Speaker 1: Back when I was at university, I did my honors
Speaker 1: thesis on the Miles Franklin Award. I know, I was
Speaker 1: very cool. It was a useful lens with which to
Speaker 1: think about Australian literature. At that point, the award had
Speaker 1: been going for about fifty years, and despite her spotty history,
Speaker 1: it remained the country's pre eminent literary prize, and it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be for the work of literature that
Speaker 1: reflected Australian life in any of its phases. Now you'd
Speaker 1: think that sounds like a generous, open set of criteria,
Speaker 1: one that should be able to accommodate a change in
Speaker 1: culture and a multiplicity of voices. But by the early
Speaker 1: twenty first century it had congealed into favoring a particular
Speaker 1: kind of Australian narrative historical novels, novels with rural settings, anglocentric,
Speaker 1: predominantly male. For a time, the award made the news
Speaker 1: only when there was some kind of controversy attached, rather
Speaker 1: than to celebrate the winner. Helen Darvel manufactured a Ukrainian
Speaker 1: ancestry for herself and led her publishers in a traditional
Speaker 1: Ukrainian dance when she won. Before being exposed as a grifter.
Speaker 1: Another year, judges disqualified Frank Moorehouse's Grand Days because it
Speaker 1: was set overseas. Yet another year, every one of the
Speaker 1: shortlisted authors was a man. That last one led to
Speaker 1: the creation of the Stellar Prize, also named after Myles Franklin,
Speaker 1: to provide a counterweight to the limitations of the more
Speaker 1: established award. But somehow the award has prevailed. The Stellar
Speaker 1: Prize clearly led to a shakeup and a greater sense
Speaker 1: of awareness by Myles Franklin administrators that Australian life in
Speaker 1: any of its phases meant more than just sepiotoned realism.
Speaker 1: And this year, for the first time, the same book
Speaker 1: has won both the Stellar Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
Speaker 1: It's a book that's also won a slew of other prizes,
Speaker 1: including Britain's prestigious James Tate Black Fiction Prize. Its author
Speaker 1: became the first person to ever win the Stellar Prize
Speaker 1: twice and join the limited ranks of people who have
Speaker 1: won the Miles Franklin Mumutiple. Times judges called it an
Speaker 1: astonishing feat of storytelling and sovereign imagination, saying it's a
Speaker 1: capacious work singing the songs of unseeded lands that bears
Speaker 1: witness to the catastrophic transformations wrought by white fantasies against
Speaker 1: which indigenous ingenuity still stands, its connection to country unbroken.
Speaker 1: The book is called Praiseworthy, and its author is Alexis Right.
Speaker 1: She joins us today, I'm Michael Williams, and this is read.
Speaker 1: This a show about the books we love and the
Speaker 1: stories behind them. Alexis Writer is a member of the
Speaker 1: One Year Nation from the southern highlands of the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Carpenteria. Her two thousand and six novel Carpenteria, for
Speaker 1: which he won her first Miles Franklin, is an enduring classic.
Speaker 1: Its follow up, The Swan Book, a future set response
Speaker 1: to the no mo Than Territory Intervention, is a personal favorite,
Speaker 1: and her polyvocal oral history of visionary Aboriginal leader Tracker Tillmouth,
Speaker 1: won the Stellar Prize in twenty seventeen. Around the time
Speaker 1: she was working on Tracker, she had the idea for
Speaker 1: a new novel, a big novel. Praiseworthy is the name
Speaker 1: of the fictional town at the heart of that story,
Speaker 1: a town that has been enveloped by a cloud of
Speaker 1: Hays part unsettled ancestors, part environmental disaster. Alexis is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary author, and I wanted to introduce her today with
Speaker 1: words that do her and her contribution justice. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to defer to the words of a previous read
Speaker 1: this guest, Tony Birch, who wrote a profile of her
Speaker 1: for The Monthly. Tony wrote, Alexis Wright is an Aboriginal woman.
