Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and I am the host of this podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.

I am also a newly minted USA Today bestselling author of the novel, Blank.

I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company, reading retreats, a bookstore, and more.

Learn more at zivimedia.com or follow me on social at Zivie Owens or join the community at

Zivie Readers.

Jocelyn Takehacks is the author of Pierce Oysters, a novel.

This is our Zivie Books July title.

We are so excited about it.

Oh my gosh. It was edited by Jordan Blumetti. Jocelyn Takehacks holds a PhD in creative

writing and literature from the University of Southern California and an MFA in fiction from

Johns Hopkins University. Her fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Narrative, Tin House, Harvard Review,

the Rumpus Diagram, Columbia, a journal of art and literature, and elsewhere. She has published

interviews and book reviews and the Los Angeles Review of Books and Entropy. Jocelyn has taught

writing at the University of Southern California and Johns Hopkins University. She lived in New Orleans

at the time of the 2010 Deepwater

Horizon spill, and in 2015, she received a grant to record the oral histories of Louisiana

oyster farmers in the wake of the environmental disaster. She currently lives in Portland,

Oregon with her husband. Welcome, Jocelyn. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't

have time to read books to discuss Pierce Oysters. Thank you so much for having me, Zadie. It's a pleasure to be here. It makes me so excited to say that. I feel like a kid in a candy store, like jumping up and down, saying hello to you for this book, which I'm so excited about. I'm so excited too. Just two years in the making, you know?

Oh, my gosh.

Since you acquired the book, and now here we are two weeks before the release.

Was it two years ago?

...