Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

Please also check out my other podcast, kids do have time to read books.

I'm on Instagram at Zivibi Owens and at Moms

don't have time to read books and at kids do have time to read. So please follow me.

And if at any time you have suggestions, my email is Zibi at Zivvyowens.com. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much to my latest sponsor, the Mermaid Pillow Company, Mermaidpillow.com.

They make these amazing pillows with sequins on the back and positive messages on the front,

and they now even make custom pillows and blankets.

It's an amazing company, and if you enter the code Zibbi, Z-I-B-Y, you will get 10% off, which is super cool. So please check them out, MermaidPillowco.com. I'm thrilled to be interviewing Meg Wollitzer, the New York Times best-selling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She's also the author of the young adult novel, Belzar.

And her latest book, The Female Persuasion, was an instant New York Times bestseller

and was one of the most celebrated books of 2018.

Nicole Kidman is signed on for the film adaptation, which is in the works.

In fact, three movies have been made from Meg's books, including This Is My Life,

The Wife, and Surrender Dorothy. A former creative writing teacher at the University of Iowa, Writers Workshop, Princeton University, Skidmore College, and Stony Brook, Willitzer currently lives in New York City with her husband. Hi, it's Vivy Owens from Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Very well. Thank you.

Thanks for coming on my show. I really appreciate it. Sure. So I loved your book, The Interestings,

even rereading it now. I mean, it just, all those characters are just so lifelike. I could just feel

myself like Julie, that shy, awkward girl. It's feared in the woods camp on the outside of the group.

He wrote so beautifully about that period of time.

And I'm going to quote, if you don't mind just to start us off, when a cool camper asked Julie at the row of things to join the group.

And you wrote that Julie had looked at her with a dumb dripping face, which she then quickly dried with a thin towel from home.

Jacobson, her mother had written along the puckered edge in red laundry marker in a tentative hand that now seemed a little tragic.

So that feeling of being an outsider, can you talk to me about that and how you include it in many of your books?

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