Rewriting History with Jodi Picoult

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Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird.
It's your fave villain, Kale Lowry. And you're listening to Barely Famous.
Welcome back to another episode of Barely Famous podcast. Today, I have a very special guest.
We know her. We love her.
Jodi Pico. Welcome to Barely Famous Podcast.
Thank you for having me. No, I'm so thankful that you took the time to do this podcast.
I know how busy press tours are and book signings and everything. So I really appreciate it.
My pleasure. I am a little more than halfway through by any other name, which is your most recent release.
When this airs, it'll already be out.

But in terms of present time, it comes out tomorrow, which is super exciting. These are all the tabs I have for the first half of the book.
So if this is any indication of what the rest of the book will be, I'm so excited. So, so excited.
I love it. So what was your inspiration for this book? So let me kind of give you the setup of the book too, because that's kind of helpful if people haven't read it yet.
So to me, this is really a book about how women have been written out of history by the men who are writing the history and about how women's voices have been silenced in the past and are still being silenced today. And it follows two different women, one in 1581 named Amelia Bassano, who is a real life historical figure, who was a female playwright who couldn't get her plays in front of the public because she was a female playwright.
And so she decides to pay a man for the use of his name. And that man happens to be William Shakespeare.
And it's about a woman in 2024 named Melina Green, who is a playwright too, and is trying to get to Broadway a play she's written about her ancestor,

Amelia Bassano.

But she can't because Broadway

is a very male-dominated world as well.

So the question is whether she's going to write herself

out of history in order to see her words on the stage.

And I think the reason this book

just means so much to me

is because it is a page-turner,

it's historical fiction,

it is so spicy, it's the spiciest thing I've ever written. And it's also really timeless and timely.
You know, right now, even though I'm writing about something that takes place half in Elizabethan England, I think we're seeing the same sort of issues coming up. We're seeing women who are fighting for their rights every day.
And we're living in a world where a small group of people are making decisions about

what stories should be read and heard and who gets to tell them.

So it's almost like we're living history, you know, all over again.

And in terms of how I got to it, I was an English major.

I fell in love with Shakespeare at college.

What I loved about him were all these super proto-feminist characters like Beatrice and

Rosalind and Portia and Kate and really three-dimensional women you never saw written back then. And maybe for like two seconds in a class, I had a professor say, you know, there's a question about whether Shakespeare wrote all of his plays.
And we all as English majors were like, ha ha ha, that's so stupid. You know, we just totally blew past it.
I didn't really think about it again until a couple of years ago when I read an article in The Atlantic by a woman named Elizabeth Winkler, who's a historian. And she said something in the article that just made me stop dead, which is that Shakespeare had two daughters that survived past infancy, but he never taught either of them to read or write.
They signed with a mark. And I was like, I do not buy it.
I just don't think that the guy who created all of those amazing feminist characters wouldn't

have taught his own girls how to read and write. And so I fell into this rabbit hole.
I had never

heard the name Amelia Bassano, but Elizabeth Winkler wrote about her. And I just started

researching everything that I could. What I learned was that there are a lot of gaps in

Shakespeare's life that make it hard for us to understand how he could have written all of these plays. And for years, academics have kind of twisted themselves in knots to explain it all away.
And Amelia's life without even trying, just fills in all those gaps. And, you know, I realized that this, I basically have been talking about gender discrimination in publishing for almost my whole career.
And once I started to see what Amelia's story was and that it was a version of that, it was more like, how could I not write this book? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I mean, I'll be honest. When I started this book, I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I kind of like to go in blindly. When you say page turner, that is an understatement.
I never thought I would be a historical fiction girly until earlier this year. So I'm like sort of new to the space.
But this, I mean, I, my assistant, I was like, wait, but did you know this? But did you know? And she's like, Kale, I can't, I don't know what you're talking about. I had no idea that there was a theory that Shakespeare did not write his work.

And so that was so interesting to me.

But there are a lot of other themes in the book, too, that I think we still deal with today, which is really interesting.

Right. And one of my one of my really early on questions when I was reading this was and this is kind of controversial, maybe, but did you look at, you know, what Amelia Bassano, first of all, let me go back for a second

because when I did a Google search about Amelia Bassano, she's not listed on even Google

as Amelia Bassano in the first page of Google.

She's listed as Amelia Lanier.

Yes.

Right.

Which is her married name.

Okay.

So that would be the husband that her, that Lord Chamberlain sold her back to.

Right.

I'm sorry. She's listed as Amelia Lanier, which is her married name.
Okay. So that would be the husband that Lord Chamberlain sold her back to.
Right. Okay.
Yeah. Okay.
So because I was trying to figure out, but why list her as that on Google when she was doing all of this before? Because how many times are women defined by their husbands and their accomplishments? I mean, like the book said, it's a business transaction. Do you feel like that is still true today? Yes, 100%.
I really, I really believe that women creators are judged differently than male creators are. And I've said multiple times now, this book is the book that I think I was fated to write.
I've written 29 novels. This is, it's like all been headed towards this.
And I have an unhealthy obsession with Amelia, honestly, after learning about her. And it's because I write about controversial stuff all the time, but very often I'm not mired in the thick of it.
I'm looking at that controversy from afar. I am a female storyteller.
Amelia was a female storyteller. Melina is a fictional female storyteller.
Everything that they've experienced are things that I've experienced. So for example, I am on a book tour.
I will be getting on a different plane every day. And let me tell you exactly what's going to happen.
My seatmate's going to say, oh, what do you do? And I'm going to say, I'm a novelist. And they'll look at me, see a woman and say, oh, do you write children's books? And I'll say, no.
Oh, you must write romance. No.
Oh, women's fiction? Now, what even is women's fiction? Where's men's fiction? Why do they get fiction? And I just think that even today, we're pigeonholing women and their creativity into places that we think they fit when it shouldn't be like that. 100%.
No, I mean, I would agree with you. I was surprised by how many themes that we see in the book that are so true to today.
I mean, did you ever think of like Lord Chamberlain

and that whole thing and what Amelia went through as what we know now as sex trafficking?

