Speaker 1: What do you do when life doesn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
Speaker 1: or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
Speaker 1: is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
Speaker 1: by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
Speaker 1: with a guest to talk about the times they were
Speaker 1: knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Speaker 1: Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
Speaker 1: are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
Speaker 1: every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
Speaker 1: answers one question, now What.
Speaker 2: I will tell you one of the best episodes of
Speaker 2: TIV that I always think about. You did an episode
Speaker 2: of Law and Order criminal Intent. I did along where
Speaker 2: you played the sort of metaverse of what people would
Speaker 2: have presumed as you, but you had there's this moment
Speaker 2: where you are so angry. It is one of the best,
Speaker 2: like five minutes of television. It's one of my favorite episodes.
Speaker 2: Whenever it comes on, I'm like, this is the Brookshields episode.
Speaker 2: I've got to watch it.
Speaker 1: Oh God, well, thank you. That was so long ago,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the most difficult shoots I
Speaker 1: have ever been on. And it was four in the morning.
Speaker 1: It was freezing. I waited. They kept me waiting all day.
Speaker 1: It was funny that when I jump in the water,
Speaker 1: I had those little those chicken cutlets to fill out
Speaker 1: my bikini top. Oh, and I dove in the water
Speaker 1: and the chicken cutlet came out and floated to the top.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: The director was like, you might want to put that back.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Stacy Abrams. Stacy is a politician,
Speaker 1: an activist, a policy expert, and a fiction writer who's
Speaker 1: penned more than a dozen books, including her latest, Rogue Justice.
Speaker 1: I first heard of Stacy in twenty eighteen, when she
Speaker 1: was the groundbreaking Democratic nominee in Georgia's governor's race. Since then,
Speaker 1: I have watched her become a national political figure, an
Speaker 1: essential voice in the battle against voter suppression, and a
Speaker 1: true inspiration to millions of young people. She's had massive
Speaker 1: wins and a few very public losses, but her resilience, intellect,
Speaker 1: and dedication to her beliefs are undeniable. I am so
Speaker 1: happy she agreed to join me, and hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Here is
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams. Well welcome Stacy Abrams. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: I am honored. This is really a privilege.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. I think the privilege is really, really,
Speaker 1: really really mine. I always like to just start with
Speaker 1: how you see yourself and how you would describe yourself.
Speaker 1: So who is Stacy Abrams?
Speaker 2: I've once described myself I am a reality show waiting
Speaker 2: to happen. So I've had this extraordinary opportunity to try
Speaker 2: most of the things. I imagine my mom said, she said,
Speaker 2: you don't want to be a jack of all trades
Speaker 2: and a master of none. And when she said it,
Speaker 2: what she intended was Stacy kind of picked two or
Speaker 2: three things. What I heard was master everything. That's what
Speaker 2: stuck with me. So I've spent my life really trying
Speaker 2: to learn as much as I can to do the
Speaker 2: things I want, but not to just glancingly do it,
Speaker 2: to really dig deep and be good at it. I
Speaker 2: think of myself as a problem solver, someone who regardless
Speaker 2: of what the problem is, regardless of the field, regardless
Speaker 2: of the issue, with the exception of dating, because I
Speaker 2: haven't figured out how to solve that problem. I see
Speaker 2: myself as someone who can find answers, and answers are
Speaker 2: rarely in the first place you look, and so you've
Speaker 2: got to be open to and able to look in
Speaker 2: multiple places. And so that's how I see myself.
Speaker 1: What was your childhood like? What kind of a child
Speaker 1: were you? In addition to that.
Speaker 2: I grew up in southern Mississippi. I am the second
Speaker 2: of six kids. My oldest sister is three years older,
Speaker 2: so we're all very close, and we lived in a
Speaker 2: small house, so we were all physically very close. My
Speaker 2: mom was a librarian, my dad was a shipyard worker.
