Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Christian and I'm it's I'm have the honor of serving as president of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and On behalf of Foundation Chairman Larry Temple and our entire board It's really my pleasure to welcome you here tonight. We're in for such a treat for this year's Harry Middleton lecture The annual Harry Middleton lecture was established by Lady Bird Johnson in 1994 and no one could be more deserving of this honor Harry Middleton has been part of the LBJ world and the LBJ extended family for many decades He served as a speechwriter in the White House from 1967 to 69 and he returned to Austin at the end of the LBJ presidency And helped President Johnson write the vantage point You might have heard rumors that President Johnson liked to have things under control This library benefited hugely from the president's attention to detail and one of those details was that LBJ wanted a superb director Someone he could trust implicitly So in 1971 Harry was named director of the LBJ library By President Johnson himself Harry served here for 32 remarkable years and certainly met and exceeded Every expectation both President Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson had of him Please help me thank Harry Middleton for his service loyalty and leadership While Lyndon Johnson recognized and rewarded Harry's excellence so did other former presidents Gerald Ford who was a Harry Middleton lecturer in 1997 called Harry the Dean of the Presidential Library Directors Other Harry Middleton lecturers have included Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Sandra Day O'Connor, Journalists Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams and playwright David Mamet Tonight we continue this tradition with best-selling author Jodi Pico who will talk about her latest book The Storyteller With LBJ library's current director Mark Updegrove Please join me and welcome join me in welcoming Mark who will introduce Ms. Pico for a reading. Thank you so much for being with us tonight Thank You Elizabeth. Good evening. I Just told our guest of honor about the three previous Harry Middleton lectures I said, you know, I mentioned that you're you are following a very hallowed tradition here and the last three speakers have been Mikhail Gorbachev Jimmy Carter and Sandra Day O'Connor and She looked at me said oh no pressure But there's a very good reason that we have Jodi as This year's Harry Middleton lecture and that is because of Harry Middleton Harry Middleton made it abundantly clear that he wanted a writer for his next lecture And boy did we ever get a writer in Jodi Pico as you're walking to the auditorium tonight You saw the covers of all 18 works of fiction that have sprung from the pen of Jodi Pico It's a remarkable body of work That includes New York Times bestsellers such as my sister's keeper Vanishing acts the 10th circle 19 minutes change of heart handle with care house rules Sing you home lone wolf and her current the storyteller Now I'm exhausted just giving you that list of names Imagine how exhausting it is to be as prolific an author as Jodi as if that weren't enough She's also the co-author of a musical play for teens with her son Jake called over the moon and Co-author of a novel for teens with her daughter Samantha called between the lines, which is another New York Times bestseller Jodi is a native of Long Island, New York a graduate of Princeton University And a current resident of Hanover, New Hampshire and before I bring her out I'm going to mention to our guys back in the booth that we're calling a bit of an audible here and rather than retire Immediately to these chairs to have a conversation Jodi is going to do a reading from the storyteller from this podium So if you could keep the lights up for a minute, that'd be great and then we'll go to the chairs Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Jodi Pico Thank you Thank you so much for having me here tonight in case there's any question.  He's a retired teacher. He coaches Little League He leads the 4th of July parade and he asks sage for a favor He would like her to help him die not because he's ill but quite the contrary He thinks that the reason he has lived this long is God's little joke on him because he used to be a Nazi What he doesn't know is that sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor So if she helps him, is it mercy is it justice or is it revenge? The section I'm going to be reading to you from as I said is in the middle of the book And it's an extended narrative by Minka who is sage's grandmother This is Minka when she is a teenager and in the section. I'm going to be reading to you from she has Recently been taken from the ghetto with her father and her best friend Daria to Auschwitz So this is Minka Daria and I lived in a barracks with 400 other women the smells were indescribable unwashed bodies sweat festering sores rotting teeth and always in the air around us the sweet Chard sickly scent of flesh burning at night the sleeping quarters were so tight I could feel the hip bones of the woman behind me Twin daggers in the small of my back when one of us rolled over in our sleep The rest of us had to do the same. I had spent the week trying to get word of my father Was he in a different part of the camp working like I was was he wondering if I was alive, too? I thought of him every morning as I was marched to work past the shacks that were the men's barracks and past the incessant operation of the crematoria Daria and I were lucky because we had been assigned to Canada It was an area where the belongings that had come in on the trains were sorted The valuables were tallied and given to the guards who brought them to the SS officer in charge of getting them to Berlin The clothing went somewhere else and then there were the items no one needed eye glasses prosthetic limbs Photographs these were to be destroyed the reason it was nicknamed Canada was because we imagined that country as the land of Plenty in Canada if a guard was looking the other way It was possible to steal an extra pair of gloves Underwear a hat The SS officer who was in charge of Canada also spent a portion of the day weaving among us to make sure we did not steal He was a slight man not much taller than I was I had seen him drag outside a prisoner Who had hidden a gold candlestick up the sleeve of her jacket? Although we did not see the beating we could hear it the prisoner was left unconscious in front of the barracks The officer returned to walk through the aisles where we worked with a nauseated look on his face It made him seem human and if he was human, how could he do this to us? Secretly when he passed by I thought of him as heredibic a human man too weak to force out the evil that had taken up residence in him There was always a little ripple of awareness when heredibic arrived or departed as if his presence was an electric shock Even though I did not turn around to watch I could hear him approaching with another SS officer They were speaking and I eavesdropped on their German conversation as I ripped open a hem So then the beer hall at 8 you won't tell me you're too busy again. I'm beginning to think you're avoiding your own brother Over my shoulder. I peaked. I'll be there heredibic vowed He was talking to the SS officer who oversaw appell the man in charge of the women's camp the one with the tremor in his hand The one who was not inhabited by an evil spirit. He was just evil period He ran hot and cold when it came to overseeing appell either He seemed bored and the count went quickly or he was on a rampage and took his fury out on us Just that morning he had raised his pistol and shot a girl who was too weak to stand upright When the girl beside her jumped in response, he shot her too These officers were related The guard who was watching me sift through the suitcases shouted at me to get to work So I reached into the pile that never seemed to get any smaller and pulled out a leather valise this one I recognized Inside were the candlesticks that had come from my grandmother Wrapped carefully in my father's tallest beneath that were his socks his undershorts a sweater My mother had knit for him He told me once that he hated it that the sleeves were too long in the wool too itchy But she had gone to so much trouble. How could he not pretend that he loved it more than anything? I could not catch my breath. I had not believed my father was truly dead until I opened this suitcase With shaking hands, I lifted the sweater This sleeve was the one my mother had been working