I really, really wanted every story turn to feel so emotionally earned, you know, grief, as much as it flattens you, it can also just tear you open.

And I think when that happens, one, you do, you feel like you're interacting with the world in a different way, right? And then I think you are also, you do have the sense that like, life is short. You don't know what's going to happen. Let me try. Like, I guess I will do this. And of course, it doesn't affect everyone in the same way. But I think that

kind of effect is familiar to all of us, you know.

Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Tracy

Thomas, and today I am joined by author and journalist Jade Chang. She's here to discuss her new book, What a Time to Be Alive. In this novel, Chang's Down on Her Luck protagonist, Lola Treasure Gold, gains accidental internet fame when a video of her speaking at her late best friend's week goes viral, launching her into

a career as a self-help guru. Today, Jade and I talk about the industry of influencing. We talk

about audience and how Jade's perspective has changed over her years as an author. And we talk about

people as punctuation marks. As a reminder, our book club pick for October is Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley, which we will discuss on Wednesday, October 29th with Angela Flournoy.

Everything we talk about on each episode of the Stacks is linked in the show notes.

If you like this podcast and want more bookish content and community, consider joining

the Stacks Pack on Patreon and subscribing to my

newsletter unstacked on Substack. Each place offers different perks like community conversations

and virtual book clubs over on Patreon and my writing and hot takes on the latest literary

and pop culture trends over on substack. Plus, your support makes it possible for me to make

the stacks every single week. To join, head to patreon.com slash the stacks and or tracytocomis.com.

Now it's time for my conversation with Jade Chang.

All right, everybody.

I'm so excited today. I am joined by friend of the pod who's never actually

been on the pod, but I think we're friends. The author of the brand new book, What a Time to Be Alive,

Jade, Jane, welcome to the stacks. Hi, Tracy. It is a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to have you. I guess how, when was the first time we met? Because you're an L.A. author. And I know that you did the fire event. And I remember talking to you there, but did we, we met before. We've met it like a reading or something like that before. Yeah. And I feel like we have friends in common.

Yeah.

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