Speaker 1: From January twenty sixth, seventeen eighty eight until this day,
Speaker 1: the moment you read these words, no group of people
Speaker 1: on this continent have suffered greater human rights abuses than
Speaker 1: Aboriginal women. Their country has been vandalized and stolen, as
Speaker 1: have their loved ones. Every conceivable barrier, bit the gun,
Speaker 1: a prison cell, a racist education system, men has attempted
Speaker 1: to silence them. To understand the failures of systems of
Speaker 1: racism and abuse is to know courage and tenacity. Alexis
Speaker 1: Right is as strong as any person I know. Never
Speaker 1: mistake her auntiness as a sign she's a pushover for
Speaker 1: when push comes to shove and she feels a need
Speaker 1: to defend her people and country. Right is a ferocious warrior.
Speaker 1: She is also loving and generous and we will always
Speaker 1: need her. I began our conversation by asking Alexis about
Speaker 1: her grandmother, a woman I know played an important role
Speaker 1: in her conception of storytelling.
Speaker 2: Well, she's somebody that I love dearly. From a very
Speaker 2: early age, I would offer run away from my mother
Speaker 2: or what away from home, and as soon as my
Speaker 2: mother turned her back, I'd be over the front fence
Speaker 2: and heading to her place. From about the age of three,
Speaker 2: she lived on the edge of town. She just had
Speaker 2: a house of corrugated iron place and it had dirt floors.
Speaker 2: She didn't have any electricity. And she was a fantastic gardener,
Speaker 2: and that comes from the Chinese side of the family,
Speaker 2: her father who had a market garden sort of vegetables
Speaker 2: and up at Lawn Hill in the Gulf of Carpent
Speaker 2: Terrier where he met my great grandmother, who was a
Speaker 2: wary lady and she couldn't read it rite, but she
Speaker 2: had a great interest in the world and people around her.
Speaker 2: She often went walking around the dry riverbeds and down
Speaker 2: the rubbish tip to get old tin hands for her
Speaker 2: pop plants, and she liked to visit people along the
Speaker 2: river bank who were camping. She'd always stop and say
Speaker 2: hello and have a talk. She liked meeting people and
Speaker 2: talking to people. She would go to town every other day
Speaker 2: because she didn't have any electricity. She had an old
Speaker 2: kerosene fridge and so she would go to town to
Speaker 2: buy some small things that she might need for her cooking.
Speaker 2: Usually she loved to cook cabbage stew and rice, which
Speaker 2: is very good. It's a very popular dish amongst Aboriginal
Speaker 2: people across Northern Australia. When she went to town, you know,
Speaker 2: it was quite a long walk, and she'd call into
Speaker 2: anybody's house, whether they were aborigin all or not Aboriginal people,
Speaker 2: and made herself very comfortable. She would expect people to
Speaker 2: welcome her and give her a glass of water if
Speaker 2: she needed a glass of water, or make her a
Speaker 2: cup of tea. She just had this ability to treat
Speaker 2: everybody equally and expect to be treated well in return.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice way to approach the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was just a beautiful person and I became
Speaker 2: like her little shadow. I think she had lots of grandchildren.
Speaker 2: We have a very big family. I have a lot
Speaker 2: of cousins and now we're number in the hundreds maybe more.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but there's a lot that's pretty great.
Speaker 1: In a lecture that you gave at the Sydney Opera
Speaker 1: House back in two thousand and one, you said your
Speaker 1: grandmother had stories to explain everything who we are, who
Speaker 1: each of us were, and the place on our traditional
Speaker 1: country that was very deep and special to her. She
Speaker 1: was our memory. She was what not forgetting was all about.
Speaker 1: It was through her that I learned to imagine.
Speaker 2: I think, so I learned to imagine through her because
Speaker 2: of the way she described everything around her at the
Speaker 2: story she would tell just how she saw the world.