on when my sister fell down and hit her head on the corner of the Piano bench and needed stitches this hemline. She had measured against my father's midsection Joking out loud. She had not meant to marry such a gorilla of a man Wiping my eyes. I started to pull the hem of the sweater I rolled the yarn up around my arm like a bandage a tourniquet for a soul that was bleeding out The guard closest to me approached screaming jerking his gun at my face Do it I thought I Kept pulling on the yarn until it lay in a nest around me Somewhere Daria was watching too afraid for her own welfare to tell me to stop but I couldn't I was unraveling too The commotion attracted some of the other guards when one leaned down to grab the candlesticks I snatched them in one hand and took the scissors. I had used to cut up fur coats pressing the blade against my throat The guard laughed The SS officer in charge of Canada pushed through the crowd Vaim Gehert is a coffer To whom does this suitcase belong? My name Fata. I murmured He looked at me for a long moment then turned to the other guards and shouted at them to stop staring Get back to work. He said and a moment later. He was gone. Thank you Welcome and thank you for that sure just a little light reading to start us off You've never been shy about taking on controversial subjects and you took on the Holocaust here What led you and you've called this story up story of good and evil. Yeah, so what led you to write this book? I was thinking about a book I'd read many years ago which was the sunflower by Simon Visenthal and in it Visenthal recounts being a concentration camp prisoner and Being brought to the bedside of a dying Nazi soldier who wanted to confess to a Jew any Jew would do What he had done wrong in the hopes that he could be absolved and then die in peace And in the course of the book Visenthal comes to realize that he can't forgive this man Even if he wanted to it is not his place to do so the only people who can forgive him are those upon whom the sins were Perpetrated and they're dead. So basically this Nazi is out of luck But you know it in the years since it's been published It has been republished with epilogues and commentaries added to it by politicians and theologians and philosophers all weighing in on what Visenthal came to see whether they think he was right and what their own traditions would urge them to do and You know it kind of got me thinking Could a person do something really awful and then spend the rest of their life trying to make up for it and ever Erase that stain on their soul by the same token if you consider yourself a morally good person Is there any one thing that could make you tip the balance and commit an act that most of us would think is pretty heinous like killing someone and could I possibly take Visenthal scenario and update it for the modern generation in a way that would make us remember why 70 years after The Holocaust it was still really important to keep telling the story right you have a Reputation for being very thorough in your research. Yeah, you've got some really interesting stories to that. I do How did you research this book? Well, I actually started in an unlikely place. I started with my mother My mother should work for the government because Literally after I called her and asked her to maybe find me some Holocaust survivors in Scottsdale where she lives part-time It took her a half an hour and she had a list of nine names for me. It was really scary But she um She basically gave me the names of nine survivors who I contacted some of them I wound up speaking to some of them. It was too hard for them to tell me their stories I can share with you some of their stories because to me they're truly amazing They really are the heroes of this book all of those real life experiences cut and braided together formed Minka so everything that happens to Minka happened to someone I spoke to and There's a man for example whose name is Bernie Bernie grew up in a small town in Poland with 5,000 Jews in it by the end of the war. There were only 36 Jews left he told me a story of how when the Germans occupied the town they would hide in their basement and They could hear the Germans walking around upstairs and one night a family friend was there with the baby and the baby started crying So they started to feed the baby little bits of bread to keep him quiet But he wouldn't shut up so mom was juggling the baby and pressing its face against her her shoulder And she accidentally smothered the infant She wound up going upstairs sitting on the curb and just waiting for three days until the next roundup She didn't want to be alive anymore When the Germans finally did come for him He was grabbing on to the door frame of his house so hard that he peeled the mizuza off it If you don't know what that is it's a little metal strip that is nailed to a door that has a scroll in it which has been blessed and He held this mizuza in his hand for the entire war like this with three fingers curled down To the point where when the war ended and he was liberated his hand had fused this way And he had to have it surgically opened but when I met with him He showed me that mizuza that he had carried all that time There was another survivor by the name of Gerda Weissman Klein very famous as survivors go she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by President Obama and She was taken from her home again in Poland in 1942 her parents were sent to Auschwitz and killed She was sent to a variety of work camps one of after several years of being in these work camps when the allies advance They began to shut them down and she was put on a forced march of 350 miles in the dead of winter in January 1945 with 4,000 other women only a hundred and fifty survived She said the reason she survived is because when she was taken from her home in June Her father said Gerda wear your ski boots and she did and she had those boots on the march Her best friend Ilsa died in her arms during the march and at the end of it when she was liberated by the allies It was American soldiers She weighed 68 pounds her hair was white. She had not bathed or showered in three years and a man opened the door for her held the door open and It was a soldier and she was shocked and she said I'm a Jew, you know and he said I am too and They wound up getting married It's not a great story. It's a great story. Yeah We've all seen documentaries. We've read books. We've seen movies, but you really got close to this subject What surprised you most about the the plight of victims in the Holocaust? I think what surprised me the most was not the resilience You know like the another survivor the one probably I grew closest to was a woman named mania I stayed with her when we were doing our interviews and when I went back home She would kept writing me emails saying are you done writing the book? I'm an old woman.  You'll be happy now. I just saw her but Mania had another remarkable story that was I stole a lot from her life for Minka She also like Minka is fluent in German because she went to a Catholic high school which was the only place that she could get in as a Jew ironically she had someone secure her place there and She had to study either French there which was taught by a large ugly nun or German Which was taught by a young attractive male teacher and so she took German She became his star pupil and because of that she was routinely placed in secretarial jobs through the war instead of hard labor And many times she showed pluck There was one time for example that her father was in a camp with her and was dying because he was sentenced to hard labor So she took an empty file folder closed it up Marched her way to the commandant's office saying I'm under strict orders to not show anyone the contents of this folder But the commandant in fluent German she gets to the guy's office. He opens it up He sees an empty file and he just looks at her and This guy had to hang someone the week before for trying to escape not a nice guy And she said I don't know if you have a daughter, but if you do I hope she would do for you What I need to do for my father and She explained how he was dying because he wasn't strong enough to work in this job And the man listened to her and the commandant wrote something down and changed her father's position So he did wind up surviving that camp he unfortunately was killed at Auschwitz not long after that But she had a lot of a lot of fervor a lot of pluck and I saw that in all the survivors But I expected that because they didn't give up what shocked me the most was who they