Yeah, I mean, but it was very common back then.

Right. So it's like a way of life.

Yeah. So what you're referencing is the fact that when Amelia was 13 years old,

she was basically given to the Lord Chamberlain of England to be his mistress. He was 56 at the

time, which is so creepy to everyone when you hear that age difference, right? But that was

absolutely, even in all marriages, whether or not you were a mistress or married,

it was very common for a young girl to wind up with an older man because all they wanted was

progeny. They just wanted their line to live on.
And so younger girls were able to produce heirs. And as a mistress, you know, she was a hot ticket.
She was a young girl. He had a wife, he didn't, you know, he must have had an arranged marriage for political reasons.
And he didn't really care that much. And a mistress was someone he could enjoy himself with.
And so Amelia was trained to be a classical courtesan, which was a career in Italy, which is where her family's from, you know, and she would have had to have been literate in politics, in all books, in sexual Congress, you know, she would have learned that. And she would have had to basically be his de facto mistress of the house, the arm candy when he went to court.
She was moving in this very elitist world for the 10 years that she was living with the Lord Chamberlain. But what did she get out of it? So the Lord Chamberlain was responsible for all theater in England at the time.
So that meant every play that was written crossed his desk. So he would go through and censor stuff to make sure that it wasn't treasonous.
So through him for 10 years, she would have met everybody in the theater world. She would have met all the playwrights.
She would have gone to rehearsal. She would have gone to opening nights.
She would have known the theater owners. She would have known the producers.
And I think that served her very, very well. And you point out that we know her as Amelia Lanyard.
The only reason we know her is because she was the first published female poet in England. Let's just stop dead right there.
Even if you don't believe that she had anything to do with Shakespeare, she totally deserves to be a household name because of that, because that was a colossal achievement of the time. But writers don't just arrive in their 40s, particularly female ones, and publish a book of poetry.
She was writing before that. There's just no way that she showed up out of nowhere with a book and got it published.
So what was she doing during all those years before she was 40? What was she writing? And who was she writing as? Because it wasn't herself. And that was kind of the seed for the mystery

that I wanted to track. Do you yourself believe that she wrote the plays that we know as William

Shakespeare? I think she was one of multiple people who wrote the plays that we know as

of the plays of William Shakespeare, the Shakespearean plays. We actually do not have

any proof that Shakespeare wrote anything. We know very concrete facts about him historically.
We know that he was a businessman, a producer, an actor. We know that he evaded taxes twice.
We know that he had restraining orders taken out against him by his business colleagues. We know that when there was a famine in Stratford, he hoarded all the grain and made his neighbors pay extra.
He was a lovely man. We also know that he never left the country, but wrote about allegedly these amazing places that he hadn't been to and that weren't listed.
The things he wrote about weren't in guidebooks at the time. We know he never played an instrument, but there are over 3,000 instruments and references to music in the Shakespearean plays.
We know that when he was not educated at Cambridge or Oxford or formally, he was self-taught. But when he died, he didn't own a single book.
And it wasn't like there were libraries he could have gone and done research in at the time. And we know that when he died, he wasn't praised or lauded by any other colleagues, any other playwrights.
He wasn't buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. We actually have zero proof that any of the work with his name on it was written by him, himself.
And it's my belief that a group of authors worked together and wrote under the name, you know, quote, unquote, William Shakespeare. And that at the time, everyone knew when they were getting a quote, unquote, Shakespeare play, it was someone fronting someone else's work, which actually was very common at the time.
It was really common for people to take on pseudonyms or alonyms, which is the name of someone who's an existing person. And, you know, and I think that it was kind of like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge joke in the industry back then.
And I just think we've completely lost the punchline. Do you know of any other like playwrights that people wrote under? I mean, why William Shakespeare of all people? Was it because that potentially he really wasn't a good writer? I know in the first half of the book, it says that these plays that he wrote would come across Lord Chamberlain's desk and she was like, this is not good.
So I put that in because I just decided to rag on Shakespeare. But what we do know, again, historically, this is the historical fact.
There are, I think it's 12 signatures of Shakespeare's. And they almost all look completely different and virtually illegible.
And writers of the time had big, elaborate, fancy signatures. As someone who was a man of letters, he absolutely should be able to write his own name.
A lot of scholars who believe that there are other authorship candidates are like, what is this? How could he not have even signed his name if he was a writer? So I think that I was extrapolating from that and thinking, okay, a guy whose name isn't even legible, I don't know how he's writing what has always been said to be a fair copy, no strikeouts, no marks, no foul copies from Shakespeare. They all came out perfect.
He couldn't even write his own name. So there's that.
And I think that, yes, there were definitely other people who were writing under the names of pseudonyms at the time. And that wasn't just in Shakespeare's time.
That goes all the way through history, especially for female writers. It's still happening today.
Look at J.K. Rowling.
And, you know, she published under those initials for a reason. So I think that, in my opinion, the Earl of Oxford was someone who was writing some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
I think Sir Henry Neville wrote some. I think probably Marlowe might have written a couple.
You know, I think there were a whole bunch of writers who for various reasons, having to do with their position in society, or whatever was going on in their lives, could not have their name attached to a play. And the reason I think it was Shakespeare is because all we really know about Shakespeare is that he wanted to make a quick buck.
We know that historically, that he got in trouble for that. He evaded his taxes.
He had colleagues suing him. You know, he literally jacked up the price of grain.
He honestly was always out to make a quick buck. And so I think here he is and he's going, oh, cool.
Yeah, you want to use my name? Sure. I'll take 50% of the cut.
Yeah. I can totally see that happening.
I just wish they would teach this and other books that you've done, maybe small great things in schools, because I do think it's a theory that high school students or college students could really benefit from really doing a deep dive into. Hey, Cale, right now, I would just settle if they weren't pulling my books off high school shelves.
Are they doing that? Oh, yeah. My books have been banned extensively in many states.
How does that feel when you learn that? Not great. I mean, I've been very vocal about book banning.
It's one of the things I think resonates with by any other name. Again, it's a very small group of people who are making decisions about what should be read, what shouldn't be read.
The people who are banning my books admittedly have said they do not read them. They just believe that they contain mature content.
They're on a list

