Sonya Walger, LION
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.4 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
British-American actress, writer, and podcaster Sonya Walger joins Zibby to discuss LION, a stunning autobiographical novel full of drama, love, and tragedy. Together, they explore the blurred line between fiction and reality, with Sonya describing her book as “a work of fiction in which everything happened.” She shares poignant stories of her charismatic, risk-taking father—once a Formula One driver, polo player, and skydiver—and reflects on how he shaped her own parenting, choices, and identity. She talks about memory, family, her marriage, writing as a way to detangle personal truths, and the chaos of losing her home shortly after this book’s release.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.2 | at Zibby Owens. |
| 0:44.7 | Sonia Walger is the author of Lion. Sonia is a British American actress, writer, and podcaster. |
| 0:51.9 | Sonia began her career as a film and television actress in 1998 and is perhaps |
| 0:56.2 | best known for her role as Penny Widmore in the ABC series Lost and later for starring as Molly Cobb |
| 1:02.5 | in the Apple TV Plus original for all mankind. A student of English literature at Christchurch |
| 1:08.6 | College at the University of Oxford and host of the literature |
| 1:12.4 | podcast bookish. Sonia is a longtime literary enthusiast whose debut novel Lion is a work of |
| 1:18.2 | auto fiction about her relationship with her father. Sonia is one of our featured authors at our |
| 1:23.3 | Santa Barbara retreat, March 28th to 30th. Welcome, Sonia. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked |
| 1:29.0 | with Zivie to talk about your absolutely stunning, beautiful book Lion. Congrats. |
| 1:34.4 | Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh. Sonia, this book was gorgeous, like |
| 1:40.8 | truly gorgeous. Every sentence was beautiful. I feel like you have taken me all over the |
| 1:47.0 | place. I feel like I spent the summer in your grandparents' apartment, trying to figure out what to do with |
| 1:51.0 | myself. I feel like I was sitting in your dad's place with his girlfriend, like wearing the sparkly gold |
| 1:58.1 | shirt. Like I just, I feel like I have lived all of these experiences. It was so powerful. So, well done. Thank you. I'm so thrilled. They have goosebumps. That's just, that's all you hope for. It's just great. Oh, well, you're a beautiful writer. Okay, why don't you tell everybody what this is about? And also it's being marketed as |
| 2:17.9 | auto fiction. So maybe explain what auto fiction is and what is real, what is not real, |
| 2:23.7 | and all of that. Well, I hate the phrase auto fiction. I think it sounds like a drive-thru. |
... |
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