Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them.

I'm your host Tracy Thomas.

My guest today is Britt Bennett.

She's the author of The Mothers and her newest book, An instant New York Times number one bestseller, is The Vanishing Half.

We talk today about releasing a book amid a pandemic and a civil rights movement, researching a novel, and of course, Brit's favorite books.

Before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to our Patreon supporters, aka the Stax Pack.

These are the people who have committed to a monthly contribution to the Stacks that allows me to make this show week in and week out.

In exchange for their generosity, they earn perks like our virtual book club and more.

Thank you to the following people who make this entire podcast possible. I am so, so, so grateful to all of you.

Morgan Banning, Bonnie McGee, Rebecca Zoller, Stephanie Whitmore, Emma Agrarian, Mary, Laura, Katie Kostick, Jordan Moblow, and Michelle Vaughn.

All right, now let's get to my conversation with author Britt Bennett. Bennett. All right, you guys, I'm so excited.

I'm here today with Britt Bennett.

Britt, welcome to the Stacks.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Of course, this is so exciting.

I've been a big fan of yours since before the Stacks even existed when the mothers came out,

so this is a very special moment.

I always love that.

We're going to start where we always start, which is basically just kind of

tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, maybe how you came to

writing, whatever you think is relevant. Sure. Yeah, I mean I I'm from San Diego County from Oceanside which is where the

mothers are set my first book and really I just came to writing as a as a pretty

...