Speaker 2: We didn't have very much in material resources, but my
Speaker 2: mom and dad were always very intentional about us never
Speaker 2: feeling a lack of and the corollary to that was
Speaker 2: that they also raised us with a very strong sense
Speaker 2: of obligation that your job is to serve that no
Speaker 2: matter how little we had, someone had less. And so
Speaker 2: the lights might be off at home, but my parents
Speaker 2: would take us to a soup kit to volunteer, or
Speaker 2: we didn't have running water, but they were going to
Speaker 2: have us volunteering at a nursing home because they never
Speaker 2: wanted us to see our material space as justifying our
Speaker 2: lack of obligation and commitment to others.
Speaker 1: Wow, and that's so. I mean, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: tell your family and your kids to do this or
Speaker 1: make them go somewhere, but to instill it in them
Speaker 1: by example as well. Were they a religious Were you
Speaker 1: in a religious household? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, So my parents were both from very strong religious backgrounds.
Speaker 2: And indeed, when I was fifteen, my parents accepted their
Speaker 2: call to the ministry and we moved from Mississippi to
Speaker 2: Georgia because they both did their Masters of Divinity at
Speaker 2: Emory University at the age of forty to become United
Speaker 2: Methodist ministers. Working full time with six kids, my older
Speaker 2: sister was the only one who was out of high school,
Speaker 2: and so we never had the excuse of not doing
Speaker 2: stuff because my mom were like, we went to grad
Speaker 2: school at forty, so shut out.
Speaker 1: You're a slacker. What about your peers now, your peers
Speaker 1: at that time, where they did they struggle financially? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So where I grew up in Mississippi, absolutely, we lived
Speaker 2: on South Street. But the way I describe it as
Speaker 2: we lived on South Street and North Street, they got
Speaker 2: really exotic names. The further the closer you got to
Speaker 2: the middle class side of town, the fancier the names got. So.
Speaker 2: But again, when you grow up in a middle class community,
Speaker 2: lower income community, you're usually surrounded by people of similar circumstances,
Speaker 2: which makes those circumstances regular. But I what I credit
Speaker 2: my parents for was that they never again, they never
Speaker 2: permitted us to wallow. It was never a question of
Speaker 2: what we had or didn't have. It was a question
Speaker 2: of what were you willing to do, what did you
Speaker 2: work for, what did you need?
Speaker 1: Well, it's also that the type of you know, there
Speaker 1: are people that define themselves as victims and it starts
Speaker 1: to set the precedence for who they are. But kids
Speaker 1: aren't born with that. So if they see there was
Speaker 1: affluence because there was love and support and safety and
Speaker 1: joy and education being truly a key to a future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean for my parents it was very much.
Speaker 2: We had three jobs, go to church, go to school,
Speaker 2: take care of each other. I don't I will say
Speaker 2: it this way. I know there are those who understand
Speaker 2: their victimization and they hold to it. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's inappropriate to know that you have been victimized or
Speaker 2: targeted by a system because If you don't know, you
Speaker 2: can't try to change it. The issue is do you
Speaker 2: stay there? Do you stay clinging to the victimization as
Speaker 2: a justification for not taking action, or do you use
Speaker 2: it as a galvanizing force. My parents grew up as
Speaker 2: teen during the Civil Rights movement, and they saw it
Speaker 2: as a call to action. They were denied their citizenship.
Speaker 2: My dad was arrested when he was fourteen for registering
Speaker 2: black people to vote, and my grandfather was conscripted into
Speaker 2: the army for the Korean War and World War Two,
Speaker 2: but never allowed to vote in an election. When he
Speaker 2: came home from fighting abroad, his kids couldn't go to
Speaker 2: the colleges where he and my grandmother worked, and so
Speaker 2: they had every right to acknowledge their victimhood and their victimization.
Speaker 2: But what they refused to do is let it define
Speaker 2: how they would shape their lives, other than using it
Speaker 2: as a galvanizing force and sometimes a roadmap to what
Speaker 2: they wanted for the next generation.