Speaker 2: It was a very cultural way of seeing things, and
Speaker 2: you had to be able to imagine these things, and
Speaker 2: I did. And she always talked about her homeland, you know,
Speaker 2: up in the Gulf of Carpenteria. She always wanted to
Speaker 2: go back because it was a time when people weren't
Speaker 2: able to stay on that traditional country. So she always
Speaker 2: talked about that and the way she would describe it,
Speaker 2: it just seemed like the most beautiful place in the world,
Speaker 2: but it was a hard place too. But yes, she
Speaker 2: did teach me to see things differently and to just
Speaker 2: imagine differently, and I think that was my saving grace. Really,
Speaker 2: I think I was very fortunate to have had a
Speaker 2: grandmother that I could be close to, because it was
Speaker 2: a struggle for my mother, and my father died when
Speaker 2: I was very young.
Speaker 1: Did she talk to you differently because you were a child,
Speaker 1: do you remember? I mean, did she edit stories or
Speaker 1: did she shape the world a particular way for you?
Speaker 1: As a child.
Speaker 2: I listened to her talking to other people, talking to family.
Speaker 2: You know, family members would come to Grandma's place and
Speaker 2: they'd all sit outside and drag tea and talk and
Speaker 2: tell stories and gossip about But also there were stories
Speaker 2: about traditional cultural things that were just spoken about in passing.
Speaker 2: So I just picked up a lot of that when
Speaker 2: I was a child. I don't think you know she
Speaker 2: especially sat me down just to tell me your particular stories.
Speaker 2: I just heard them through her talking and other family
Speaker 2: members talking together, and her talking to people wherever she went.
Speaker 1: How much do you think those heard conversations in your life?
Speaker 1: And you know, whether their gossips or their old stories
Speaker 1: or whatever, the stories they are have infused and influenced
Speaker 1: the way you approach your writing practice.
Speaker 2: I think the writing practice comes from a number of things.
Speaker 2: Michael part of it from my conscience that's been shaped
Speaker 2: by people like my grandmother and family members, and also
Speaker 2: through the work that I've done through my life, working
Speaker 2: you know, for our own people, in our own organizations,
Speaker 2: and for our concerns and land rights. I think I
Speaker 2: was very fortunate that, you know, I had access to
Speaker 2: some really great orators from our world. I think I
Speaker 2: was very lucky and fortunate to have had access to
Speaker 2: people like that who were always given us guidance as
Speaker 2: younger people, and in fact they are about my real
Speaker 2: university and where I really learned, you know, from coming
Speaker 2: through you know, a school system that wasn't particularly something
Speaker 2: that I could embrace. And there's when I less school,
Speaker 2: there was a number of older people, you know, in
Speaker 2: our world who you took on a younger people like
Speaker 2: us like myself, and taught us. They've virtually taught us
Speaker 2: to read and write. They taught us to have an
Speaker 2: inquiry in mind, and to imagine and to research and
Speaker 2: you know, find ways. They expected us to do all
Speaker 2: these things. When I first started working, you know, in
Speaker 2: our world, you know, with a lot of people like that,
Speaker 2: they would have meetings, you know, and they would go
Speaker 2: on for hours and that want someone like me to
Speaker 2: take the minutes. They expected me to write down every word,
Speaker 2: not just the points of what came out of the meetings,
Speaker 2: but write down every word. And I guess we didn't
Speaker 2: have money to buy a tape recorder, okay with the
Speaker 2: human tape recorder. But it was more than that. It
Speaker 2: was an education. They were teaching people like myself to
Speaker 2: listen to here, to think, to see what's happening in
Speaker 2: our world and who we are, you know, what culture
Speaker 2: is all about. And they expected us to go out
Speaker 2: do the reading, do the writing, and find out what
Speaker 2: are theytgenous people are doing across the world, what's happening
Speaker 2: in the legal system in other places in the world
Speaker 2: that could help us here. I then studied literature from
Speaker 2: across the world, and I still do that to find
Speaker 2: out how I could write the type of writing that
Speaker 2: I'm doing now. It's be something that I'd be building
Speaker 2: for a long time now to reach something like praiseworthy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a towering achievement and so utterly
Speaker 1: your own voice, your own rhythms. The thing that strikes
Speaker 1: me almost above all else about this book is the
Speaker 1: ways in which you've found entirely a kind of different
Speaker 1: register in the way it's done. And in one interview
Speaker 1: you talked about to write it, you knew you had
Speaker 1: to write it off key from regular fiction and find
Speaker 1: that different, different note.
