81. AMAL EL-MOHTAR: Murder Ballads, Sisterhood, and Time Travel

Amal El-Mohtar is a co-author of the very buzzy book, "This Is How You Lose The Time War" which was seen in the TV show adaptation of "Heartstopper", and debuted as a solo author this year with "The River Has Roots". You know I love a good physical book, but I highly recommend the audiobook for reasons we chat about in this interview filmed at C2E2 2025.

This was such a fun conversation about sisterhood from the oldest daughter's perspective, sports, and literacy and justice for all, among many other things. The ADHD was strong, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It was such a delightful time!

Cover artists of This Is How You Lose The Time War Deluxe Hardcover Edition: Amanda Hudson of FaceOut Studio.

Links to come

Transcript

00;00;02;29 - 00;00;24;17
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype podcast. I am Stephanie here literary hype man and today's author conversation is a really fun one because this author is getting a lot of buzz right now for one of their books appearing in the show Heart Stopper. So it's really brought their older book to the limelight. But now they're back with a brand new book that is their debut as a solo author, and that is Amount of Time.

00;00;24;24 - 00;00;40;27
Speaker 1
And the book is The River Has Roots. It is a very skinny book, and so it's got two little short stories in here. I got the chance to talk to Amal while she was in Chicago for C2e2, and we took a little time to talk about this book and kind of a lot of other things we went off on a lot of different topics.

00;00;40;27 - 00;00;41;24
Speaker 1
So brace yourselves.

00;00;46;07 - 00;00;48;02
Speaker 2
Well, welcome to Literary House.

00;00;48;03 - 00;00;50;16
Speaker 3
And so excited to have you here to talk about your great book.

00;00;50;16 - 00;00;52;12
Speaker 4
Different. That's. Thank you so much.

00;00;52;29 - 00;01;02;02
Speaker 3
So before we get into the book, I saw something on your Instagram and I have to bring it up and it's this brand new shirt you just got. You got it in my town of St Louis.

00;01;02;05 - 00;01;04;05
Speaker 4
Oh, my God. It's like you yeah.

00;01;04;14 - 00;01;14;12
Speaker 3
Cool. I was going to go to your event, but I was out of town and I was like, Oh, I'll make my husband go. And then the audience here and I was like, I'll just I'm just here and we'll schedule an interview and we're.

00;01;16;12 - 00;01;18;11
Speaker 4
Yes, agreed on all. OK.

00;01;19;10 - 00;01;22;28
Speaker 3
So tell me a little bit about this shirt for anybody who hasn't seen it, what it means to you.

00;01;23;03 - 00;01;49;20
Speaker 4
Absolutely. Hilariously, I was literally wearing it earlier today. It's a literacy and justice football and I got it from left bank books, which I adore. This is a bookstore that I became aware of before I visited Saint Louis for the first time because they do so much really passionate community advocacy on so many different levels. They have been you know, about Black Lives Matter, they have been about Palestine, they have been about all these busses that are very important to me.

00;01;49;20 - 00;02;11;28
Speaker 4
They've been very clear, focused. And I just was when I finally got to visit them on this most recent trip, I was like, I want your merch. And I just I was like, this is this is great. I would like to have this is and it is this in T-shirt form but my dear friend who I was also visiting and Saint Louis is very crafty and I like everything to be tank tops as much as possible.

00;02;12;14 - 00;02;26;20
Speaker 4
And so she leaves off for me. You know, I have this like muscle tank that says literacy and justice for all and makes me feel very powerful and threatening to people who don't agree with me, which I feel is how I should carry myself in the world. Not a bad.

00;02;26;22 - 00;02;34;29
Speaker 3
Thing. Yes. But also, it's kind of interesting that you're Canadian and you love tank tops like that. Just sometimes that does not compute. You think of Canada as being really cool.

00;02;35;02 - 00;02;45;05
Speaker 4
I run half, first of all. But it's true. I mean, I was literally wearing that shirt earlier today outside here. I don't know what the temperature is in Fahrenheit. It was like.