that has circulated from Moms for Liberty. And so because of that, 19 Minutes, for example,

is one of the most banned books. It's the most banned book in Iowa.
It's been banned hundreds

of times in Florida school districts at this point, all over the place. We'll be right back.
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As a mom of seven children and one entering high school this year, I wish that they would teach these books in school. Me too.
So that's really disheartening. I can't even imagine what that feels like.
It's just food for thought. And I think that if we had books like this in high school and we were studying them and dissecting them, we could kind of think in a new way, you know, like perspective.
Not just that, but let's look at the fact that what I write is no racier than what the Shakespearean plays have in them. Absolutely.
So if you're going to stop having my books on the shelves, you better pull those plays too. Well, what's really interesting is that they're using shows on like networks and stuff, and they're referencing that in textbooks, but they're not going to let us,

let our children read books like this

that provoke thought and start conversations.

And that's exactly it.

And also create empathy and compassion

and allow kids to see a world wider

than the one that they're living in.

You know, the thing about book bans

is that they drive people apart

and books are the things that bring people together.

And I think that's what terrifies the people who want these books being banned.

They don't want people to think differently than the way they do.

And that is very scary to some people.

The great news is the vast majority of Americans do not want books banned, which is really good.

It's a very tiny group that is very vocal and very active that is pulling books off shelves.

We just all need to be equally as loud.