Speaker 2: That's right. I thought really deeply about how to write
Speaker 2: this book. I knew it would be a big book.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it would be this book. You know.
Speaker 2: I wanted to write a book that the spirit of
Speaker 2: the times, and I was deeply concerned about environmental issues.
Speaker 2: I'm deeply concerned about our ability as Aboriginal people to
Speaker 2: cope with climate change, and you know, we've gone through
Speaker 2: a climatic change in the past with the longest living
Speaker 2: culture in the world, and I thought really deeply about
Speaker 2: those things and how did our ancestors survive over tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of years. So I was thinking about that
Speaker 2: and trying to figure out how to put this book together.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the story, it's also about the
Speaker 2: tone that I wanted to capture in the book, that rhythm.
Speaker 2: And I knew that, as you said, neeter to be
Speaker 2: written off key in a different rhythm. And I thought
Speaker 2: about what we say in the golf we're of one heartbeat,
Speaker 2: and I wondered, well, what does that heartbeat sound like?
Speaker 2: And I felt it sounded like a slow rhythm. And
Speaker 2: that's you know, the sound of Digery doo, your darky collapsticks,
Speaker 2: women singing ceremony, and it's a slow beat and those
Speaker 2: sounds that come from the earth, in instruments made from
Speaker 2: in a country, And that's the tone I wanted to
Speaker 2: bring it in this book. So I've really worked and
Speaker 2: reworked and reworked to make that tone consistent throughout the book.
Speaker 1: I can't. I mean, this seems like a nonsensical thing
Speaker 1: to say, but you achieve a kind of sense of
Speaker 1: slow urgency.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The book is never less than kind of furious and
Speaker 1: grief stricken and full of these kind of big emotions,
Speaker 1: but manages to temper them through a kind of prevailing
Speaker 1: spirit of patience or a long view. When I spoke
Speaker 1: once years ago, and I remember you saying that when
Speaker 1: you were younger, you were a real hothead and would
Speaker 1: you know, fly off the handle about things. And I'm
Speaker 1: interested in a career in advocacy and activism, caring about
Speaker 1: these issues and these ideas, and caring about your community
Speaker 1: and trying to find ways to impress upon an audience
Speaker 1: the urgency of the thing. How did you find the
Speaker 1: way to slow down while retaining urgency.
Speaker 2: This is something I've been taught as well, is that
Speaker 2: to take the long view. I think that right in
Speaker 2: those minutes years ago taught me patients and that's what
Speaker 2: they were aiming for, to teach young people that you
Speaker 2: needed to have patients, extreme patients and dealing what we're
Speaker 2: dealing with. And I do have a lot of patients,
Speaker 2: and you have enormous patients, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know there's storms brewing it. I watched storms and seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, the storms that created for us. And I
Speaker 2: see the story ORMs in the Gulf of Carpenteria and
Speaker 2: a huge and mighty and the book in the Way
Speaker 2: is a response to so little we know about our
Speaker 2: world and what's happening in our world and how it's
Speaker 2: shaping and reshaping us. And I wanted to explore all
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a minute. Alexis reflects more on
Speaker 1: the characters at the heart of Praiseworthy, cors Van Steel
Speaker 1: and his family, and chairs why she felt this book
Speaker 1: was so important to write. Now, here's some more from
Speaker 1: the Males. Franklin judges on Praiseworthy through its sheer, ambition, astringency,
Speaker 1: and audacity. Praiseworthy redraws the map of Australian literature and
Speaker 1: expands the possibilities of fiction. They said beyond the environmental
Speaker 1: allegory of the Hays and a world that feels on
Speaker 1: the brink of end times. The book is fiercely passionately
Speaker 1: engaged with questions of government control and self determination, reckoning
Speaker 1: with the failures of imagination, policy and empathy of contemporary Australia.