00;02;45;12 - 00;02;47;28
Speaker 3
It's like it's upper forties. Yeah. So.

00;02;48;08 - 00;03;15;18
Speaker 4
Yeah, it was just like a lovely sunny day. I just like, you know, sun comes up because it just a thing that I like. But in general, this is a recent phenomenon for me that I just embrace all the times of life because I have recently become a gym bro and I just in addition to being very warm all the time, I just like to have my increasingly big shoulders released from the confines of other clothes that don't fit me anymore.

00;03;16;00 - 00;03;17;17
Speaker 4
So Tank tops are just very forgiving.

00;03;18;09 - 00;03;23;14
Speaker 3
When I was around where we were, lots of tank tops nothing really fits.

00;03;24;01 - 00;03;30;12
Speaker 4
That weird shit. I mean, look growing for upper body definition. I mean, I admire rowers very much.

00;03;30;12 - 00;03;30;23
Speaker 3
It's more.

00;03;32;05 - 00;03;33;19
Speaker 4
Oh really? Yes. I think that.

00;03;33;27 - 00;03;35;09
Speaker 3
Because you're kicking and pushing.

00;03;35;18 - 00;03;43;04
Speaker 4
That makes a lot of sense. I have actually been in a rowing machine before, which is so different. OK, oh, so this is fascinating to me actually, because.

00;03;43;22 - 00;03;57;16
Speaker 3
So in a rowing machine, you it's stationary. You're right. But in a boat you have to like every little bitty movement you make right the balance of the court. So you have to hold your core. So it's 85% legs, 10% for 5%.

00;03;57;23 - 00;03;58;15
Speaker 4
That's all you're doing is.

00;03;59;23 - 00;04;16;03
Speaker 3
Tapping down into this is great. I feel like I should take this up this summer. Don't do it. It's worse. Your body will not like it later. I regret. I regret very much the Nike and the scholarship. But now my body is like, What have you done?

00;04;16;03 - 00;04;18;09
Speaker 4
I want so much about you can.

00;04;18;09 - 00;04;25;16
Speaker 3
You could turn this interview around. Tell me about your history. Rowing is not for the week. OK.

00;04;26;12 - 00;04;27;13
Speaker 4
So very strong.

00;04;27;27 - 00;04;36;02
Speaker 3
And especially we have a coach who is British and an Olympian, OK, he was very, very strict, which goes into reverse.

00;04;36;28 - 00;04;50;15
Speaker 4
Yeah, immaculate. Immaculate. Secondly, I respect I'm not wearing hot, but like Shapiro. Incredible. Yes. Speaking of rivers. Speaking of rivers, you've got this book that's called The River Has. True. I do. It does, yes.

00;04;50;15 - 00;04;53;25
Speaker 3
So for anybody who hasn't seen this online or in their bookstores already, you tell us.

00;04;54;13 - 00;05;19;26
Speaker 4
Sure. So The River Has Roots is a retelling of a 17th century ballad type called The Cruel Sister The premise of the ballad is that there was a man who was courting two sisters mysteriously. He's not the villain of the ballad. And the older sister is jealous of the younger sister, so she drowns her in a river and the drowned sister goes through a series of transformations.

00;05;19;26 - 00;05;36;24
Speaker 4
She becomes a swan, she becomes an instrument. And then when she becomes an instrument, she sings the song of her murder. And the older sister comes to a back end. That's the gist of it. I love murder ballads, which are ballads in which a murder occurs.

00;05;37;14 - 00;05;43;03
Speaker 2
I live with that. But the thing I know is they are murder ballads, riddles uncluttered ballads. I love them. This is not me.

00;05;43;03 - 00;06;06;19
Speaker 4
Being like how shag ballads are problematic. Oh, it's that particular ballad, you know, was very itchy to me because, I mean, I'm the eldest of several children. I am an older sister, and my younger sister is the direst person in the entire world to me. I love her extremely, enormously, completely, simply, straightforwardly. Ours is not a complex relationship.

