Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and I am the host of this podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.

I am also a newly minted USA Today bestselling author of the novel, Blank.

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Zivie Readers. Anna Quinlan is back on the podcast. I am such a huge fan as anyone

listening to this podcast knows. I am just over the moon,

excited in love with everything she does after Annie is her latest novel and it is my Zivis book club

pick. So on March 22nd, if you are in L.A., you can come to Zivis Bookshop and see her in person

with our book club there with the local chapter and she will be can come to Zivvy's Bookshop and see her in person with our book club there,

with the local chapter. And she will be part of the Zivis Virtual Book Club, which you can

learn about on bookclubs.com when you find Zubi's virtual book club or on Zivimedia.com,

go to the book club section and you will find the information. And I'll also probably post about it. So anyway, Anna Quinlan is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists. She is the author of many novels, object lessons, one true thing, black and blue, blessings, rise and shine, every last one, still live with breadcrumbs, and Miller's Valley. Her memoir, lots of candles, plenty of cake, published in 2012, was the number one New York Times bestseller. Her book, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at the New York Times, she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, living out loud and thinking out loud, which, by the way, if you have not read, you should go back and read because although they were written years ago, there are timeless messages that everybody should read. Her newsweek columns were collected and loud and clear. Welcome, Anna. Thank you so much for coming back on moms. Don't have time to read books. We were just joking. I feel like you've been on this 100 times already. To discuss after Annie, which is my Zibi's book club pick.

I just love this book so much. I love your writing so much. And, oh my gosh, everything about it.

So thank you. Well, thank you. Thanks so much for picking it, Zibi. I'm so honored and pleased.

And I can't wait to do the book club meeting with you. Yay. Also, the color. I feel like I dressed for you today. I'm wearing a light blue sweater. I can just loan it to you if you want to take it on the road. I must say I love the cover of this book and we fought pretty hard for it. There were a lot of different iterations. You know, cover art is hard. Yeah. Well, this is about, you know, it's so much

interior life, right? It's about relationships and intimacies and the effects of one thing,

but it's about a person, you know, I would imagine this would be a tough brief, you know,

because it could go in so many ways for the cover. But it's gorgeous.

It's really gorgeous. And speaking of that, so can you tell listeners what after Annie is about?

Sure. I don't feel like it's a spoiler because in the first sentence, on the first page, Annie Brown dies.

And she's a young wife and mother. She has four young kids. She's been married quite happily to a guy named Bill,

and her best friend is named Anne-Marie. And the book is about the first year in their lives without her.

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