Speaker 1: At its core stands the Steel family. The eldest son
Speaker 1: is called Aboriginal Sovereignty and he's in a state of despair.
Speaker 1: His eight year old brother is consumed by the hateful
Speaker 1: stories he reads on the internet. Their mother, Dance, has
Speaker 1: a deep connection with moths and butterflies and a desire
Speaker 1: to escape, seeking a people smuggler to take her to China,
Speaker 1: and the family's father, the main character of the book,
Speaker 1: is on an obsessive quest to save both family and people.
Speaker 1: He's known as Widespread and Planet, but mostly by the
Speaker 1: name cause Mans Steel.
Speaker 2: You know he's a culture dreamer, and he says a visionary,
Speaker 2: and he decides his scope to bring these people over
Speaker 2: the burning planet. And you know, he's obsessed with it all,
Speaker 2: and he can see, like anybody can see, that they're
Speaker 2: not getting much support here, you know, in recognizing our
Speaker 2: rights and what our rights really are and our sovereignty here.
Speaker 2: So he's finding a way that he's going to take
Speaker 2: his people over the burning planet. So they're going to
Speaker 2: be able to survive, to tell the tale on the
Speaker 2: other side, which is what ancestors did and got shaped
Speaker 2: in that time. And it takes time, and we will survive.
Speaker 1: You compellingly make the case for survival. But Cosman's donkey
Speaker 1: based vision. I mean, he's a wonderful figure in many ways.
Speaker 1: I understand that Cosman knows more than a bit to
Speaker 1: track a till mouth.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily tracker was a far more sophisticated fisionary in
Speaker 2: a way in terms of developing stateable economic policy and
Speaker 2: an economic vision for Aboriginal people across Northern Australia or anyway.
Speaker 2: He had enormous vision, enormous ideas. And here's a totally
Speaker 2: different kettle of fish. But this is a person who
Speaker 2: is on a community who's not getting any support from anybody,
Speaker 2: and he's trying to create a vision to help his
Speaker 2: people ride through the storm of global warming. So he's
Speaker 2: thinking about this and he is going to use his
Speaker 2: own brain power to try to figure it all out.
Speaker 2: And he's clapped out sedan and he's going to travel
Speaker 2: all over the country and he's going to fulfill his
Speaker 2: vision of creating this global tradesport company that will replace
Speaker 2: maybe quantity.
Speaker 1: Replace the kangaroo with a donkey, is the only.
Speaker 2: Way, well, well, the kangaroo is it is a native
Speaker 2: animal and honor that the kangaroo is going to do
Speaker 2: our bidding. But a donkey might, a donkey might.
Speaker 1: The great tragedy of the book is, while Corsman's on
Speaker 1: this quest for the next generation of the Steel Family,
Speaker 1: for Tommy Hawk, and for Aboriginal sovereignty, the stories they're hearing,
Speaker 1: the stories they're being told, the national reality they've inherited,
Speaker 1: is one that is limiting their options and indeed steering
Speaker 1: them down paths that are not their own.
Speaker 2: This is true, and I wanted to think about what
Speaker 2: happens to people for generation to generation of bad decisions
Speaker 2: made on their behalf and there not being able to
Speaker 2: do a thing about it, and people spend their whole
Speaker 2: lives fighting or you know, for the chance to be
Speaker 2: able to design our own future of work with people
Speaker 2: in the past. You know, we're on ideas of abertial
Speaker 2: self government. And I always remember some of these really
Speaker 2: senior people, you know, who know this country back to front. No,
Speaker 2: it's stories and it's you know, and so much about
Speaker 2: this country. It's not funny, and we don't hear them,
Speaker 2: and we don't understand what culture is all about, this
Speaker 2: long term culture that belongs here. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: explore those issues and those concerns and what happens to
Speaker 2: people when you make those people making those wrong decisions government,
Speaker 2: keep making those wrong decisions that take away that power.