00;06;06;19 - 00;06;37;17
Speaker 4
I just love my sister. And I was like, I just feel like this, which I love. I need some correction for me to be brought into line with my life and my feelings. So I decided to retell it in a way that made me feel better. And the result is the river has roots, which is mostly about two sisters who love each other, who sing to these willow trees that are on the border with very large scale Arcadia and and then some courtships happen and shenanigans.

00;06;38;03 - 00;06;40;25
Speaker 3
That's a shenanigan let's and let's it.

00;06;41;03 - 00;06;44;23
Speaker 4
Yeah, I was going to say, like, shenanigans makes it sound like they're fun and funny things happen.

00;06;45;14 - 00;07;09;03
Speaker 3
Yeah. Which is important to have a story about good or bad. You have to have things happening. Correct? You have a story. Yes. Yes, exactly. We're friends. This wedding was spreading through the back while we were in line. She's like, What are you doing today? And she's like, What is this girl's obsession with grammar? And I was like, Oh, I don't know how to answer that.

00;07;09;23 - 00;07;12;21
Speaker 3
So but you have a really good mind at the beginning of.

00;07;12;28 - 00;07;18;26
Speaker 4
What is the magic between. Yes, yes. So talk a little bit about the grammar magic sure.

00;07;19;03 - 00;07;20;06
Speaker 3
And how that word comes up.

00;07;20;06 - 00;07;46;09
Speaker 4
So that's why this girl has an obsession with grammar, is that for my sins, I have done way too much English in my life. I stayed in school for a very long time. I did doctoral work on fairies and other supernatural creatures and romantic. Everybody's writing, you know, I'm really good at that. But so it's a deep interest of my grammar.

00;07;46;11 - 00;08;22;03
Speaker 4
The word ideologically is connected to the word grimoire, to magic, you know, attempts to work, you know, your will in the world and stuff like that. And I've also taught English, both literature and language and creative writing for many years. And I think I was trying to like teach students was to have, you know, an appreciation and a respect for grammar and not as a driving dusty thing that's boring to learn about because a way of organizing thought and through thoughts will and power in the world.

00;08;22;12 - 00;08;47;22
Speaker 4
So it is like the idea that grammar is an organizing principle for intention, for the way that you want to communicate and stuff is enormously powerful. And it is basically what magic is like. You talk about like, you know, the way that people to find magic and modern day occult terms or yesteryear's occult terms. But it's about like working one's will in the world and stuff like that and, and grammar is a very literal means of doing that.

00;08;48;01 - 00;09;18;12
Speaker 4
And the way that you shape the language often shapes reality, shapes stuff, shapes our perceptions of reality. So all of that felt congruent with, with magic. And I like the idea that, you know, if you what happens to your experience of the word magic, if you replace it with if you just literally nakedly say that, you know, wow, that was there was so much grammar in the air, you know, and I like what it did to me, what I described and I just really enjoyed.

00;09;19;00 - 00;09;23;07
Speaker 4
Yeah. The vibe that it gave the story, but also just the intention that.

00;09;23;17 - 00;09;29;13
Speaker 2
You know, a body can be organized in a grammatical or an ungrammatical or.

00;09;29;13 - 00;09;36;05
Speaker 4
That somebody can be murdered. And to have Mari to be like, you know, like you can grandma you know, it just that sort of thing.

00;09;36;08 - 00;09;45;27
Speaker 2
All of that was very fun for me to play. But just as a reader, it's also so words literally words are literally magic. My thesis statement for my life.

00;09;46;04 - 00;09;54;23
Speaker 4
And for my career. Yes, words there. But I mean, like, what is it? Magnets. How do they work? Words. How do they work?

00;09;55;11 - 00;10;09;13
Speaker 3
And stuff that you touched on your relationship with your sister and older multiple children as well with younger sisters, we're like the same OK, so the story, the Center on Sisterhood.