Speaker 1: When do you think that you actually really saw the
Speaker 1: system for what it was.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was very young. I was in first grade.
Speaker 2: I was already reading, I was fairly advanced, and I
Speaker 2: was bored. I was bored to tears in my class,
Speaker 2: and they wouldn't I get in trouble for reading too much.
Speaker 2: And it took another teacher to tell my parents I
Speaker 2: was being held back because they were waiting for two
Speaker 2: young white girls to catch up with me. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't because they were worried about my socialization. I was
Speaker 2: first grade, second grade and saw the same thing. It
Speaker 2: was they didn't want the precedent of moving me and
Speaker 2: not moving these other girls.
Speaker 1: That's unthinkable, but it was, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was. I was aware of the fact that
Speaker 2: I was chastised. I didn't know the politics of it.
Speaker 2: My parents found out and I was then very quickly
Speaker 2: moved into the second grade. It was very scary because
Speaker 2: no one told me what was happening. The principal came
Speaker 2: and got me from class and took me outside because
Speaker 2: we had trailers, and you know, only the big kids
Speaker 2: went outside to the trailers. I'm the first grade, and
Speaker 2: so I walked out to this trailer and I'm fairly
Speaker 2: certain I'm going to die. I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 2: what happened out here, but it's not what I'm supposed
Speaker 2: to see. And then the trailer door opens and there's
Speaker 2: this tall, beautiful woman who looks like an angel, and
Speaker 2: the sun is beaming down because it's Mississippi and it's
Speaker 2: you know, the fall. And she smiles at me and
Speaker 2: her name is Missus Blakesley, and she invites me into
Speaker 2: the trailer and I'm like, oh, thank God, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to die. But that was how I moved from
Speaker 2: first grade to second grade.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I mean, you're you're clearly extraordinarily intelligent and
Speaker 1: very smart, and you incredibly astute even as a little person,
Speaker 1: and you've become a real role model for so many
Speaker 1: women in particular and particularly young women. Did you have
Speaker 1: any people that you really looked up to or icons
Speaker 1: when you were a child that you.
Speaker 2: Taught you not necessarily? I mean they're my mom, of course,
Speaker 2: my dad, my grandmother and grandfather, my paternal grandparents we
Speaker 2: were very close to. I got a chance to know
Speaker 2: my grandmother, my maternal grandmother well, and my great grandmother.
Speaker 2: We called her Moomoo, who to me was the most
Speaker 2: resilient human I'd ever met. She used to joke that
Speaker 2: we would when we would be visiting her house, we
Speaker 2: would watch baseball on the radio because she couldn't afford
Speaker 2: a television. She was the daughter of sharecroppers, and even
Speaker 2: though she had a television, you only turned the TV
Speaker 2: on for like special occasions. But we would sit in
Speaker 2: her front room and watch baseball on the radio, which.
Speaker 1: Was it's kind of amazing.
Speaker 2: It was just it was it was exciting and it
Speaker 2: was fun. But I grew up surrounded by people who
Speaker 2: believed that they were entitled to more, believe they were
Speaker 2: responsible for working for more, and believe they should create
Speaker 2: a path for others to get more. I knew about
Speaker 2: the icons of the civil rights movement, icons and politics.
Speaker 2: I you know, I watched a lot of Dynasty in
Speaker 2: General Hospital as a child, so you know.
Speaker 1: Those covered your bass I did.
Speaker 2: But what I extracted from it, and I think, you
Speaker 2: know this, what you extract from your experiences, it's filtered
Speaker 2: through your sense of self. How do I use what
Speaker 2: I'm learning? How do I use what I'm doing to
Speaker 2: solve problems either problems that I have, problems that others have,
Speaker 2: problems no one knows about. And there weren't a lot
Speaker 2: of people who looked like me who were talked about
Speaker 2: in that vein when I was growing up and That's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I've been so assertive about where
Speaker 2: I stand and what I want because I didn't have
Speaker 2: people who looked like me or came from my experiences
Speaker 2: who could do so.
