Hey y'all, welcome to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living.

I'm your host, Sid Evans, and today I'm talking with someone whose debut novel made quite a splash back in 2009.

Catherine Stockett's The Help, captivated millions of of readers and brought national attention to the complex relationships between black housekeepers and their white employers during the Civil Rights era in Mississippi.

It also became an Academy Award-winning film just two years later, with Catherine's friend Octavia Spencer winning for best supporting

actress. Catherine was born and raised in Jackson and later attended the University of Alabama.

After a long run in the magazine industry in New York City, she eventually returned south,

and she now splits her time between Natchez, Mississippi, and New York.

Several of her friends from the film production of the help have also settled nearby,

creating a close-knit community.

Now, 17 years later, she's back with her long-awaited second novel, The Calamity Club.

Set in 1933 in Oxford, Mississippi, it follows a group of resourceful women with a

terrible, awful, but very profitable idea to make enough money to survive during the Great Depression.

In true stocket form, it's full of memorable characters, hilarious scenes, and plenty of heartbreak. In this episode, we talk about how

her mother struggles as a divorced woman in the 1970s inspired her new book, why some characters

came more easily than others, and how she sees her job as a Southern woman, all in this week's

Biscuits and Jam.

Catherine Stockett, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.

Hey, Sid, I'm so happy to be here.

It's so nice to see you.

It's really been way too long.

I don't know why our paths haven't crossed somewhere out there in the south, but you know, they just haven't. I know. They haven't. Nice to see you again. It's good to see you. Yeah,

I'm in Mississippi. You are? I am. I go from Mississippi, sometimes to New York, you know,

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