It's so interesting tiny group that is very vocal and very active that is pulling books off shelves. We just all need to be equally as loud.
It's so interesting because right before we started this podcast, you and I and your publicist were talking about how the book community is so supportive, especially just like Book Talk. I have an online book club that I absolutely love and we're so supportive.
Even if one of us really don't like a book or have like really strong feelings against it, I still want to know why someone loves it. And so even if I hate something, that doesn't mean I'm never going to read it.
You know what I mean? Like I still want perspective and I want to know what someone else is seeing through the book. Absolutely.
And I mean, I read about lots of different things. I don't think you're going to like all my books equally.
You know, people always have a favorite. That's totally fine.
The nice thing about fiction is it allows you to discuss difficult topics, controversial topics in a way that feels very safe because it's not quite as aggressive as walking up to someone and saying, let's talk about gay marriage, something like that. It allows you to live through the lives of the characters and maybe see a point of view you haven't considered before.
That's the whole point of fiction. Well, I absolutely love all of your books so far.
So for someone like me who is new to historical fiction, how does one determine what is fact and fiction? Because like I said, I mean, even if you are searching Google for Amelia Bassano, and like I said, even on the first page of Google, you know her as her as her married name. But then you don't know what is fact or what is maybe just like a rumor or a theory on someone's website.
How would you determine or tell someone to determine? That's a great question. And so the answer is you don't use someone's blog.
You know, this is like high school 101. You use primary sources.
So let's look at Amelia, right? We know very concrete facts about her life. And almost all of them come from this diary of a man named Simon Foreman, who was an astrologer slash hack doctor that she went to when she was having a bunch of miscarriages and she wanted to have another baby.
And he documented all of their sessions very clearly, including how he tried multiple times to sleep with her and she turned him down. He included that? Oh, yes.
It's lovely. Go, Amelia, for fighting him back.
And this diary exists in the Ashmolean Museum in England. So you literally can read it.
You can read everything in it and extrapolate it yourself. Right.
So what we know about Amelia comes from that. We know that she came from Italy with her family.
They were very, very musical and creative. And Henry VIII found them and brought them back to be the recorder consort to the king.
And then when he died, they became the recorder consort to the queen. So Amelia grows up with performing all around her and knowing that art can change the mood of someone who hears it, right? She is also Jewish and like the rest of her family, not allowed to show it because you could not be Jewish in England at the time.
She was at age seven. Her dad dies and she's given to a countess as a ward.
Again, this is a super common practice. So her mother gives her to the Countess of Kent to learn from her.
The Countess of Kent is a really cool lady because she decides to educate Amelia and give her this full, full classical and legal education, which is rare for a woman who is not noble. I mean, it's shocking that Amelia as a commoner would have gotten that kind of education.
Then this woman, the Countess, winds up getting married when Amelia is 12. And Amelia is like stuck in limbo.
So she winds up living with this Countess's brother for a year. And he is the ambassador to Denmark.
And so he takes this diplomatic trip at the time when she's living with him. And then the next year he comes back and he arranges for her to be the mistress of the Lord Chamberlain of England.
So she winds up with this guy who is 43 years older than her. For 10 years, she is in his keeping.
And in these diaries, she's very proud of it. He kept her well and long, she says, and says that she got jewels and was constantly praised for her looks.
And like she really was very proud of who she was at that moment. And then she gets pregnant and thrown out of the Lord Chamberlain's home because you can't have a pregnant mistress in your house.
And she winds up getting married off to this guy named Alfonso Lanier, who is her cousin, a distant cousin. And he's a terrible human being and also blows through all the money that the Lord Chamberlain gives her to be comfortable.
So here's Amelia. She's 23 years old.
She has a baby. She has a husband she hates, and she has to find a way to support her family because her husband isn't doing it.
And so she starts reinventing herself a million ways. And then, like I said, we know after that, in her 40s, she becomes the first published female poet.
We don't know anything in between that. So we don't, do we know that all of that with Lord Chamberlain, that is all fact? That happened.
Absolutely happened. So I had mixed feelings about Lord Chamberlain.
Yeah, I have mixed feelings so far. Because at first I was like, oh, I don't like this because she's 13 years old, right? And so I was like, this is, and I didn't remember if he was around 50 or 60, but it sounds like he was right in the middle.
And so I was highly concerned for her. But then I was like, you know what? He didn't like rape her, right? Like he didn't, he was kind of gentle almost.
Yeah, like we don't know. We don't know any of those details.
And so when you're writing historical fiction, what you have are like these high watermarks of fact. And you as a writer have to get from one to the other.
So it was my decision to extrapolate from what she said in those diary sessions with Simon Foreman. She was proud of the time she was with him.
She said that he kept her well. He kept her long.
He settled money on her. So what I'm getting from that is she didn't hate the guy.
Somehow know, somehow over the course of 10 years, whatever their relationship was, it was a positive one, way more positive than what you thought of her husband. Right.
So I was like, all right, well, how do I make this work? And so that was the kind of character that I created for Lord Hunston, the Lord Chamberlain. I wanted him to be a nice guy.
Yeah. You know, I mean, it wasn't his fault that the way society was back then, a 13-year-old would wind up being his mistress.
Right. He's making the best of it, and he's giving her security and comfort and, you know, lodging and food and all these really important things.
And, you know, so I chose to make him a man who had an interesting, complex relationship with Amelia. Another really, like, cool way, a cool fact about this, which you don't know yet because you haven't gotten to the end.
So there, in Amelia's life, another fact that we know about her is that when she was in her 50s after her husband died, thank God. Yes, because I hate Alfonso.
We all hate Alfonso. Okay.
Right. So her husband dies and she is due money that he had like a hay patent.
So basically anyone who came into London with like a, you know, a crate of hay had to pay him a few cents. And after he dies, she should have gotten the money, which of course she always needs money.
And instead, his brother-in-law started taking it. So Amelia goes to court.
She sues them. She goes and she represents herself in court.
Amazing as a woman, right? And at the end of this trial, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the Earl of Southampton walks in. And he's in his late 50s at this point.
And he says to the magistrate, this isn't my courtroom, but if it was, I'd rule in her favor. Now, this is extraordinary because a peer of the realm, the Earl of Southampton, who was not just a peer, but like a very well-known one and very rich and very, she was just all over the place at the time, but he would not have interceded in a commoner's trial.
It makes zero sense. So I read that and I thought, okay, well, let's think about it.
He's in love with her. Did he know her? I started there.
Did he know her? And I thought, well, you know what? When she was living with the Lord Chamberlain for 10 years, they absolutely would have known each other because court was a really tight circle. You all moved around together.
So she would have met him at court during those 10 years. More to the point, he was three and a half years younger than she was.
And he is well documented as being a hottie of the time. So I was like, you know, Amelia's had a tough life.
I'm giving her a relationship. So I decided to write what I think is a fictional relationship.
So I'm like, she's going to meet him when she's at court. They're going to wind up falling in love.
It's going to be doomed because as an Earl, he could never wind up with a commoner for life. And Amelia's just not the right class.
And I was like, that's going to be great fodder, right? So I write this whole love affair, this sad, tragic love affair for them. When I finish the book, I wind up going to the Victoria and Albert Museum in England, because there is a portrait of Amelia there that is a miniature that is, it's basically the miniature that they think is Amelia with that you wrote about in the book yes okay okay so I go in and the archivist show me this beautiful portrait of her and I got to hold it which was like oh my god I'm holding her in my hands but she's in a box with all of these other portraits that are done by this artist named Nicholas Hilliard and my eye keeps getting drawn to portrait next to her, this tiny little miniature of a man.
And it's different from all the others. Instead of it being on a blue field like this color, it's on black.
And the guy's hand is covering his heart. And I said, so what's up with that? And they said, well, back then when you had a miniature painted, you would put clues in to help people understand who you were and how you felt.
And that would have been the decision of the person sitting for the portrait. And it probably shows despair or heartache.
I was like, okay. Then I find out that it's painted on the back of the Six of Hearts playing card, which in early Elizabethan tarot, which is called cartomancy, meant the Six of Hearts is the soulmate card, the person who you were meant to be with, but never would be because of fate.
And I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at the guy, and he's got long, curly red hair. And I said, who is that? And the archivists go, oh, it's an unknown man we don't know.
And I said, I think I might know who it is. And I pull up on my phone, a portrait of the Earl of Southampton.
And I show it to them. And it looks remarkably similar.
So they're like, what? And I start telling them about everything I just told you about Amelia in Southampton. And they were fascinated.
We both go back to do research. I go back and I find that this portrait that I'm showing them on my phone was painted by the same artist four years later.
Hilliard. Yeah, Hilliard.
Four years later. So now it's 1594, which is the year in my book that I say Amelia was beaten so badly by her husband, she literally crawled to Southampton.
And that portrait that I had showed them is actually painted on the back of the three of hearts, which represents someone has come into our relationship and is tearing us apart.

