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Welcome to the Other People podcast, a weekly program featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

I'm Brad Listy, and I'm your host.

I am happy to have you here.

Thank you for tuning in.

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So my guest today is Betsy Lerner, author of a debut novel called Shred Sisters.

I never thought that I, when I wrote Shred Sisters, it was always a placeholder.

I never thought it would be the title of my book.

And then I gave my main character the name Amy Shred.

And I didn't know why I did that either, really. I didn't even know I was writing the book.

But I think that what I was doing was processing the pain that we were all in, the fact that as sisters,

we had very rivalrous and did not really get along all that well,

but pulled together in this extraordinary way in the wake of that tragedy.

We needed each other in a way that was profound, and we did it.

And I think that that's a lot of what the book is really about is

sisterhood and that connection, no matter how fractious the relationships can be.

All right, that was Betsy Lerner. Her debut novel is called Shredsisters, available from Grove Press. This is Betsy's debut.

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