence of that in our culture, even just our cultural dialogue. We're we're suspect. For good reason. I mean, obviously it's right, but you need something. And and you need you will believe in something like regardless. Uh atheists even believe in something. So I I do believe that there is this need for some sort of filling, whether that's of Pentecost or of God or something else that is greater than you or higher than you. Something that inspires you to go run a field and tell everybody about it, right? Um that's that's a human need. And yet if we we need to take it seriously. Um I feel like we don't. We do it a lot of disservice. I dismiss it all the time in my daily life. I don't need that. I'm smarter than that. So I don't I don't need anything. And yet what do I do in the very next moment? Feel that feel that needs to be so and and I started it by saying I want to relax, I want to take it easy, I look into nature. I don't say it's God, but there's a need there, right? And that's just a human desire. So I love that like all of your projects seem to be getting at that in some way. Maybe just that spark of curiosity, right? That you have honor and you take seriously. And then you follow it and see where it leads, you know.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

As as publishing people looking for books, trying to shepherd book ideas forward, um, you know, we we often like Mick and I have talked, I think we talked on the podcast too, about how there you if you counted up all the Christian nationalism books that have been coming out the last five years, even like very recently, there's there's some coming all the way, I know one coming out in September. It it's quite a bit. And as someone who's kind of really familiar with the topic and has been in it, uh, you know, knows it, knows the people in it, some of them directly. It I'm I'm I'm kind of like, wow, do we really need another one of those? And where is that book? I love what Audrey said, Mick, about where's that book about making people wanting to, they want to, they want to be inspired, they want to run around the hill, they want to run around the mountainsides or the hilltops, whether that's a whether that's talking about Jesus or whatever, but they wanna they want to be have joy. Yeah they want to get involved in something that bring that makes them ecstatic in a sense, too. I think that's something of a bit of an American phenomenon, a fairly culturally ruddless society, as great as it might be in if from economically. Um but um I yeah, yeah, I think that's that's what we're we're really challenged by. We have often and I've often said, you know, we're we're really challenged by trying to find another one of those really deep writer, like spiritual writers. You just don't see that going on right now, like maybe you did 25 years ago or 50 years ago, like the Frederick Bieckner type for today. Who would that be? Or the or the Madeline Langle type, or even the maybe more recently the Barbara Brown Taylor type. You don't see that as much as you as I mean, we'd love to see that more. Um the curiosity and the way that it the way you can spin curiosity, whether it's a narrative nonfiction or a treatise on Pentecost or what have you. Um and you're a publishing person too. Maybe we wrap up with that. So you're now a publishing person too. You work with me at Hyponymus Literary, which has been a true delight. There's been some amazing projects to come and just with just a handful of clients so far. Uh you're you're you're you're fitting it into the rest of your life. It's something you approach me about. You wanted to do more of. Talk about what your hope is with being a literary agent.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

And are you looking for proposals?

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Yeah. Um, well, for the last few years, I've been with a company, Narratively Academy, and um they teach a lot of writing and workshop uh classes. And so for them, I was already working one-on-one with a lot of authors, helping them to conceptualize book ideas, begin to write them, even put together a book proposal. And I felt like I was doing the work of an agent. And so that's when I went to David and made my plea um for him to take me on as a mentee.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

And he's really tough decision, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Um, thank you. And I have so appreciated that opportunity and the freedom that David gives me and the trust that he has in me with the different projects that I'm drawn to. Um I think that like agenting really is a test of values because it's easy to like look at corporate publishing and say, you guys are so capitalistic. And um and agenting is like you also have to make choices about projects, whether they're commercial or not. So I've given a lot of thought to like how can I be a disruptor to use your word, but also like, you know, not fail as an agent. And um, part of it is a willingness to take on projects that I know are bound for a smaller press or an indie. Um, part of it is giving authors a second chance or even a third chance, if possible. I think that like in the name of combating like the efficiency that is demanded of doers and creators today, you have to recognize that creation is messy and people, it might take 10 times. So where possible, I do try to say to somebody, it's not working now, but this might work, come back to me. Or uh, you know, this idea won't work. But if you have other nonfiction ideas, come to me. Um, and it's it's a challenge, and I'm always, you know, kind of trying to coax myself to do even more um to pave the way for authors, especially um projects that I think are disruptive, you know, the poets, the dreamers, the prophets out there. Um, so I've only signed a few authors at this point. Um, have had one sale which hasn't been announced yet, so I won't get into it. Um and working with another client, again, I won't say much, but you know, David knows who's pretty big. And um I think that one will have more commercial potential, which I'll keep under wraps and announce later. Um, but yeah, I'm I'm in a position of privilege too that I have other income from teaching and other things that I can afford to take on, you know, the the more out there unruly projects. Um so yeah, I'm I'm grateful to David. I'm very excited. Um likewise grateful and excited.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Yeah. Yeah. Go to hyponymus.com and look up Audrey's bio. You can get her email there if you have a proposal to send. And you you can you'll just have to guess at which author she's referring to in our author list. It's just there. It's not it's not set by agent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

But yeah, I have a good idea of your uh top just based on your topics, um, you know, what has interested you and what you've written, and then other authors that that will eventually pop up on your site, and then uh people can kind of take their cues from that to see what kind of things you're looking for. And um, are you open to queries? Is that uh part of the process?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Yes, I'm I'm very limited right now because I've I'm still teaching it narratively, I'm still trying to make progress on my own book, but I am open. I still consider projects um very interested in religion, philosophy, uh, cultural criticism. Um, memoirs hard, it really is. But um I try to encourage people to do the memoir plus where it's like you're breeding your personal story with this wider cultural inquiry that can be a little bit more successful today.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

That's great. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about more of that. Yeah. Thank you for being here. I mean, there's so much more I want to discuss, but um we we will do that. Let's let's have you back uh at some point. Um but yeah, thank you for being here. Thank you for all your your insight and all you share and all you do for authors. It's it's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

Yeah, narratively.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:14

Describe Narratively Academy briefly.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

Yes. Um they publish magazine type articles, but they also have uh an academy which teaches writing classes and holds workshops for writers. Actually, Sarah Mosliner just launched uh uh workshop on writing about religious trauma there.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

Hyponymous author. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:39

Yep, she's another hyponymus author.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:41

Author of After Purity.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Yep. And so there's tons of classes, people should check it out. It's really wonderful. Uh that community makes me very excited.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

Thank you, Audrey. Appreciate it. Good deal.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:58

Yeah, that brilliant word's definitely still sticking, still sticking. Thank you. Awesome, thank you.