00;10;09;15 - 00;10;13;00
Speaker 4
What the sisterhood mean to you? I mean, sisterhood for me has.

00;10;13;02 - 00;10;19;20
Speaker 2
Genuinely defined my I entire like waking life, like my memory. It's my.

00;10;19;20 - 00;10;38;16
Speaker 4
Earliest memory. I can't remember a time before I was an older sister. There's like a really small movie, sincere, earnestly answering this in a slightly right way about I'm saying this. I'm kind of going to push the button that you can be sincere when it's just like my sister is me, like to say best friend doesn't quite cut it.

00;10;38;16 - 00;11;04;27
Speaker 4
It's like she is part of me in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who doesn't have a sibling because her existence has defined mine in so many ways as she's a lot of who I am, a lot of I think of myself in the world and I just like loved her so much and she is like one of, if not the best person in the entire world.

00;11;05;14 - 00;11;30;26
Speaker 4
Not hyperbolically, just speaking completely objectively. My sister is like the best person, so sorry to every other person, but like including my husband's but yeah, just I love her completely because I mean, by way of answering it is I have never felt more destroyed by a tweet than the one that said, are you the eldest daughter of immigrants or are you my mom?

00;11;31;27 - 00;11;33;26
Speaker 4
And I really feel that, you know.

00;11;34;23 - 00;11;37;12
Speaker 3
Eldest daughter from the Romans, you know.

00;11;37;22 - 00;12;02;17
Speaker 4
And I think that there's just, you know, all the things all the things that, you know, you look back on and feel a little sadder, annoyed by like that you I don't know if this is the case for you, but in my case, it was like I couldn't sleep over at people's houses or like there was a lot of just like parental fear that gets projected onto the first child.

00;12;02;24 - 00;12;24;16
Speaker 4
But then like every other child, they're like, whatever, that's fine. We figured it out you know? And also this like there are so many formulas that my parents would say that also feel like definition to me as a person. Like, if you're the eldest, there's this proverb in Arabic, it's like you want to be in this city, which is like the big pot carries a little pot.

00;12;24;28 - 00;12;35;05
Speaker 4
And in any situation where I was like in a conflict with my siblings, my parents been like a big pot carries a little pot. You're the big pot. You just gotta, you know, if you die, right?

00;12;36;01 - 00;12;37;03
Speaker 3
I feel so attached.

00;12;37;18 - 00;13;00;17
Speaker 4
Oh, my God. Yeah. And yeah, I will say, as annoying as it is to like reflect on and stuff or, you know, to look back on, like, just how much you child support and stuff the elders usually provides and stuff too. I do feel like that asking myself the question in the world of like who is the big pot in this situation has actually been very helpful.

00;13;00;26 - 00;13;30;00
Speaker 4
Like if I am in a situation of conflict with someone else or if I see a conflict between people, I find myself asking like, who here has the greater capacity here? Has the capacity to extend grace or patience or, you know, call or help and stuff. And I do think that that's a question that should be answered in most situations of conflict, not necessarily just like, you know, who's in the right, but who has capacity, who can be forgiving.

00;13;30;25 - 00;13;44;13
Speaker 4
And I don't know. And I feel like uncertainty well generally and as a pillar of like how I want to move through the world, it's been important me it's into so from knowing that I am an eldest daughter and an older sister and stuff.

00;13;44;22 - 00;13;48;15
Speaker 3
Has your sister gotten you into any particular interests?

00;13;49;09 - 00;14;11;00
Speaker 4
I thought you were going to say trouble and I was ready with an anecdote. But in terms of me thinking, oh, there's no no, it's all good, honestly. I mean, so this is very neat and graphical and stuff. But like she and I have sung together since we were very small and we, like, you know, worked our way through things like the designs on books, on book and stuff.

