A Zibby Summer Reads pick!! Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling, THE MEMO
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zibby chats with co-authors Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling about THE MEMO, a smart, addictive, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant debut novel about a woman who is approaching her 36th birthday, feeling like she missed life’s crucial “memo” as her friends succeed while she struggles—until she’s given the "memo” and can go back in time… Lauren and Rachel, who co-wrote the novel during the pandemic, drew from their experiences as underemployed freelancers, questioning the small choices that led them there. They discuss ambition, regrets, societal pressures, unseen struggles, and the subjective nature of success. They also share invaluable insights on their collaborative writing process.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and I am the host of this podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. |
| 0:08.1 | I am also a newly minted USA Today bestselling author of the novel, Blank. |
| 0:14.2 | I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company, reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. |
| 0:21.8 | Learn more at zivimedia.com or follow me on social at Zivie Owens or join the community at |
| 0:28.4 | Zivie Readers. |
| 0:31.3 | Rachel Doads and Lauren Meckling are co-authors of the memo, a novel. |
| 0:35.8 | Rachel Doads is a freelance culture writer. |
| 0:38.0 | She's a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, and her work has also appeared in town and country, L. Esquire, the New York Times, among other publications. |
| 0:45.4 | She was previously a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal covering the film industry. |
| 0:49.5 | Lauren Meckling, who I interviewed so many years ago, like right when I started this podcast, |
| 1:11.1 | has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, the New Yorker online and Vogue, where she wrote a regular book column. She has worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for the New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She is currently a senior editor at the Guardian U.S. |
| 1:14.1 | Welcome. |
| 1:14.7 | I have a dual podcast today. |
| 1:16.9 | Very, very exciting. |
| 1:18.2 | Two guests, Rachel Doads and also Lauren Meckling, who is a repeat guest on talking about the memo, |
| 1:25.5 | which is so great because I actually use this expression all the time, |
| 1:28.6 | and I hope that other people do and totally get the reference. Talk about what your book is |
| 1:32.7 | about. Please and welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Of course. Thanks, Simi. So our book is on the |
| 1:40.1 | surface. It's a comedy. It's about a woman who is approaching her 36th birthday, whose sense that she |
| 1:48.3 | didn't get the memo is becoming increasingly pressing all of her friends, people she came up with |
| 1:57.4 | as she was a younger woman, are killing it in the world, and she just keeps looking |
| 2:03.0 | around herself and wondering how on earth did she get where she has become? But the book is also |
... |
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