Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.

Moms don't have time to read books.

Please sign up for my newsletter at Zibbyowens.com for updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.

Today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland Readers Retreat, which is happening

April 29th to March 3rd in Iceland.

Who doesn't want to go to Iceland?

While you're there, you'll get small group lectures and talks by renowned authors, learning

about the rich literary heritage of this Nordic book-loving nation.

Adam Gopnik is the special guest this year, and he will be doing a small seminar on memoir

between all these intimate book discussions.

You get to have literary theme tours of the countryside here from other Icelandic writers

and discover some really cool artifacts in Reykjjavik's museums.

This sounds so fun,

and I'm hoping I can somehow manage to get there. But you should check it out at Icelandreaderset.com.

That's Icelandwritersretreat.com. The price is $1,600, but that includes so much, everything, for basically four days of your life. So check it out at the Iceland Readers Retreat. Thank you so much everything for basically four days of your life.

So check it out at the Iceland Reader's retreat. Thank you so much. Emily Nemens is the debut author of the Cactus League, a novel. She's the editor of the Paris Review and was previously the co-editor of the Southern Review. An alumnus of the Carrowack Project Writing Residency Program in Orlando, Florida. Her work has been published in Esquire, N-plus-1, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, and other outlets. Originally from Seattle, Emily attended Brown University and received her MFA from Louisiana State University. She's also an illustrator. Her illustrations have been published in The New Yorker and on Tumblr, where she has a following for her portraits of women in Congress.

She currently lives in New York.

Welcome, Emily. Thanks for coming out. Moms Don't have time to read books. Thanks for having me. Of course. We were just talking. We had coffee, and Emily mentioned this book to me. It felt like 100 years ago. And now here it is. Finally coming out. So, the Cactus League. Next week.

Next week.

So the Cactus League, can you please tell listeners what this book is about?

Yeah, it's so exciting. Yeah, and The Cactus League. Next week. Next week. So the Cactus League, can you please tell listeners what this book is about?

Yeah, it's a novel about spring training baseball, but it's sort of the least baseball book.

...