00;14;11;00 - 00;14;36;13
Speaker 4
And we memorized all the songs and sang them together a lot. I don't know how interested I would have been in continuing to sing without her also singing and without, like, hearing the way that our voices sound together and stuff which really feels unlike any other situation of singing with a person. There was just something about voices in a family harmonizing that to me sounds different in a ineffable way that I tried to put in prose in this book and stuff.

00;14;36;19 - 00;15;01;27
Speaker 4
But she also on the two of us actually went on to pursue music, and she is an actual musician. She I I think of her as the musician, and I am like a writer who plays music, and that's a distinction I'm very comfortable with. So she plays the flute and I play the harp. Her interest in music has opened my eyes has widened my aperture response to like different experiences of music.

00;15;01;27 - 00;15;20;15
Speaker 4
She's like classically trained. She went to conservatory and something like that. And, and I think that, yeah, that definitely has opened things up to me. In general, just like the way this makes me delighted. She's very nice. I feel like when we were little, I used to be a lot.

00;15;20;15 - 00;15;29;06
Speaker 2
More just kind of open and bubbly, and they're very small, the two of us. I was the one who was like the more outgoing and stuff.

00;15;29;25 - 00;15;58;05
Speaker 4
And then I went and I lived in the UK for like six years and that was like smooshed out of me by a general, just a lot of cultures and a very different way of being in the world. Let's remember going back to Canada afterwards and seeing my sister be this like open, bubbly, gregarious, earnest person and just being like, Yes, I just like, like I can see something that I used to be in the way that she now was, and that felt really good.

00;15;58;05 - 00;16;06;11
Speaker 4
And I honestly don't know if she would have like if it's one of those things that when you're apart for a while, you kind of just develop in something different directions and stuff.

00;16;07;07 - 00;16;15;25
Speaker 3
So I don't know what you and your sister sing together. You still look for this. Yes. Yes. So what's it like for you to get to do that with her for your process?

00;16;15;25 - 00;16;42;12
Speaker 4
It was wonderful. I kind of enough sing the praises of like Steve Wagner. I mean, really, what do you for just being so game with all of my nonsense? Like, you know, I first she was like, you know, do you have any thoughts about narrators for the audio book? And I said, yes, I have. Could we get someone who has natively has a British accent I would rather that someone was not putting on a British accent.

00;16;42;12 - 00;17;01;25
Speaker 4
So much of this book is like rooted in Dartmoor, very specifically in a place called China that I love for a little while and I just wanted to have someone like me who had a West Country accent, if possible. And then I was like, could you find someone with a West Country accent who also has a Middle Eastern heritage and is a bit of an ask?

00;17;01;29 - 00;17;14;20
Speaker 4
Not them, not a lot of Middle Eastern diaspora in the West Country. So but Jim Carmela, the narrator, is like, I made her up inside my head. She's incredible. Very disturbing. So first of all, Steve.

00;17;15;13 - 00;17;20;09
Speaker 2
Then I was like, peace to you. My sister and I play music, music together. I literally play the harp.

00;17;20;09 - 00;17;44;17
Speaker 4
Do you want me to do this with you and stop being wildly overconfident? And she was like, That sounds great. Yes, let's do it. And I was like, Oh, great. Now we have to do it and we have to rehearse. And it turns out that, you know, rehearsing when you're in your teens and twenties and live in the same place, roughly is a lot easier than when you're in your thirties, forties.

00;17;44;17 - 00;18;16;04
Speaker 4
And one of you is apparently and is and has like a lot of other projects and deadlines. So finding the time to rehearse together was also already very tricky. And we also had to navigate a lot of like anxieties about like I think a lot of people who have been working musicians for a while happens where it's like we used to be really good and there's a song right here, we can't be as good as we used to be when we had all this time to be really focused on practicing and stuff.

00;18;18;09 - 00;18;29;25
Speaker 4
But can we do something good enough? It ends up being your own harshest critics, totally forgetting that when you walk into a studio, there are sound business who will make you sound good.

00;18;30;08 - 00;18;32;00
Speaker 3
Use their music grammar.