So painted on the back of the three of hearts, which represents someone has come into our relationship and is tearing us apart. So I tell that to the archivist.
Then I send them another portrait that I find that's done by an artist named John DeCritz, which shows Southampton at the same age of whoever the man in that portrait is. And they're almost identical.
And so the archivist went back and did all this research, sent me a 30-page document of the provenance and said, based on what you've told us and what we've researched, we think there's a very good chance this could be Southampton. So for the past like 250 years, Amelia and Southampton have been cuddled up next to each other in this box at the V&A Museum.
And nobody knew. Yeah.
And I'm like, I think I made that happen by writing this, right? You absolutely did. But again, you start with that kernel of history.
Right. And then all you do is follow the thread.
So will you get a credit in that museum? Because you should. I mean, I don't think they can say this is definitely Southampton.
They can say we believe this could be Southampton. Because Jodi Pico told us.
Because Jodi Pico, yeah. Absolutely.
I also, I just got the Seven of Hearts, so I'm going to go, I got that last night. Oh, you have to look that up? Yeah, I have to.
So I have seven kids, and so it's like Seven of Hearts, but now I'm like, what if it's bad? Look up Elizabethan cardamancy, Seven of Hearts. Okay, I'm going to do that.
That is, I'm fascinated, and I just don't, I now need to go to England. Yeah, you do.
I have to. You do, And you should, I mean, Amelia's tucked away.
She isn't out in front of the public, but I'm really hoping that after this book, they have no choice, but to bring, they will have no choice. I'll write it.
Do you want, I'll go to bat for you. Definitely.
For Amelia. Like I really will.
That's so is, what do you even do when you have, when you did that, you brought that to, I was, I'm blown away by this. I was like writing everyone.
i'm writing my book this is like oh my god oh my god wait i have to tell you this i'm telling my editor you know i and i actually was over there for a theater project and i came in i stopped rehearsal dead i'm like i just have to tell everybody i mean i was absolutely blown away by it how could you not be i know i need to look this up because i actually haven't googled what he looks like looks like and I would be interested to see what he looks like because I don't know what the Earl of Southampton. And I knew the red hair.
So wait, what part of, you know, we know that Amelia got pregnant. Whose baby do you think it was? I don't know.
Most people assume it was the Lord Chamberlain's. I don't.
So far. Okay.
I have not finished it yet, but so far, it seems as though she was with the Earl of Southampton more. Right.
But again, now that's something that I created for her. We do not have any proof that she had a relationship with Southampton.
But what I will point out to you is that she named her baby after its father, and she named it Henry. Both of their names are Henry.
That is correct.

So that couldn't have worked out better for her.

Yeah.

I would be so interested to see if anyone were to do like 23andMe or Ancestry

and get the lineage.

We need to do a deep dive.

I feel like we could do a whole docuseries

on that alone. so on page 59 i referenced something that i wanted to ask you about sure hold on let me find it this is this is the first podcast that i've ever actually referenced um things in the book so just bear with me.
It's just really exciting because I truly never thought I would be a historical fiction girly. I started with The Women by Kristen Hanna.
Yes. And then I kind of just unraveled from there.
Yeah. So.
Well, I mean, really good historical fiction reads like a page turner, right? No, absolutely. Yeah.
But you know what? Also um before i get to the quote um there was

the nightingale i read which is historical fiction is is about you know the holocaust yes correct um

this book also talks about the jewish community being marginalized am i allowed to say marginalized

i don't know if that's like offensive yeah um you absolutely can and that is 100 true i just

didn't know that it went all the way back to the 1500s like i was shocked way before that but yeah it opened my eyes so much because i was like oh this isn't just like a problem today it was a problem during the holocaust and it was a problem even further like way before that exactly and and that's a problem because i'm 32 years old and i shouldn't be learning that right now i should have learned that that. Well, it's funny you should mention that because if they hadn't, for example, pulled my novel, The Storyteller, off bookshelves in Florida, it too is about the Holocaust.
And perhaps a kid in Florida might know that if my book was still on the shelves. Right.
Which is we're going to send out these clips to the schools. I'm going to send them out and be like, here's why we should keep these in school.
Okay. So on page 59, it says she was beginning to understand why Andre didn't write anymore.
And if you didn't put yourself out there to be rejected, you couldn't get hurt. And so I literally wrote on here, has Jodi ever experienced this? So have you ever experienced the fear of rejection with your books? Or were you just like, I don't care if I get rejected, I'm putting it anyway? Absolutely.
I've experienced rejection. I mean, I've been writing for a really, really long time, right? But when I started out, and there was no self-publishing when I started out.
So I know a lot of people now do indie or self-publishing. I did traditional because it was all there was.
And when I started out and was trying to get an agent, I had over 100 rejections from agents. And you kept going? Yeah.
Well, what finally happened was this woman wrote me who I had met doing an event when I was in college. And she said, I'm starting my own agency and I think I can represent you.
And I was like, yes, yes. Oh, yes, please.
Because I had no other yeah and she sold uh my first book within three months and she's still my agent almost 38 years later i love that for you both yeah that's amazing yeah um i when i was reading this i was like i just i truly was so unaware of the levels of of marginalization i guess that women were even um yeah not allowed to write. Like I didn't – I don't remember ever learning that in high school ever.
Women were not allowed to do a lot of things. Yeah.
You know, and I think when I was creating Amelia, I kept thinking about that, what it would feel like to have spirit and a brain and to have no outlet for that. Right.
I mean that's really hard. And you see it a lot.
You see it in history over and over again where women have found a way around the system in order to get their words out there. Wasn't it the Egyptian civilization where the women were pretending they were dressing as men to be? Well, there's the queen.
Yeah. I didn't say that correctly.
I wrote a book about this. i should be able to say exception yeah who is um she actually called herself a king because she didn't want she wore a fake beard and she didn't want people to think of her as a queen because it was less than a king right so she called herself a female king so yes you're right would you have done the same i feel like i would yeah 100%.
I know women today that call themselves king instead of like, you know, like on social media.

Yes,

queen.

