Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Jenks-Daily, supervising producer at Late Night, and welcome to our summer semester episode of Late Night Lit.

On this episode, we speak with NBC News Daily co-anchor and NBC News correspondent Morgan Radford, whose debut novel,

Now, Then, was published in May. We'll also hear from author Stephanie Swallow, whose latest book,

Should the Waters Take Us, is out now. Lastly, we're joined by Anne Patchett, who took a few

minutes to answer some questions with me backstage

following her recent late-night interview with Seth.

Morgan Radford's debut novel, Now Then, is not only a wonderful story, it's a very personal one.

She joins us on the podcast with her days old

newborn daughter in her arms to talk about the inspiration for the book and when she found the time

to write it. We also chat about how becoming a mother changed her life and vastly improved

her organizational skills, the types of narratives that she finds inspiring, and how her

journalistic background affects the way that she wants to tell stories.

Here's my conversation with Morgan.

We're here with Morgan Radford, whose new novel now then is available now. Morgan, welcome to Late Night Lit. I'm so happy to talk to you.

I'm so excited to be here. I love everything you guys are doing, and I am really pumped to be talking to you. Well, I would just like to mention you did recently give birth, and we have a special visitor, which our listeners can't see, but I'm thrilled to be looking at your new little baby. You are right. I have my hospital bands. We left the hospital last night. And Little One was excited to join the mix. What can we say?

I can't believe you're doing this. But congratulations on a baby and a baby book, I guess. I wanted to first just start off with you are obviously a busy NBC news anchor and a mom. And it's so challenging to write a book to take some time for yourself. So I was wondering,

what is your schedule? Like, when did you find time to write this? It's funny. I feel like the time

found me. I think this was actually a very centering activity. And I think one of the biggest lessons I

learned thinking about finding the time was that it's almost more important to do when our lives

feel most congested and almost charted in a sense because that's what brought me back to myself,

right? Like I love being a mom. When I had my first daughter, I felt like my world just exploded

and just became brighter.

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