had come to be Because here are these men and women in their 90s, and what do they want to talk to me about gay rights? Because in their mind that is Another example in our country currently of inequity and of discrimination and that is what they believe in They believe that when you start to see little forms of prejudice and little forms of discrimination like that It can blossom out of control and that amazed me and inspired me Your books are often about well, they're all about moral dilemmas and yet you grew up in your worst Disgustingly happy in in Long Island So how does a girl with a great childhood, you know look into these dark and controversial subjects What leads you to that I honestly think I would not Write what I write if I were living the lives of my characters if you've read my books Perhaps you've you've noticed they all have miserable lives all these characters Well talk about some of the moral dilemmas if you would just talk to give a litany of the the kinds of moral dilemmas Okay, so you know there's there's a question about stem cell research and one of them There's another one about wrongful birth suits Another one about school shooting in America and bullying. There's another one about gay rights teenage suicide Yeah, I mean You take on that you take on the little issues is what you know, but you know, I haven't lived those things I've been very fortunate. I have a terrific home. I have a great husband I have three happy healthy kids and I think if I were living that every day I would find it very hard to go to my office and write about it I think it's because I have a giant safety net that I can kind of walk on the dark side because every day I get to go downstairs at the end of the day and I'm not living the lives of my characters How do you become those characters given your frame of mind giving your experience not having had to deal with these situations? Exactly the way I did it for the storyteller I find people who have had that experience and I sit down with them. I shadow them. I spend time with them I listen to their stories. It's weird It's especially to make this reference with the storyteller But you know, there's that old adage about the sin eaters the Catholic priests who would take on the sins of Those who were dying and hold them inside themselves And that's sometimes what it feels like to be a writer You take in all the pain and suffering of the people who are spilling their stories to you for research And you just hold it inside of you for a little while and then squeeze it out on a page So how do you arrive at these subjects? How do you decide? Well, this book is going to be about gay rights Or this one's going to be about Stem cell research. I think the subjects choose me There are usually things that I am worried about as a mom as a woman as an American They're the things that keep me up at night and if they keep me up for several nights. It's probably an excellent idea for a book That's really how it works Has there been any subject that you've been reluctant to take on that you might Choose to There have been subjects that I don't want to write right now that become more attractive to me as my life Changes because even though I haven't lived these experiences. They somehow begin to cross You know my consciousness in different ways as I grow older as my kids grow older You know one thing that I'm asked to write about a lot actually is the military Which is interesting because I don't have a lot of personal experience with the military God knows there's plenty of controversial issues in the military But I can't say I wouldn't write about it, but it's not at the forefront of my consciousness right now I've been asked to write a lot about race in America And I have actually just found the story to do that with and I'm very excited about that It'll come out in a few years It's clear that you develop a relationship With your characters because they're very sympathetic despite what moral dilemma they're wrestling with they become sympathetic So several of your books have been adapted into movies including My sister's Keeper in 2009 with Camedia How's it feel to relinquish your work and put it in the hands of a filmmaker to make his or her own interpretation of it? What was that like? It's kind of like having a root canal done You know with a grapefruit spoon The experience of my sister's Keeper was not a pleasant one right I have had some great TV adaptations done of my work and I've had a lot of input into them a Lot of a lot of really good directors who have adapted that material Unfortunately Nick Estevedes was not among those I Was actually asked to talk to him before he was hired and of course what most people don't realize is that the author of the Novel has zero control over the film zero control Unless maybe you're JK Rowling, you know, but I'm not and Anyway, I I was asked to talk to him because it was very important to me that the ending of that book stayed the same in the Movie and I said to him that's what sold millions of copies of this book You know people who say I can't tell you what happens Just could you read it so we could talk about it and it's really it's what really made that book I think a grassroots movement all its own So he read the book and he said you're right. That is the only ending for the story I'm not gonna change it if anyone does I'm gonna tell you why and I'm gonna tell you myself I thought that's totally fair and he spent a year writing a script Calling me weekly asking for my help asking me if I could read sections for him And the script looked a lot like the book and had the right ending And then one day I got an email from a fan who worked at a casting agency and she said did you know They changed the ending of my sister's keeper So I called Nick at home and he wouldn't take my phone call. So I flew to the movie set and he threw me off the set So I marched to Toby Emmerich's office at New Line Cinema and I said you're gonna lose money on this film He's the head of New Line Cinema and he went no no no We know what we're doing. We really trust Nick and I said you're gonna lose money on this film And sure enough low and behold they lost money on the film because you guys are the best fans ever And You know it was great because Ironically as a result of that no matter how heartbreaking it was at the time and it really was it was almost making me physically ill during the process I now have this weird clout in Hollywood because I very psychically predicted a loss of money and I was right Has there been a film adaptation of your work that you like?  She poured meat water That is unbelievable. We never had that before Gorbachev never poured me water Worst, who does he think he is anyway? You know, I really enjoyed the adaptation that was done of the 10th circle and of Salem Falls Which were TV movies in fact Salem Falls came out after my sister's keeper and the people who were doing the movie Were living in absolute terror of me because they knew how crazy I went after my sister's keeper and they did change the ending and I Looked at the script. I said you guys know and they changed it back, which was great So I felt really good about that because they did listen to me There is currently a script of change of heart that is a beautiful script that was co-written by me and another very talented filmmaker, that's the reason it's beautiful not me and It is a very faithful adaptation of the book It is being shopped around by an independent producer who really wants to go the festival route Because she thinks she'll have more control over the film and I would certainly hope that that would happen So I hear your friends with Robert Redford feel free to call them up but You know, I just think I'd like to see that happen because it would be a very honest adaptation and that's that's an important book It's about the death penalty in America. It's good one to talk about in this state And you know and and I think I think it would it would be very well-made So one of the more interesting parts of your resume involves Wonder Woman You did five Episodes of five five comic books for for the DC Comics. Yeah Wonder Woman What led you to do that? I wrote a book called the Tenth Circle and the main character in the Tenth Circle was not a very communicative guy His daughter is date-raped as a young teen and he can't tell you as a reader How he's feeling but he can show you because he's a graphic novelist And so he creates this graphic novel in the Tenth Circle that is an allegory for what he feels in the aftermath of this trauma with his daughter and I actually wrote