00;18;32;05 - 00;18;56;12
Speaker 4
Yes, genuinely. Like I kept saying to my sister, We don't have to be album we're not recording an album. We're creating sounds for the brilliant sound of business to use in making an audio book sound really good. So we just want to take the pressure off. So we we sang a bunch of stuff together, we played a bunch of stuff together, and we would do a take and be like, Oh, you didn't like that very much.

00;18;56;12 - 00;19;19;21
Speaker 4
And then they would play it back for us with whatever stuff they were doing to it, and it would just sound so good. This is great, actually. I mean, maybe, maybe this is fine. So the experience, though, of just singing together and playing together was so wonderful and genuine, and I like like I always feel a little goofy, like just coming out and saying this.

00;19;19;22 - 00;20;00;10
Speaker 4
I don't know if you noticed this. I'm a very earnest person. Right. I know. It's shocking. Nothing felt as magical to me as the two of us singing the what in the book is called The Professor was him and what in reality is that with this movie, which is this Palestinian folk song that on the album where I first heard it gets called Lovers Who and it's a it's a technique that uses this technique in it called NOLA, where you introduce these like nonsense lot sounds into words like a kind of pig like situation to break the words up and make them unintelligible to anyone who's not a native speaker of Arabic or who's unfamiliar

00;20;00;10 - 00;20;13;23
Speaker 4
with the dialect and stuff and it was a means of encoding secret messages in songs. And women specifically would sing these songs, you know, to their imprisoned family members.

00;20;14;21 - 00;20;15;10
Speaker 3
To, you.

00;20;15;10 - 00;20;46;23
Speaker 4
Know, convey messages back and forth or to tell them to expect to be like bust in prison and stuff like that. And it was a beautiful thing to learn about in the course of while I was revising this book that I was like, I want explicitly as much as possible to get this into the book somehow. And when my sister and I sang it together, you know, we both sort of just looked at each other and like it felt like something happens to us.

00;20;47;02 - 00;21;07;21
Speaker 4
So yeah, short answer is that it was great. It was just an incredible experience getting to sing with my sister on the audiobook of the book that is partly dedicated to my sister. Is just an incredible it's a closing of circles that one does in magic, you might say, Well, it's magic. Magic.

00;21;08;22 - 00;21;19;06
Speaker 3
A different kind of magic that is kind of hinted at and also comes up in your previous book. Oh, it's Time Travel. Yes. What do you love about time travel? Oh, so many things.

00;21;19;10 - 00;21;43;12
Speaker 4
I love what time travel allows us to say about memory. Mostly, I can't think of time travel without thinking about how weird it is that we have memory like that as a species. We have recollection of things that happened, and when we think about them, we hallucinate them vividly enough that you can just like be in the same place that you are.

00;21;43;21 - 00;22;04;08
Speaker 4
There are so many ways of experiencing things that are like time travel. We're like, I mean, so, so much of the dominant metaphor of time war is that there's a kind of time travel and writing letters, right? Every time you write a letter by hand, it's like you are preserving a self, like a version of yourself in some situations.

00;22;04;16 - 00;22;29;19
Speaker 4
And you have to imagine the person you're sending it to to in ten days time. Like you have to kind of think in ten days, where will you person who I'm writing to be, what will you have experience? Like if I know that a friend of mine is going through, you know, a huge thing and I write a letter knowing that it's going to arrive after that huge thing, then I have to kind of ask and anticipate and wonder, like, who is my friend at this point.

00;22;30;08 - 00;22;39;01
Speaker 2
In time in the future? So I guess, like, the thing about time travel is that you can have these really mechanical plot.

00;22;39;01 - 00;23;05;23
Speaker 4
Based ways of thinking about it as a McGuffin and stuff like that, which can be very fun and very satisfying. You can have it be something about a deterministic universe where like everything that has not been touched to have happened. Like it's a kind of world where it's like if there's a prophecy, you can't defy the prophecy. And if you try to defy the prophecy, the moment make it happen, that sort of thing, you know?

