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Welcome to Dedicated with Doug Brunt.

You have just gained access to an exclusive insider's look at the lives and works of some of your favorite authors and hear conversations with the world's greatest writers as they discuss their writing lifestyle, creative process, latest work, and behind-the-scenes revelations.

Welcome to Dedicated. I'm your host Doug Brunt. Today we're talking with Emily St. John Mendel.

She can play piano. She can dance. She's written numerous essays and short stories and is the author of six novels, including Station 11, which has been adapted for a TV series on HBO Max. She's that

rare combination of writer who was both a literary success and has also achieved incredible

commercial and popular success. And I'm thrilled to you's here with us today. Emily, welcome.

Good morning. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I should clarify, I used to be able to dance.

I kind of doubt I still can. It was a long time ago in a former life. Contemporary dance, right? Yeah, exactly. I studied ballet really intensely, but contemporary was my focus. Okay. Well, I could never dance. I had to sort of look up contemporary, so I knew it has influences of ballet and other things. But my dancing is, I just, I try to keep the elbows tight,

face kind of neutral, no sudden movements. Don't draw attention to yourself. Exactly. That's me. I need someone there just like, don't, you know, don't, just try to hit a single. No big swings out there. So I also wanted to tell you that when I was putting the show together about a year ago, and I was meeting with the producers at SiriusXM

and coming up with what I wanted to do with the show and the format and things like that, I had a wish list of bookings for the show of 10 authors. I was really hoping I could get on the show, and you were on the list. So this is sort of like a bucket list interview for the show. That's lovely to hear. Thank you. And today we're drinking Earl Grey tea with some milk. We are. Yeah. And, you know, as I was saying earlier, it's my drink of choice in the late morning because at that point, I've already had two cups of coffee. So, like, I don't want to have a heart attack. I don't want to get into like trembling hands territory. But sometimes you want just kind of a, um, a light hit of caffeine.

Right.

You just throttle back a little bit.

Exactly. attack. I don't want to get into like trembling hands territory. But sometimes you want just kind of a

light hit of caffeine. Right. You should have to throttle back a little bit. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I may try that because sometimes when I'm in that mode of writing and it's a long period of time, I do write with coffee and I start with one and then two. And if I'm writing a little later, usually for, it's 9 a.m. to noon.

But if it goes longer and I have three or four cups of coffee, I am a wreck for the rest of the day.

Yeah, by late afternoon, your hands are shaking.

Yeah.

It's kind of a bad scene.

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