that graphic novel I hired an artist to create the art for it It was embedded in the text and someone at DC Comics read it So they wrote me an email and they said hey Would you be interested in writing some issues of Wonder Woman and I was like, oh gee, you know That's really nice, but I don't have time to do that And I went down to dinner that night and I was telling my kids and they all looked at me and said mom You totally have to write Wonder Woman. So I juggled everything around and and I did I wrote Five issues which were then bound together in a book and I'm really proud of them. It was hard to do It's the only character. I haven't created, you know She's been around since 1941 and I had to be very true to everything that had come before me Because there were lots of fanboys still living in their mom's basements who wanted to tell me what I got wrong and And yet I still had to be able to put my stamp on her somehow So I was thinking well Why would they have asked me to write this and and I will say I was only the second woman to write Wonder Woman since her conception in 1941 which is kind of ridiculous the first thing I tried to do was to get her straps on her bustier because You're not gonna fight crime unless you have straps It didn't happen it would not change it but I will point out that after I stopped writing they gave her a jacket at least So I'm really happy about that But you know I thought well to be able to do something that would that would honor the way I tell stories You know and yet still allow her to to continue to grow I basically realize she's kind of like Superman and that she can do no wrong and she loves humans But she's not a human and I thought it would be very fun to see her in a capacity of trying to act human You know but not know how to order a coffee at a Starbucks or how to pump gas because she just doesn't get that She's an Amazon princess and and then I thought well What do all women have that she hasn't had yet and I thought issues with their mother So that's what I did I created a big war where her mother was basically taking the Washington Monument and throwing it at her and And that was really fun. That's the Jody Pico stamp. That's the stamp. Yeah, I wonder woman And you put yourself in as an Amazon warrior. I did I was I was kicking Batman's butt. It was great You have been very outspoken your criticism of the press and how they treat Your male counterparts versus women novels. That's correct. Talk a little bit about what leads to your feelings About the disparity Well, it's it's actually not feelings. It's facts The truth is that there isn't inequity in publishing that currently male Writers are reviewed more often more frequently and by more male reviewers than the female reviewers at various media outlets from You know the Atlantic to all the way to the New York Times and there's a group called Vita Which has actually been crunching those statistics for several years now and and showed it You can see it if you look it up on pie charts And see, you know, for example, the New York Times has two-thirds of The reviews that it offers are for men versus one-third for women Now that's a particularly interesting to statistic given that readers are over 60% women So there's a real inequity there that gets even muddier when you begin to look at the difference between genre fiction writers and literary writers It's very rare for a genre fiction writer to be treated as anything important And yet you will see for example Stephen King who I love. He's a great writer being reviewed in the New York Times You will not necessarily see a female genre writer of that caliber say a romance writer being reviewed That's not fair. It's just not right. And so one of the really nice things about having You know, I guess an invisible podium as a writer who has readers and who has people looking for what she says is to be able to sometimes say things that get people thinking and get people to notice inequities and It all started when Jonathan Franzen was reviewed for the third time in one week in the New York Times Yeah, and and I was like, you know, he's a good writer But really I mean, isn't there anything else we can write about here? And I honestly I must have sent some little tweet about that and it must have been a very slow media day because everybody jumped on it and I was not saying anything about Franzen. I mean, I've read his stuff He's a very good writer. I was actually making a comment about the fact that this reviewer this review outlet Did not choose instead to pick what I would say would be this, you know The best review it could have which would have been a woman of color who write genre fiction That would have been great, you know But instead no it was the third story of Jonathan Franzen What was really interesting was that in the big brouhaha that happened after that Jonathan Franzen himself said Yeah, she's right. I mean, he knows what the statistics are and he was very fair about it I'm not making this stuff up But it is it's still dispiriting to know that three years after I started talking about it and Jennifer Weiner has also been very outspoken She is a genre fiction writer Not much has changed, you know They actually just released the numbers for last year about a week ago And according to the Vita statistics only one review outlet Tin House has actually evened out the balance because they went and actively tried to do so You know, I don't think it's fair I wish that the books that were being reviewed were more representative of the books that people read and of the buyers who buy them And that doesn't just mean women. It means genre fiction as well So your genre you think is largely trivialized Anyone who writes commercial fiction is trivialized. I mean, I can tell you right now. I'm gonna be psychic again You know, I'm not gonna win the National Book Award I'm not gonna win the Pulitzer, you know, because I chose to write commercial fiction and I did that very intentionally I did it because I wanted to reach as many people as possible and Commercial fiction runs are much wider and the marketing behind them is much bigger And I knew I was gonna write the same kind of book every time no matter what I was still gonna give it my all I was gonna do a ton of research. I was gonna try to educate my readers So to me it didn't really matter what label you slapped on it, you know I think it's it's when you say something as commercial or literary. I think that's self-serving I think honestly if you look at what Jonathan Franzen writes It's really about the relationships between men and women and how you go about surviving today in America I would argue that there are lots of women doing the same thing and they call it chiclet, right So this might be an obvious answer. Why do you take exception to that term chiclet? Oh, I don't take exception to it. Chiclet's a great genre lots of people read it It tends to be funnier than what I tend to write I mean someone said, you know, well, do you worry about the storyteller being chiclet? I said, wow, if they think the storyteller's chiclet, they're really misreading that book. I mean, there's nothing funny in that You know, chiclet is it's just a genre and it's it's usually about younger women It's usually got a lot of humor in it Like just like thriller is a genre or mystery is a genre I mean, I guess you could say that I write a genre if you want to call it I don't know morality fiction or something I may be the only person in the genre but but that's okay, you know But it definitely is commercial fiction. I am trying to educate and entertain you not just naval gaze But you've also pointed out that there's a lot of commercial fiction by female authors that have that has really stood the test of time Talk a little bit about that. Absolutely. I mean, you know, look at what today's Classics are are very often yesterday's commercial fiction You know Charles Dickens wrote for the masses William Shakespeare wrote for the masses chain Austin wrote for the masses Yeah, all of this stuff that we consider a classic was not the esoteric literature back then It was really stuff that was for public consumption for fun for readership So are you gonna tell me that JK Rowling is not gonna be a classic a hundred years from now?  So something's clearly working Talk about your writing process. Sure. And I have to tell you that's something that works against you You know, there is this this sort of unspoken belief that if you produce a book a year It can't possibly be good and because it's formulaic and some don't even get me started on that word really. Yeah Drives me crazy.  