00;23;05;28 - 00;23;17;28
Speaker 4
Or you can have like the multiverse thing. And right now, or at least like in the last few years, there's been this trend that I've been seeing that I really believe is still very moved by that. I think of as like a.

00;23;19;28 - 00;23;20;09
Speaker 3
I guess.

00;23;20;19 - 00;23;38;05
Speaker 4
It's like a Spotify day last time in my head, that's like queer millennial multiverse sort of thing where there's just there have been a number of books where there's a kind of like, who would I have been? This question and I'm thinking here of like, is a book.

00;23;38;05 - 00;23;42;15
Speaker 2
By any book, like a cult self-portrait with nothing, I think is the title of the book.

00;23;43;14 - 00;24;01;03
Speaker 4
Which is deeply moving and Morphs and Universes is is another one where it's just like there are books that are like, I am this person now. I am approaching middle age, and there are all these points in my past where I'm like, If I had done this thing differently, who would I or in this other universe, who would I be?

00;24;01;14 - 00;24;23;17
Speaker 4
And it feels so specific to the world that is collapsing around us in so many ways and to the kind of pressures that determine who we are. And I feel specifically like with queer people more where you know, a lot of people will talk about like queer teenage hurt or like, what does a queer a queer adolescence or a second adolescence and stuff.

00;24;24;13 - 00;24;55;02
Speaker 4
If someone like transitions in adulthood or if someone has like previously, you know, been bisexual in one way up until a certain point. And then it's like I think it's kind of time to explore this other side of me and stuff. There's just like there's so much about that that involves looking back at the past and wondering, you know, and bringing questions to like, would I have been ever who could I have been if I just find that really moving?

00;24;55;02 - 00;25;13;03
Speaker 4
So when I think about time travel as a thing that we interrogate or like put in fiction that I think of as kind of a journey for myself anyway, I think of those questions I think of like that. But I also think of it as a relationship to history, you know, like what is history but a collective memory ultimately.

00;25;13;12 - 00;25;44;19
Speaker 4
And the idea that everything that currently has some clear antecedents, you know, like, you know, won't come back to fairness, is there are always rediscovering, rediscovering Jews that lots of queer people in the past, like artists, scientists, inventors, whatever, and just being like, oh, yeah, so-and-so, you know, lived with their they're close friends of the same sex or their whole life and they were very devoted to each other.

00;25;45;13 - 00;25;54;11
Speaker 4
That was it all, you know, that sort of stuff where there are lots of things that we can't know for sure. But there is always like our vision of.

00;25;54;11 - 00;25;59;09
Speaker 2
History is so determined by our present. It's like the present is.

00;25;59;09 - 00;26;23;09
Speaker 4
Always curating versions of the past and to change that, curation feels like changing the past, you know, recognizing the past for more of what it was. Is it kind of like enacting that time travel change, you know, that allows more connections to flourish in the present with like people being like, it's not weird that I'm like, this is actually very big.

00;26;23;10 - 00;26;50;16
Speaker 4
There is so much pressure, you know? And I always think of like, Emily Barrett Browning, I think writing this language, she was like, I, I look around me for Grand Mother was on Friday night and what she was talking about specifically with like women writers and she was writing in the 19th century. She's like I with the benefit of a lot of scholarship, know a lot of writers who were writing before her after that she didn't necessarily have connections.

00;26;50;16 - 00;27;13;09
Speaker 4
Well, and that also like is something that I see reiterated time and time again of like people not knowing that someone else was doing the thing that they are doing. And when they learn, they feel the simultaneous like joy of recognition and also pang of loss that, you know, when you didn't have that knowledge earlier. So how do you use content?

00;27;13;09 - 00;27;16;25
Speaker 4
Words about to come out again in a special edition has since.

00;27;16;25 - 00;27;21;29
Speaker 3
Really popping off ever since that appearance Mark sorry. So what's it like for you to see this book that's been around for a while.