Yes,

queen. female king.
So yes, you're right. Would you have done the same? I feel like I would.
Yeah, 100%. I know women today that call themselves king instead of like, you know, like on social media.
Yeah, they're like king. Yeah.
King Kale has a nice little ring to it. Why did you feel like during this time that it was a woman's job to have to both pleasure a man and also be responsible for the contraception when at that time there was no birth control right so it wasn't our fault we could if we got pregnant that was the man's fault at that time there was no it takes two you know what i mean uh yeah do you really want me to go what what has changed nothing that's my nothing nothing has changed yeah it is always the woman's fault.
There is no accountability for the man. There's no responsibility for the man.
And, you know, the fact that people in today's day and age say, if you don't want to get pregnant, keep your legs closed, as if that is going to solve all the problems, that makes me very, very upset. Female reproductive freedom in Americaica the fact that we have gone backwards is a tremendous embarrassment for this country it is yeah i agree i wholeheartedly agree with that um when i when i was reading that i just i felt so bad for amelia because this whole time i'm like what do you want her to do she's taking herbs like are you taking the herbs too to like prevent just I couldn't.
Yeah. I mean, but what do we do?

What do we do here? You know, if you get pregnant, it's very rare that a man is held accountable in any way. I agree with you.
I agree with that. Also on page 88, I tabbed that her life could be viewed as a tragedy or it could be a comedy.
It truly was a matter of perspective. I felt that in my soul about my own life.
So it's so interesting that it really puts it into perspective that people even in the 1500s or before the 1500s were still having some of the same things that we're going through today, which is it gives you perspective, but it's also so sad that it dates back that far. Right.
And I mean, it's kind of worth bringing up to that the other half of this book, which is modern, right, follows this experience of a young female playwright in the Broadway community today. And the reason I wanted that in there is because I wanted you to remember that all these issues are still happening today.
So Melina is this playwright

who's written a play about a woman. And everything that she is told in this book is something I was told to my face when I was writing my first libretto for a musical.
So we adapted, the first one we adapted was called Between the Lines, and it was based on the YA novel that my daughter and I wrote. And we were told, because it was a young girl's coming of age, it was too emotional, too small.
It was skippy. It was something nobody would want to see, a young girl's coming of age on stage.
At the time, mind you, two Broadway musicals were about a young man's coming of age, and they were on stage playing that year. And the interesting fact is that 80% of Broadway tickets are purchased by women.
So where is that disconnect, right? And the answer is that the gatekeepers of this industry are men and mostly old white men. And what they want to see on the theaters they own on their stages are experiences that reflect their own experiences.
And it's this really weird, vicious cycle, because if that's all we ever see on Broadway, women even start to think, oh, I guess that's really the only story worth telling. And that's really dangerous, not just for women's stories, but for black stories, brown stories, queer stories, trans stories, stories of people with disabilities, you name it.
We all deserve to see ourselves represented on stage. And it's not a matter of allowing one slot per season for a different kind of voice.
It should be about making theaters that support those voices exclusively, making sure that there are plenty of seats at the table for all of us. Well, I guess I don't understand the mindset behind the whole idea that these older white men are going to do the show running or then the production, right? Because if you include representation in the performances in your theater, you're going to attract those, say, marginalized people to come see your show.
So I don't understand that. That's really, it's so complicated because people will say, oh, but we have diverse casts now on Broadway.
That's true. That's not enough.
No, because the creators are not diverse. So it's still mostly a man's world in theater.
And we need to make sure that the backstage, that the people who are backstage, the people who are writing the shows, the people who are doing the music for the shows, the people who are in the pit are all lots of different colors, shapes, sizes, genders, you know, you name it. And that is not necessarily happening yet.
And they write about it bringing in a different kind of audience. But sometimes that becomes problematic because it's never really happened.
So after George Floyd's murder, what happened on Broadway was there was this kind of mini reckoning. And a lot of these theater owners were like, oh, we better fix this.
So they would allow one play written by a black creator into their season. Just one.
Maybe because then they were like, look at us, aren't we great? And so the problem was that nobody had really ever targeted Broadway ticket sales to exclusively black audiences. Right.
And so nobody was going out of their way to make sure that the black community knew, hey, we have this amazing new show, and I think you're going to like it. And it was amazing when people who had never been to a Broadway show before found their way to those shows.
But someone should have done a better job of making sure that that was marketed a little differently and to a different populace than was used to seeing a show. That said, too, it was also really important for the white community to see all those shows, right? Yeah.
Yeah. You know, and like you look at a show like A Strange Loop was an amazing show on Broadway.
I am so not the target demographic for that show, but I loved it. Yeah.
And without that reckoning that Broadway had, we never would have seen A Strange Loop in a Broadway theater. It never would have made it off Broadway.
And we need more of that and more often.