Cuz I just don't think it's it doesn't feel formulaic to me But I don't know I think formulaic means commercial to a lot of reviewers I would argue everyone has a formula. I'm gonna tell you Jane Austen had a pretty good one It worked really well, you know, and I would argue that even mr. Franson has a formula You know anyone who finds readers has a formula. So I hate that term, but that's not your fault, but My routine is very regimented and I think that's how I do it I get up at five o'clock in the morning Usually I go for a three mile walk with a friend of mine We gossip the whole way I come back help my daughter get off to school and at 7 30 I'm at my desk and I'm reading emails. I get about 200 Fan emails a day and I read and answer everyone. I do not have a secretary. I have nobody who works for me So I really feel it's important to do that. There are a lot of books in the world. You picked mine I think it's good breeding to say thank you and Then I pull up whatever I was working on the day before I edit my way through it when I get to the bottom I just keep writing and I go in until about 330 when I very magically become a mother again. Hmm. Do you get blocked ever? No, and I'll tell you why Writer's block is for people who have too much time on their hands So all of you in the audience, right? Listen to this How many of you remember being in college and you couldn't get that paper dugs? You had writer's block did it not miraculously clear the night before the paper was due? right So when I started writing, you know, I I had a newborn I had written my first book my my first son was born then I had his brother and then I had a sister I had three kids under the age of four and I was writing a book a year and I was the primary caretaker I didn't have a lot of time to write. I was writing when Barney was on television I was taking my laptop and putting it on the steering wheel and typing waiting for nursery school pickup I was writing at swim practice. I was writing anytime. I had 15 minutes and because of that I learned to really write on demand and Even now when I have more time, I still function that way.  You can always edit something bad, but you can't edit something blank when you leave It seems like you you can you can take a clean break from your work and get back to your life But are those characters still living in your head? Are you still germinating ideas when you're not at the typewriter? Definitely yeah, I at night a lot of the time. I'll hear them in my head I have long said that writing is successful schizophrenia. I get paid to hear voices That's what it is and they're very clear to me They're very distinct and those voices are the first things that come to me for a new book They're you know, that's what I feel like I'm channeling and writing down So I do I do get ideas most often when I'm driving And I usually take out a pen and I write them on my arm as I'm driving so I can transcribe them when I get home Well clearly the stories of people inspire you because you you often use them as composites in your own characters What writers most inspire you? Well, probably the most inspirational writer for me was Margaret Mitchell Because I read gone with the wind when I was 13 years old and it's the first time I remember thinking wow She created a whole world out of words. I could do that It was like that moment where I thought oh I could make a career out of this and I read the book I memorized passages. I used to act them out as both Rhett and Scarlett, which is why I didn't have a boyfriend till I was 15 and I Loved it and you know, that was really the first moment. I remember thinking I could maybe do this As an adult as a fan the first writer who I fell in love with was Alice Hoffman She is an amazing writer who makes writing look so easy and it's never easy So that has always fascinated me one of the high points of my career was being asked to do a talk with her And I was like yes, I'll go to Siberia if you'd like me to just so I could be in the same room And I met her and we became friends and you know like I have her cell phone number and stuff That's great, but we are good friends now and you know and and then there are tons of writers whose work I love now who I look for and I get excited about You know Alice is one of them. I love Chris Bojelian's work. I love Sue Miller. I love Ann Tyler You know, I just I love reading stories that I think capture me because the characters really take me away Has there been a book and by the way if we're I'll take questions in about two minutes If you all want to start lining up at the microphones Have the has there been a book? Published in the last several years where you said God, I wish I'd written that life of pie. Oh God was I jealous? Hmm. I read that book first of all. I read the book and I was like, oh Brilliant, you know, and I mean the life of pie is brilliant because it's really about two things it's about faith and it's about the power of a story and And interestingly, I just watched the movie recently and I was all upset because they went with the faith angle not really the story angle And you know as a writer I was hoping they go the other way But I read it and I said to my mother you have to read this just read this book So she reads the book and she calls me up.  I don't know what this is it was so funny and I had to explain the whole thing to her but it really is about the transformative power of words and and about stories and how we tell them and I love that and I loved that overarching metaphor So I finished the book and I just thought you know Jan Martel's genius. I wish I had done that What's next for you? My next book is currently called the elephant graveyard it could change by tomorrow But right now it's called the elephant graveyard It's a story of a woman named Alice Metcalf who is an elephant researcher studying grief and cognition in elephants You may not know this but they have very elaborate grieving rituals an elephant will An elephant will return to the spot where an elephant has died for many many years and their behavior gets very different They get quiet serene retrospective. It's a little like we would at a graveyard They will they've been known to break into Research facilities that have bones. They're doing research on and take them back to the spot where an elephant has died They have They can identify from a bunch of skulls which elephants they knew and which ones they didn't and you can see a calf go up and put It's trunk into the mouth cavity of one particular skull that was its mother, which is how it would have greeted her It's remarkable to watch so anyway Alice is studying all this and she's studying it at her husband's elephant sanctuary in New England when a tragedy occurs a Caregiver is trampled by an elephant there and that same night Alice Metcalf vanishes off the face of the earth And the only witness is her three-year-old daughter Jenna who can remember nothing the book opens ten years later when Jenna is 13 She has never believed her mother would leave her willingly and she decides she is going to find out what happened to her So she winds up teaming up with a publicly disgraced psychic in the hopes that this woman can find some new evidence That will allow them to go back to the original detective and have the case reopened as a missing persons case Knowing very well that what she finds out about her mother. Maybe stuff. She really does not want to hear So it's a book about loss It's a book about grief and how some people survive it and some are crippled by it and most importantly It has the best twist that I've written in 20 years We can't hear that without inviting you back So you've written you've obviously you've written 18 books 15 novels you've written Comics you've written to play you've written a team book. What Would you like to do that you haven't done? Great question. I don't know if I've ever been asked that. Well, I'm pretty good. That's good I'll tell you what I would love to do That I I don't know if I could pull it off and I would certainly need a pretty interesting collaborator But I have done a lot of work in theater I've written, you know a variety of children's musicals with my son and a couple of them have been Published so that other schools can put them on we did it to raise money for local charities and and it's been incredibly successful we raised over a hundred thousand dollars for local charities in nine years and I Would love to take one of my books 19 minutes in particular and turn it into a musical like rent. I Think that would be really cool So if there's