Art, Family, Escape and Reinvention in Saoirse with Charleen Hurtubise
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author Charleen Hurtubise paints a picture of a woman reinvented. We meet Saoirse on an airplane, faking her identity with a friend’s passport, on her way to start over entirely overseas. Why? You’ll find out. Art plays a central role in Saoirse’s new life — and in her unraveling. Does her husband know? You’ll find out. (Note: We had some technical issues during this episode, but we’ve edited them so you’ll never know. It is a bit shorter than usual as a result.)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbmedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.1 | at Zibby Owens. I interviewed Charlene Hurtubais, the author of Searsha. I'm sorry, I'm probably |
| 0:49.7 | saying that wrong. S-A-O-I-R-S-E, Searsha, a novel on Zoom, unfortunately, but she was around the country, |
| 0:58.1 | around the world at the time. So this is what we do. She was in Ireland. Charlene is a novelist, |
| 1:04.1 | essayist, and artist, and the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, which was published in |
| 1:09.2 | Ireland and the UK in 2023. |
| 1:12.4 | Sircia is her U.S. debut. |
| 1:15.2 | Charlene holds a masters of something, m.s.c. |
| 1:19.3 | from Trinity College, Dublin, and an MFA in Creative Writing from University College, Dublin, |
| 1:25.3 | where she facilitates creative writing seminars. |
| 1:28.1 | She is the sixth sister in a family of nine, and she spent much of her childhood in Michigan, |
| 1:33.2 | her early adult years in Boston, and has now lived half her life in Ireland, which is home, |
| 1:38.2 | which actually is a bit concerning because there is a woman in the book, |
| 1:42.1 | around whom the book centers, who escapes the U.S. with a false identity and moves to Dublin. |
| 1:47.9 | And I'm hoping that was not the case for Charlene, but I guess we'll never know. |
| 1:51.1 | Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Searsha. |
| 1:59.1 | By the way, Charlene was incredibly, incredibly patient with me because for whatever reason, |
| 2:05.0 | my messages on my computer kept digging for about 15 minutes, and I kept trying everything |
... |
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