I agree. It's not the same, but it sort of reminds me just on a child's level when movies like Coco came out.
Yeah. I have two sons that are Mexican.
So for them to get so excited because it was representation for them. Absolutely.
Or movies like Encanto, which is another – Absolutely. You know, based on Hispanic culture.
And I absolutely loved that for especially not just my kids, but just all kids around the world. They need to see that.
So I love what you're doing here. I just, it really has opened my eyes to so many things, not just that, but I mean, society in general, really, like what what is going on still today in 2024? It's actually really sad.
You briefly touched on in talking about the lord chamberlain and he had his wife and then he had the commoner which was his mistress amelia i i guess i was a little bit still confused on what what made someone good enough during that time to be the wife oh she would have been born of noble birth okay so she had to basically come from wealth or money or prestige. Absolutely.
Okay. Okay.
I got that. So that makes sense because I was like, what is wrong with Amelia? She's so educated.
It's all class. It's all based on class.
And so especially in England at that time, there was the elite class were a bunch of aristocrats. Those are your earls and barons and the queen and all the people who are tied to nobility somehow, who have a title.
Okay. And if you don't have a title, then you are a commoner.
And so Amelia is an interesting person because she's kind of caught in the middle. Right.
Her family had money, you know, because they had a really plush, great job as the recorder consort to the queen. Right.
But they were never going to be, you know, aristocracy. So they were kind of floating in this middle zone a little bit.
And so you just still don't have a chance at that time to go be with someone who you never would have wound up. Absolutely.
There's no world in which she would have been able to marry someone who was titled, which is so sad because she was so educated. And so just all the things, I mean, played instruments, I think you said, right? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Everyone in her family did.
She could read. She could write.
She could do everything. Yeah.
She was way smarter than a lot of men were for sure. And I feel like we see that today all the time.
Yeah. How would you compare this book specifically to any of your other books? So, I mean, I really mean it when I say this is the book of my heart.
Amelia is my favorite character that I've created. I can't shake her.
I'm really obsessed with her in a bad way. And I think it is, again, because I have been fighting the same battles my whole career that I was writing about in this book.
It's so deeply personal to me. And it's really fun for me when people are reading the book and they say, oh, I see so much of you in it, you know, because like people who are close to me, because I've probably been complaining to them for years too.
You know, so I think it really is if you if you love my books, if you've read my other books, and you really want to know who I am, this is the book for it. So it's really not comparable to other books that you've read.
I mean, it's right now it's my favorite. I always reserve the right to change, but right now it is my favorite.
It's definitely different. But I think the common theme is that you write about very heavy and sometimes necessary but controversial topics.
And I think it's alike in that way. But outside of that, I think it's very – it's so far out of the books I've read of yours, very unique.
It's very different from the rest, which I love. Well, that's nice.
Thank you. But I also think like, to me, what makes this, I'm so, I could never have planned it, but I'm so glad that this book is coming out at this moment because again, I, every now and then I just, I can't wrap my head around the fact that half of the book takes place 400 years ago.
Right. But we are living in a world right now.
We are living in a country where women are watching their rights being stripped away on one hand. And on the other hand, we have the opportunity to have our first female president who is happens to be a woman of color.
And I feel like in America, we're standing literally at a crossroads. Yeah.
And I'm like with my arms crossed going, okay, game on America, which way are you going? Right. No, absolutely.
Don't even get me started. The whole where 2025 is headed, I'm afraid.
Yeah. And I think, you know, to me, it's really important to remember a lot of great things have happened for women.
A lot of great things have not. But we have a long way to go still.
Yes. But just trying to get men to recognize that.
And I think it was Jasper in this book that was just fascinated with the idea that, you know, it was written about a woman's person, Melina's play specifically, was a man telling, you know, the story in the eyes from, you know, a woman's perspective. And I was so angry because I'm like, do you hear yourself? Like I'm screaming at the book.
Do you hear yourself? Okay, so let me tell you the equivalent of that in the publishing industry. Yeah, please.
So when I was a much younger author and we started to see what I would call the genre of male romance. It started with the Bridges of Madison County and then a lot of Nicholas Sparks novels.
And there are women who've been writing romance for years. They are constantly dismissed as being, oh, romance.
Well, let me tell you, romance keeps the publishing industry afloat. It is more than 60% of all sales for the publishing industry.
Second of all, it is really hard to write a romance because it's very strictured. And to write something new that hasn't been done before is virtually impossible.
So hats off to the ladies who do it. But what pissed me off the most was that when these guys started writing romances, instead of getting a little paperback publication, they were getting full publications with hardback covers.
It was revolutionary that they were able to write about family and love and stuff like that, like as if this has never been done before by anyone male. And that made me so mad that I decided that I was going to write a male romance and I was going to take a pseudonym, kind of like Amelia does.
And then I was going to go on Oprah and I was going to blow it out of the water. Like that was my plan.
And my agent took my book and she tried to sell it. And she was told repeatedly by the editors who were publishing this stuff, this is too well written for this genre.
Like the male's writing wasn't, isn't, in other words, they don't write as well as this. So we can't really publish it.
It's too smart. And so the book was never published.
And I was just like, okay, I give up. But could you self publish? I don't want to.
It was like, you know, my point was that I really wanted people to notice the fact again, that even when they're writing the same sort of story, male creators and female creators are treated very, very differently. I get asked all the time in interviews, oh my gosh, you know a book a year and you had three kids.
How did you do it? And I usually say to the interviewer,

did you ask that of the last male novelist that you had here?