anyone out there who like knows an amazing rock band that wants to collaborate I am in the city of music. So, you know, bring them on up to me. I think that'd be really interesting That's great. Why don't we take some questions from the audience? Start over here. Hi Have you ever studied researching something and then decided I really don't like this or don't want to do anything about it? Not by the time I'm doing my research. Honestly by the time I do the research I usually have formed enough of the idea in my head that when I get to the research I'm so excited to be there the opposite happens There's way too much and I have to sift through it and figure out what I'm going to use in the book and what I'm not going to use Thank you One of the things I always astounded in your books is that like in 19 minutes that you have all the different perspectives But unlike most authors you never give away which perspective you think It is your perspective You would think in real life and I wonder how you do that how you can kind of keep yourself out of it It seems that's a great question. And honestly, it's the nicest compliment. You could give me I once had a man who came up to me at a reading and he said I have read my sister's keeper six times And I still don't know if you're for or against them. So I was like Yeah, I'm really opinionated and I'm always happy to tell you my opinion, but I don't think my opinion should trump yours I don't think it's my job to tell you what to think I do think it's my job to tell you every facet of a given controversial situation So that you have the tools and the resources to then reevaluate your own opinion and maybe you'll change your mind And maybe you won't but you need all of those different points of view It is not easy to always espouse different points of view But writing in multiple narrative voices makes it a little simpler for me because even in a book for example Like sing you home where there is a point of view that it's very different from mine The character of max there belongs to an evangelical church that is particularly opposed to gay rights It's something I'm very passionate about because I have a gay son You know, I I had a hard time writing him But he's his words came verbatim from a six-hour interview. I did with focus on the family It is the only interview I've ever done where I had to keep putting the phone down excusing myself going into another room and like yelling and then coming back because I Just couldn't hear what this woman was saying without, you know, getting really angry when you say to someone Do you worry that some of your rhetoric might lead to hate crimes against gay people and she says thank goodness That's never happened. That's a problem for me. So but I digress anyway But you know, but the thing is I had to give you that point of view because it was only fair that you hear What they say and why they say it so max provided that for me and you can't fault max He may not believe what you believe or what I believe but he believes one hundred percent in what he's telling you And that is what makes his narrative honest and truthful And that's why you can look at it and say well I at least have to give a fair shake to this and hear him out before I make my decision So by splitting those opinions into multiple narratives It actually becomes easier to hide my point of view somewhere in the range of them. Thank you Go over here. I have questioning anxiety now. That was so good I'm also a self-employed mother of three kids and so mine's more about family life balance When I get clients my family's tired of hearing about them How do you manage your family life balance in your job? What's been successful for you?  I remember once my son Jake was Think he was 12 years old and he was sharing a high school cafeteria He was in middle school and this high school girl came running up to him because he was reading perfect match and She said oh my gosh, Jodi Pico. That's my favorite author. How have you heard of her and Jake went? That's my mom But you know honestly for me it is about putting them first I really have tried to do that I have there have been multiple times in my career that I have flown 30 straight hours from a different continent to make it home to the school concert. I I'm coming home a day early from A British tour in three weeks so that I can see Jake perform an avenue queue and I will always put them first and Shuffle my life including my work life around them. So they knew that they still came first Even though there were huge swaths of time, you know, three or four weeks at a time that I was gone And that I couldn't really be with them. I also have to give enormous credit to my husband He is a remarkable guy who married me not having any clue that this is what he was signing on for And and really without him I couldn't do what I do I doubt there are many women in the audience who could walk out of their house for a month and not leave a single note But I can that's pretty remarkable. So how did you start right? You wrote your first novel your first novel published at 25 Yeah, did you start right? Well, I really was writing in college I went to Princeton's creative writing program because I wanted to learn how to be a writer and I studied almost exclusively with Mary Morris who was a Tremendous influence on me in my writing. She's the only reason I think I'm here today and I you know graduated And I didn't become a writer because I really wanted to also pay my rent and I wound up working on Wall Street I worked as a textbook publishing editor. I taught creative writing at a private school I was an ad copywriter. I got a master's at Harvard and education. I taught eighth grade English In Concord, Mass. I got married. I got pregnant all in two years Yeah, so but the whole time I was writing because that's what writers do writers can't not write So that's what I did. I just kept writing I honestly I used to do all my work at the textbook publisher before 10 o'clock and then I would close the door pretend I was really busy and I would write my novel instead and literally a couple years ago I saw my old boss in an airport and he said yeah, I knew you were doing that You know, but I I was really lucky to be able to sort of shoehorn my dream job with my real jobs And that whole two-year period I was also trying to get an agent I had over a hundred rejections from agents finally a woman wrote me and said I have never represented anyone before But I think I can represent you and I went okay And 20 years later. She's still my agent I Next question I actually have a two-part question if that's okay. Have you ever heard of Chris Kyle? No, okay Well, I just mean we don't have a part B He was actually in the military and was killed by someone with PTSD And I wonder if you were ever thinking about Writing about mental disorders. That's another thing I get asked about a lot You know right now I can tell you it's not in the next three books I don't know if it will be one day, but I have a lot of people who asked me for that I have a lot of fans who write me every day and say I really think you should write this story this is the story of my life and Honestly, everyone's got a story, you know, you all have stories But the reason it's important to you is because it's your story Not my story and I always encourage people to put it on paper because even if you don't Consider yourself a writer the act of doing that of taking your thoughts and your memories and just trying to put them down Is really therapeutic to begin with you can always hire someone to cobble it into something that's publishable But it's a really good start to figure out why this is an important story to you So, you know, I mean I haven't heard of that particular instance But I have heard a lot about people who said why don't you write about mental illness and bring awareness to it It certainly is something that should be written about I don't know if I'll be the one to do it But it has been brought up to me before. Thank you. Sure Go over here. Okay, I'm sure you get asked this question all the time, but I've read I Think every one of your books except for one So I'm just curious if you have a favorite book or a favorite character. Sure. I actually have a favorite book It is second-glance. I like it because it addresses a period of history that very few people know about in America When we were in the business of racial hygiene prior to Hitler It had the best research I've ever done in my life. I got to go ghost hunting, which was really fun And it was a hard book to pull off technically and I really