00;27;22;05 - 00;27;49;17
Speaker 4
Get a new life? Oh, my gosh. It's it's incredible. It's really, really wonderful. I mean, there's heart stoppers, you know, the most recent thing. But obviously, like with the it's the book having had it's like big elastic. It was open moments in 2023 was life changing for me and just like the waves and waves of people who were coming to the book fresh in 2023 like four years after it had come out it's just wonderful.

00;27;50;08 - 00;28;12;21
Speaker 4
Getting to see the new cover is also very, very exciting. I feel like Greg Stanton cover that with the two birds on it has been tremendous and like it's been such a delight to see them be iconic and stuff in this way. Getting to see letters on this new cover that is delightful and that I wish I could remember the designer's name.

00;28;12;21 - 00;28;31;12
Speaker 4
I literally saw it recently in my email, like, I trust you to put it in show notes and things, so they want to give credit where it is due, but it looks so beautiful and it looks like it's it, it's a different expression and just getting to think about the people who might come to the book because of this, like new packaging.

00;28;31;12 - 00;28;49;28
Speaker 4
This new cover at the same time is thinking about all the people who desperately wanted a hardcover after the hardcovers were just like gone, like the hardcovers. I think it was like 10,000 copies of them that were first made. I think I was right in 2019 and then there were no more. And people would be like, Can we have more covers please?

00;28;49;28 - 00;29;05;21
Speaker 4
And be like, I would say, I wish I could give them to you. I simply cannot. So now that that exists for people who have like, you know, a treasure copy that is falling apart and that they can have like a solid thing that lives on the bookshelf in a different way is really, really exciting to me. So I'm thrilled.

00;29;05;23 - 00;29;09;08
Speaker 3
My last question we always ask because this is literary.

00;29;09;08 - 00;29;15;13
Speaker 2
Hype woman. OK, my favorite book that I've read in the last several months.

00;29;15;22 - 00;29;30;22
Speaker 4
Is Metal from Heaven. But on this planet, it's phenomenal. It's so great. I think I described it as something like Disco Elysium and Chapel Brown did something together. I don't know if anyone knows this going to New Zealand. It's an incredible.

00;29;30;22 - 00;29;48;15
Speaker 2
Video game that I love, but Metal from Heaven is about Libra and queerness. It's a very anarchic text. It's, if you like more. I would be shocked if you didn't love metal. Sometimes it has a.

00;29;48;15 - 00;29;54;27
Speaker 4
Narration track that is masterful to me and it's just gorgeous. The point is.

00;29;56;12 - 00;30;04;11
Speaker 2
I love everything that authors read and and they bring under are like a bunch of different names. But if you.

00;30;04;24 - 00;30;09;07
Speaker 4
Like the middle ground and magnificent. Oh, the pockets, the rise in the chain.

00;30;09;07 - 00;30;23;06
Speaker 2
By space amateurs. I love that I read recently seen the bright boards by Superman. That's kind of where my friend looks lately. And you. Yeah. So I can't I can just keep going and look for.

00;30;23;07 - 00;30;29;01
Speaker 4
So much I don't get to stop. I mean, we do have things to do. We do have things to do.

00;30;29;09 - 00;30;31;15
Speaker 3
I'm going to get to your dinner on time.

00;30;32;03 - 00;30;37;00
Speaker 4
Get me to the dinner on time. That's very kind of almost nothing. Well, thanks, guys, for.

00;30;37;00 - 00;30;40;28
Speaker 2
Taking up this literary night. Just talking about the presence. Thank you so much for having me.

00;30;44;23 - 00;30;58;11
Speaker 1
Thanks again to Amol for taking time out of her C2e2 schedule to talk all about the river has roots as well as this is how you lose the time where if you'd like to get your hands on either of these books, the links to do so are down in the show notes for you, as well as where to find her on social media.

00;30;58;13 - 00;31;07;09
Speaker 1
If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast give us some stars and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.