Speaker 2: They see new people, but always say to me, we've
Speaker 2: always governed ourselves, we have always governed ourselves. And what
Speaker 2: do you do? And someone else says, they govern them
Speaker 2: for you, and they make the wrong decisions all the time,
Speaker 2: what do you do? So I wanted to try to
Speaker 2: address that in the book, and address that idea of
Speaker 2: Aboriginal sovereignty through that that young character, that beautiful young
Speaker 2: man who his father had named from birth Aboriginal sovereignty,
Speaker 2: so you'd always remember who he was.
Speaker 1: I think you're say in the book his names him
Speaker 1: Aboriginal sovereignty because they're the only words his father loves
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: That's true, and only words a lot of Aboriginal people
Speaker 2: love to say and say that they will and say
Speaker 2: they must and will continue to say it. I guess
Speaker 2: I thought it was necessary to write this book and
Speaker 2: and to really show the complexities and the growing complexities
Speaker 2: of what's happening here. And it's not all it's not
Speaker 2: cut and dry, and and I, you know, hope that
Speaker 2: people would understand that, you know that, oh what am
Speaker 2: I saying? And I think there's there's kind of be
Speaker 2: a realization is that you're not going to get an
Speaker 2: understanding of our people from social media or soundbites or
Speaker 2: manipulation and what you know, a national narrative is about
Speaker 2: who or what Aboriginal people are. And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of depth here, and there's a lot of complexity. And
Speaker 2: this is why this book became what it was, because
Speaker 2: I wanted to try to bring this, you know, out
Speaker 2: in some way. It's it's it's I don't think this
Speaker 2: book could be It could have could have been less
Speaker 2: than what it was, and I'm just amazed that I
Speaker 2: was even able to finish it. It's you know, it's
Speaker 2: I look at it and I'm in are of it
Speaker 2: because I don't think, you know, someone like me is
Speaker 2: capable of writing something like this. But I really think
Speaker 2: it's necessary, Michael, that we look at things, you know,
Speaker 2: and more deeply we have to, and as we move
Speaker 2: into a new era of global warming and the world
Speaker 2: getting harder and more things to be really insecure about
Speaker 2: about as survival, that we need to really think about
Speaker 2: these things and really try to understand. And for me,
Speaker 2: one of the best ways to try to understand it
Speaker 2: is through reading. And I think that we need to
Speaker 2: be writing huge works of literature, and we need much
Speaker 2: more than this throughout the world so that we can
Speaker 2: create better understanding of each other. And as we move
Speaker 2: into the future, we're really going to need to. It's
Speaker 2: a book I wanted, you know, to have a universal
Speaker 2: feel that you know, anybody could understand it anyway.
Speaker 1: Alexis. I mean, firstly, I think it's reception not just
Speaker 1: here but in the US and in the UK suggests
Speaker 1: you've achieved that spectacularly. But also it's not just a
Speaker 1: tool in creating a more literature literate world, because of
Speaker 1: the ways in which you are defining your own literary
Speaker 1: traditions in here, you're demonstrating how fluid those boundaries of
Speaker 1: what literature can be and what it can do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I decided very early in my literary career
Speaker 2: as such, I wasn't going to be trapped in anyone's box,
Speaker 2: you know, about how I should write and what I
Speaker 2: should write, and what literature is or what Australian literature is.