feel like I nailed it So I'm very proud of that for a lot of reasons. I have Various characters that I love. I still worry about Chris Hart From the pact. I loved writing Jacob Hunt He is a kid with Asperger's and his narrator his narration was so much fun to slip into is really really fun to Write like him. I get asked a lot about the character that I most often like and it is not a flattering one It's actually Nina frost. I think from perfect match Nina is a woman who shoots the man who she thinks has sexually abused her son Only to realize she shot the wrong guy, so she basically does all the wrong things for all the right reasons I can't tell you I would do that But I can't tell you I'd probably think about it and if you ever crossed one of my kids I would absolutely come after you so I think about her a lot We talked about the research that you do. What was the most interesting? Research project you had out of one of your books. Well, definitely There are few There were a few that were devastating and interesting Certainly doing research on death row was pretty remarkable I got to see literally behind the curtain, which not a lot of people get to see you're still in touch Not anymore because he's died. He's been killed. He's killed. Okay. Yeah, and yeah I for many years wrote to this one inmate who I had done interviews with after I went to this facility in Arizona and I was taken through the facility and It was very interesting. I Basically was I was there and they canceled my visit as I was flying to Arizona and they told me I was the wrong kind of a media so I was literally banging on the door of the prison begging to be let in which doesn't happen often and they Did let me in and they took me on a tour of death row, which honestly if it's working correctly should Look pretty boring. Most of these guys are stripped down to their underwear because it's hot and they're usually asleep during the day And I said to one of the guards could I see the death house? And so he took me to the death house and of course every state that has the death penalty has two forms of execution In Arizona, it is lethal injection and an electric chair And so I was in this room where they have the electric chair And I was playing with a switch on the wall when a woman showed up and said what are you doing? and she was the warden and She asked what I was doing there and I told her and I said maybe you can answer some questions for me and I asked her You know if she had ever presided over any executions and she said yes and then I said have you ever attended an execution that you were not presiding over and She said that's a personal question and I went yeah And she told me about a woman who is I think she's still on death row in Arizona she was convicted of Telling her four-year-old son that they were going to visit Santa and he put on his Halloween costume He was all excited. She drove him to the middle of the desert and four guys that she had hired to kill him for insurance money Came and killed the little boy So she was convicted of this and this woman Has her family no longer speaks to her and so the warden Started to talk to her and she asked the warden if the warden would attend her execution and the warden finally said Yes, not because she thinks that she is innocent but because she is a Christian a Catholic and I said you're Catholic. Do you believe in the death penalty and She looked at me and she looked at her assistant and she asked him to go get a binder on her desk And it was the statute of how they do this in X in Arizona how they execute someone in Arizona which is not public information which inmates routinely sue for and are not given and She then spent the next six hours reading to me from this binder exactly how executions happen in Arizona and I literally was spread out on the death gurney writing as she was telling me all this and She was telling me things like for example The way it works is this there are they bring the inmate down and he is is Secured to a gurney and his arms are out and there's a doctor there and the doctor puts in you know an IV line and If you can't get it in here you can get it between the toes because some intravenous drug units of the users have blown out their veins and What what happens is there are three there's a tube that goes from the line behind a curtain and That hurt that line splits part of it is connected to where the doctor's standing with sodium pentothal and part of it splits off into three again and there are three guards who have volunteered for this duty who each have a syringe and The syringe has the the drug that's going to to kill them one of them has the syringe The other two have placebos and no one knows who's got what and what happens is the curtains open up in front of the gallery and the Warden comes out and she reads the death warrant the death warrant is a one-page document and Then she says To the inmate do you have any last words? Okay, that is the cue for the physician to begin to administer the sodium pentothal, okay And inmates last words are usually anything from I love you mom to screw the world or but it's usually really short It's not like these guys go on and on for five or ten minutes as soon as he finishes talking The warden says may God have mercy on your soul and she walks out That is the cue for those three guards behind the curtain to push down on their syringes And what that actually means is biologically There's not enough time for the sodium pentothal to anesthetize that inmate before he feels the potassium chloride in his veins Which is why the Supreme Court of course took up this case and ruled and said no it is still constitutional I don't know that I would necessarily agree with that It was pretty interesting. What I will tell you is that Very unexpectedly less than a month after I did my interview my surprise interview with her she quit And I like to think maybe that was because of me Talk about the correspondence that you maintained with the inmate for so long So Robert Towery was a man When they canceled my visit they actually canceled my interview with him And I had to fly back and do it a different time Robert was a man who? was convicted of Armed robbery he he broke into someone's house He was taking their stuff But he told this guy tied him up and he said he was going to anesthetize the guy so that he could be knocked out And couldn't identify him, but he was high as a kite at the time and he wound up shooting the guy up with battery acid and killing him Now he was clean and sober for over 13 years when I met him and he knows that he did something wrong He understands that he should have been convicted He has apologized to the victim's family and had some kind of restorative justice with them and he also had multiple appeals that you know went nowhere and Robert and I began this correspondence and it was years I mean we actually corresponded for many years He was a very accomplished artist and you don't get art materials on death row in Arizona so he would have to make his pigments so he Showed me how you could scrape away a magazine of the black of a magazine and dilute it in water to get black ink and He saved all the envelopes that he ever got and he opened them up to use the backs as paper Coffee makes like a flesh stain, you know color, you know, he would he would use water and Brush off the coating on M&Ms for different pigments That was how he created his art and he used to send me these beautiful paintings that he made and his Christmas cards were phenomenal and We had a terrific correspondence We used to talk a lot about the plot of Grey's Anatomy because he watched a lot of TV and when I was on book tour He kept me updated.  