And the answer way that you did for your books. Exactly.
Speaking of, when you're writing and your writing process, do you set down deadlines for yourself and kind of structure it? Or do you just kind of however you feel that day is how you're going to write? No, I definitely have deadlines, like global deadlines. Oh, wow.
Okay. I have to get them in by a certain time.
But also my years are very structured now because I'm doing a lot of theater work and I'm doing a lot of writing work, novel work. And so I really pretty much can say, okay, this is going to be the month that I'm doing research and now I'm doing my actual writing and then I have to go somewhere because we're launching a show.
And so it's pretty easy to sort of figure out my year based on the timeline that I have. Were you able to ever actually go to the New York City Public Library? We're in New York City right now.
And go to the archives, the Records and Archives room? Was it Records? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
The Manuscripts. Manuscripts and Archives.
Yeah. A lot of people.
I actually had someone write and say, I can't believe you outed me. That's where I go to hide.
And now everyone's going to know about it because of your book. It is a good place to go hide out.
I'm going to have to visit one day when I'm in the city. That's so cool.
Did you ever think about writing under a pen name because of the fear of rejection or just... Only that one time that I told you about.
I was going to write under a man's pseudonym and that was when I was going to blow the industry wide open. And my male pseudonym was was an amalgam of my three kids that's so cool I mean it's not cool but it's not cool but yeah I get what yeah um okay so in in can we talk about small great things is that okay okay so I hope I remember it but yeah small great things um I have all of my children are biracial yeah and so I am I get very nervous to talk about it because I don't want to offend anyone.
Right. And so I was started to read it.
It was a book club pick, I think last month for my book club. And yeah.
And so I didn't know what to expect. I went into it blindly.
I had no idea it was about racism and kind of social injustices that, you know, and so have you, did you get pushback when you went to go publish that book or you wrote that book from your editors, your publishers about, you know, the perspectives that you were writing from? No, I actually had, I had, I, my, my publishers have always been really good about me being able to say, hey, I'm writing about this. And they're like, okay, great.
Like, I, I'm very fortunate because a lot of writers do not have that, that freedom. That book is written in three narrative voices.
One is a white woman who is a public defender. One is a black woman who is a nurse who winds up accused of murder.
And one is a white supremacist. And I, I did research for all, all those points of view.
But the interesting thing is I wrote that book at a time when I – there's a lot of – well, let me back up. I think there's a lot of controversy in the writing world now about who has the right to write what stories.
And you could argue, well, why am I a white woman telling a story about racism? And the reason why is because that book is really not meant for my black readers. There's nothing I'm going to tell them that they don't already know.
That book is really meant for white readers to say racism is not just the active racism of a white supremacist. It is the passive racism of the good white person, the white suburbia mom, who has so much privilege and doesn't recognize that she has privilege because she is this color.
And I'm delighted to say that that book has done its job. Like I've heard from so many people who would never have said, oh, I'm racist, but have said, oh, actually, I am the way I live my life because I haven't acknowledged this and I need to do better.
I need to actively try to change the systems that are oppressing people who don't look like me. And so I'm really thrilled that that book did what I wanted it to do.
That said, why should I be creating the voice of a black woman? I'm not a black woman. And so I did the best that I could in that I interviewed about 10 different black women extensively, and took all of their responses and braided them together to create Ruth, and then gave it back to them to make changes.
Because I wanted it to be their voice. I wanted to know that it was accurate in their experience, because it an experience I'm never going to have.
So when I was creating those voices, I wanted, I was trying to do the best that I could in the body that I am. I guess that's the best way that I could find it.
No, I mean, it was eye-opening for me just to recognize implicit bias or things that I was, maybe thoughts that I had that stemmed from racism, maybe, you know what I mean? And so just opening my eyes and I hope that there are more books and other authors kind of follow in your footsteps and write more, more works like that because they feel like it's so important to talk about. And, um, our book club, I was so hesitant.
I was so scared. I didn't want to say anything because my eyes are being opened, right? Like it was important for us to talk about, but I was so hesitant.
I was so scared. I didn't want to say anything.
Yeah. Because my eyes are being opened, right?

Like it was important for us to talk about, but I was so scared of like in this awakening.

Yeah.

I was scared of even just like being offending anyone because I'm learning.

I want to learn.

Okay.

But that's okay.

You know what?

We all make mistakes.

Yeah.

And it's better to try and to then correct yourself and say, I'm so sorry.

I can do better next time than to shy away from the topic completely. And that's part of the lesson, I think, of Small Great Things, too.
I mean, I'm still a work in progress. We're all works in progress, but it's important to make that progress.
And that's what a lot of people don't do. I still get a lot of emails from people who say, how dare you call me a racist? And I'm like, okay, you're not ready for this message yet.
That's okay. That was my response.
I posted a reel of us talking about it. And people were missing the, I used the bandaid example that was in the book.
One, they didn't realize it was in the book because I'm talking about it as if, not that it was my own idea, but I was giving the example because everyone in book club knows that it was in the book. The comments, oh, this is so trivial.
Obviously you don't, you don't understand what's going on in 2024. There's bigger fish to fry.
And I'm like, clearly you don't understand. You are not ready for this conversation.
But that being said, I told you earlier, my son's going to ninth grade this year. And I actually want him to read it in high school, because if he reads it now, and then he can go back and read it later on, I think that would be really beneficial for him.
I think it would be good for him to kind of have just some thought-provoking content. Maybe he can take it to school and the teacher can see it on his desk and talk about it.
Or even by any other name. That would be important for my – this would be really important for my sons to read.
I think that would be – I think you're right. I mean, again, it's kind of like the way Small Great Things is a book about racism for white people.
Right. You know, By Any Other Name is a book about feminism for men, because unfortunately, we are still living in a time when when a group that is being oppressed speaks out.
It sounds like it's like the Charlie Brown. Yes.
Right. And so sometimes what it takes for people to stand up and take notice is for someone in the majority to go, hey, actually they're right.
100%. 100%.
I think, and my oldest son, he is someone that challenges thoughts and challenges norms and questions, all kinds of things. And I think he would get it.
I think he would get it. So I think that's important.
Would you consider yourself an investigative journalist at this point? I guess I'm an investigative journalist with a safety net under me. How's that? Because, you know, like, I think the really fun thing about fiction is that I am, I'm doing the best research I can and I'm going to keep it as accurate as I can.
But I definitely have the freedom to depart from fact. Yeah.
And I like that. Yeah.
Yeah, no, I get that. Amelia went against the grain and by any other name, do you feel like you go against the grain in all of your works and all of your books? Absolutely.
I'm really, I'm not very good at keeping my mouth shut. I'm really opinionated.
And I'm like, you know, you poke the bear, I'm coming after you. So I think I really do think the older I get, the less Fs I have to give.
I really think that. And I'm just like, I'm going to tell it to you like it is.
So it would be an honor to be compared to Amelia. Well, I definitely think you're going

down in history. Like I'm way beyond, yes, 1000% because these are such good topics that people