Speaker 2: And I was going to write in my own way,
Speaker 2: trying to find the way that I could write in
Speaker 2: this country, about this country, and to consider it its
Speaker 2: depth in our history here, which it goes back, you know,
Speaker 2: thousands of years, not just two hundred and something years,
Speaker 2: but thousands and the stories, the big story is the
Speaker 2: interconnected stories here that are ancient. It's something that's I've
Speaker 2: been working on for a long time and I'm happy
Speaker 2: with what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: And that's some delightful under statement there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's and and I've always wanted to and
Speaker 2: I thought, if I you know, if I am to write,
Speaker 2: you know, I wanted to always challenge myself and to
Speaker 2: keep challenge myself and and and I'll take risks in
Speaker 2: what I do, how I write. You know, I did
Speaker 2: that with Carpenterrier. You know, started from Carpenterier and that
Speaker 2: was his huge riss and it really didn't get published.
Speaker 2: And until one, you know, until I've indic you know,
Speaker 2: my publisher at Romando, he looked at it and asked
Speaker 2: me some really hard questions about why I wrote it
Speaker 2: the way I wrote it, and then he said he'd
Speaker 2: be happy to publish it. And so he's been. He's
Speaker 2: a great publisher here, it really is. You always says,
Speaker 2: but he's best publisher in the world.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty phenomenal collaboration, the one between the two
Speaker 1: of you. It's great when a publisher is able to
Speaker 1: have the space for an author's vision and to help
Speaker 1: bring that vision to life. And I think watching the
Speaker 1: way the two of you have done that together over
Speaker 1: years now is one of the great satisfying stories of
Speaker 1: Australian literature.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I'll be happy to hear that. I think.
Speaker 1: I think you've given either many rolling reasons to be
Speaker 1: happy to hear things over the past little bit, and
Speaker 1: it's been thrilling to see that not only has the
Speaker 1: risk paid off, but that there's some deep reading and
Speaker 1: deep listening going on in response to Praiseworthy, and it
Speaker 1: deserves all the credit it's getting.
Speaker 2: Grandma was a great gardener. She grew all sorts of things,
Speaker 2: so she grew Chinese cabbage, and she had an old
Speaker 2: fashioned flower garden. On one side. There were very old
Speaker 2: fashioned types of flowers, like a zenius. I grew a
Speaker 2: garden of zeneus last year after I've finished Praise with
Speaker 2: when we got published, they were gigantic, they were huge,
Speaker 2: but she had small sinia flowers in her garden. I
Speaker 2: remember that.
Speaker 1: I love that you had to finish writing the book
Speaker 1: before you would let yourself indulge in go out to
Speaker 1: your own garden and do that. You couldn't plan the Zeneus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our garden was totally overgrown because I just didn't
Speaker 2: have time. I didn't have time and probably the last
Speaker 2: decade of doing Tracker and Praiseworthy at the same time,
Speaker 2: so I really didn't have time. All I did was
Speaker 2: think of the book or the job at hand, or
Speaker 2: whatever I had to do, and the book always stayed
Speaker 2: with me. But in the last three years I had
Speaker 2: collected a few packages seeds each year that always going
Speaker 2: to grow in the garden, and I got the chance
Speaker 2: and I just put the all seeds in and they
Speaker 2: all came up. It was just amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm very happy as a reader, and I'm very happy
Speaker 1: as a person in the world that this astonishing book
Speaker 1: is out there in the world. But I'm almost as
Speaker 1: happy for you, Alexis Right, that you finally got back
Speaker 1: to your garden after after that decade. Alexis Right.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Thank you, Michael. It's such a
Speaker 2: joy talking to you. As always.
Speaker 1: Alexis writes Praiseworthy and all of Alexis's other books are
Speaker 1: available now and you can read that Tony Birch profile
Speaker 1: of Alexis and Praiseworthy in the Monthly. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us for this special episode of Read This. We'll be
Speaker 1: back to regular programming next Thursday. Read This is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Clara Ames. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: Atticus Basto. Original compositions by Salton Fetcher. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: See you next week, and a big congratulations Alexis Right.