He invited me to his execution. I was unable to go I was actually on book tour. He completely understood and he He it was very interesting because I was I know exactly where I was I was talking about it not too long ago I was in Seattle doing an event and someone asked about change of heart and I said Thank you for bringing this up because I'd like to talk about a friend of mine and I talked about Robert and he had been executed that day and Robert had a son who he had recently Reconnected with while he was in prison and he came to me for advice because his son who had been raised by Mormons was gay And he didn't know how to interact with him and he said I know your son is gay and you've been such a good mom Can you tell me what to do? And I would write him as much advice as I could you know and just say love him be accepting be tolerant Anyway, I came home from that Seattle event It was almost exactly a year ago and there was an email waiting for me And it was from Robert's son and he said my dad said you were a very good friend to him and I was hoping maybe you could be a friend of mine and Corey and I not only struck up a friendship But Corey moved to the University of Connecticut to do his graduate work and my son My oldest son the gay one is that Yale and they have met many times gone out with their partners They've all gone out to New York City and had a great time and Corey and Kyle go out to lunch And I really feel good about that. I feel like maybe Robert knows that his sons You know got a buddy out here in the world We have time for two more why don't we go over here Well after that I have question anxiety, too. I Guess my question is also two-part Myself and I'm sure many people in the audience have Self-published to Kindle and and that revolution that's really happening with in the traditional publishing industry To what extent do you feel like that's going to maybe help balance out some of the Discrimination with female writers and that kind of thing. I mean, how does it affect your writing the independent publishing self-publishing? Okay, you're not gonna like the answer to this I do not advocate self-publishing. I think it's a mistake. I think that there's currently a stigma against being self-published If you are self-published, it's very hard to get a book contract after that with the traditional publisher Here's what you lose when you're self-published You use you lose the heft and the muscle of a publishing company that can get you placement in stores That can get you marketing advertising PR anything that will get your book out there Everyone thinks of the brass ring as that published entity But the real brass ring is knowing that people are buying the published entity and for that They need to know it's out there and there are millions of self-published titles on the Kindle Nobody will ever know about if you are willing to become your own your own publisher Your own marketing machine your own PR rep and spend a year Traveling around to book clubs and libraries and festivals trying to get the word out about your book You can buck the system, but that is not feasible for most people who self-publish and so what happens instead is Instead of waiting for an agent to take them on instead of weathering all of the criticism and all the knows They say oh, I'm just gonna self-publish. It'll be easier that way and you know what publishers notice that they say oh they gave in This is how you can tell that self-publishing is not the be all and end all yet Think of the big the biggies in self-publishing the EL James of the world who managed to write something that does sell millions of copies on the Kindle What do they do they turn to a traditional publisher for a print publication and there's a reason for that still so What what is happening with? e-book sales is different than self-publishing e-book sales are becoming predominant in America My e-book sale rate at this point is about 47 percent of My total of sales and that's gone up dramatically in the past three years And you know I'm not someone who particularly minds that I I have a Kindle sometimes I read in my Kindle Sometimes I read a hardcover sometimes I buy two copies of the same book one that's electronic and one that's a hardcover Just so I can read it in different places but I think that What what becomes difficult are the pricing wars that happen and the deep discounts of books It's very hard for someone to look at this and not say I'm getting something for my money But when people see nothing, it's just downloaded. It's a wisp that's downloaded to your electronic device They don't feel like they're getting something. So why should they pay $15 for that?  It's a file What are you paying for? Well, you're paying for intellectual property and that's really hard for Americans to wrap their heads around And I do think that that's gonna have to shift a little bit We're gonna continue to see that shift a little bit because people feel like e-books should be incredibly cheap But it was just as much work for me to create the e-book as it was for me to create this book And honestly what you're talking about the pulp the paper. That's the cheapest part of a book Well, the music has changed the paradigm exactly does that give you encouragement for no Actually the music industry, you know, you can see it There was a lot that went wrong in the music industry when you began sharing downloads and stuff So I think the publishing industry is archaic. They're having trouble catching up But they're also they don't want to make a misstep either You know think about and the other thing that's really hard about e-books is that they are much more easily pirated And that's a horrible thing, you know, I mean to think about the revenue that's lost to pirating is really scary And and I wish that there was more recourse legally against that. There is still not that much Last question. Hi. I'm in the Texas creative program here at UT Austin doing art direction and copywriting And so I deal with critique on a daily basis and this is my first semester I was just wondering how you take Negative critique and I guess turn it around to fire it back You know with a positive creative energy to kind of keep you going rather than letting it bring you down like it's another great question And I wish I were better at it every year. I say I'm not gonna read reviews and then every year I do And what makes it hard is that I actually had a really interesting breakfast the other day with Brad Meltzer it was a really nice guy never met him before and We've been communicating Astronically, you know through email and through Twitter and and he said hey, do you want a breakfast? I live in Miami. I said yeah, that would be great And we were talking about negative reviews and nasty reviews. There is there's a difference I mean, there are people who professionally review and some reviewers give really good constructive criticism And I think any writer who is intelligent knows you're not going to write something that pleases everyone all the time And it's their job to find things that maybe they find flawed. I think that's totally fair and legitimate I think there's another problem though when someone's entire review is I hate commercial fiction and you write commercial fiction I mean, there's nothing I could do about that and that does happen to sometimes with professional reviewers and Janet Maslin anyone New York Times She hates me I swear she hates me out of what I ever did to her But the things that kill me the most are the reviews that you get now on Amazon That are like one star and this is why I don't like the price of this book Or this was my favorite on Goodreads actually for the storyteller blood blood gore gore blood That's all this book was I'm thinking okay. It's about the Holocaust You know, what were you thinking it was gonna be? I don't know So, you know, it's funny because you can't you honestly can't predict what people are going to say and it's hard Not to take it personally. I think if there was anything I could leave readers with it's this we may be writers But we are human We read those reviews and if you're hiding behind your computer and writing something really mean like oh, I think she's phoning it in She doesn't even do her own work anymore. I bet, you know, we read that and that hurts. I do my own work I work really hard. I tried really hard to give you a good book really Sorry, it wasn't something you wanted this time around maybe next time will be one that you really like But maybe when you want to criticize me you could do it in a way that you would want to be criticized I think that's a really good lesson for everyone It's not a bad idea to think in this age of technology Which is so faceless that it's a good idea to be kind to I want to thank Harry Middleton for suggesting that we not suggesting for imploring us thank you to get a writer for this lecture and I want to Thank Jody for being that writer. Thank you. So this is the life


We are individuals. I'm often tempted to believe that my experiences are unique or more life-changing or transformative than anyone else's. In moments of unhealth, I am the only one that matters. What I experience is what matters most. In moments of health, I know my perceived uniqueness is a characteristic of all that all of us were made to live a life fully deserving of freedom and hope, justice, and dignity. It is there that I know that I am only able to truly be an individual to truly be myself is when I'm connected to others.