Speaker 1: Was there a seminal moment in which you decided to
Speaker 1: pivot towards politics and how did that come about in
Speaker 1: your life?
Speaker 2: I saw it less as a pivot and more as
Speaker 2: an evolution. So if you go back to solving problems,
Speaker 2: I think poverty is a moral I think it is
Speaker 2: economically inefficient. I think it is solvable. And if you
Speaker 2: look at all the pieces the facets of my life,
Speaker 2: whether it's being a tax attorney or a writer or
Speaker 2: an organizer, everything I've done in my mind is shaping
Speaker 2: how I can tackle this problem because it has a
Speaker 2: corporate side to it, has a public sector side to it,
Speaker 2: has a non profit side to it. So I've always
Speaker 2: tried to operate in all of those dimensions. But I
Speaker 2: reached sort of a plateau where the next set of
Speaker 2: changes that I needed to see, I did my best
Speaker 2: to get other politicians to do it for me. I
Speaker 2: was their lawyer, I worked on their campaigns. Many of
Speaker 2: them did what they could, but there were there are
Speaker 2: institutional and structural impediments, especially in the South, to exercising
Speaker 2: political power. And while I could get young people to
Speaker 2: vote and worked on voter voter rights and democracy, I
Speaker 2: could work for politicians and draft legislation. All of those
Speaker 2: things had me as a supplicant to others trying to
Speaker 2: get them to do and so standing for office myself,
Speaker 2: whether it was when I stood for office in the
Speaker 2: when I was a student at Spelman, or when I
Speaker 2: ran for office in two thousand and six, it was
Speaker 2: because I'd reached the inflection point where I could no
Speaker 2: longer ask someone else to do it. I needed to
Speaker 2: be the one to do it myself. And being the
Speaker 2: candidate versus being the campaign manager or the supporter or
Speaker 2: the lawyer was just the shift in where my role was.
Speaker 2: It was never a shift in what my goal was.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. And then so in twenty eighteen, when you
Speaker 1: first round for governor in Georgia, there was a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of the narrative really centered around the novelty
Speaker 1: of you just as a candidate. But you'd had a
Speaker 1: very long career before that. Were there any experiences that
Speaker 1: you felt were extremely formative?
Speaker 2: When I stood for a leader in twenty ten, and
Speaker 2: I ran to be the minority leader or the leader
Speaker 2: of the Democrats in the House days after we'd lost
Speaker 2: every state wide election. We had fewer members in the
Speaker 2: House than since reconstruction, and we were at the lowest
Speaker 2: ebb of political power in our one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: in like one hundred and thirty years. And so I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to be in charge of all this. I
Speaker 2: want to be at the top in the nator. But
Speaker 2: for me it was so critical because no one thought
Speaker 2: you could do anything when you feel so exhausted that
Speaker 2: possibility is almost extinguished. That to me is the prime
Speaker 2: opportunity to figure out what's next, because you don't have
Speaker 2: a choice. And coming in the caucus was in debt,
Speaker 2: the party was in debt. The following year, when redistricting
Speaker 2: was done after the census, we lost even more seats,
Speaker 2: and so I presided over an even smaller caucus than
Speaker 2: I started with. And so it made me take all
Speaker 2: of these lessons that I'd learned as an entrepreneur. How
Speaker 2: do you take the little money that someone's willing to
Speaker 2: invest in you and stretch it, as you know, as
Speaker 2: far as you can how do you use the rules
Speaker 2: that they've written to stymy you to your advantage. So
Speaker 2: I would find rules that were written, you know, on
Speaker 2: the capitol. I was known because I read every bill
Speaker 2: and I knew what we could do and what we
Speaker 2: couldn't do. And so every year as leader, I would
Speaker 2: find some you know, hidden gem and use it to
Speaker 2: bolster our visibility. The very next year they would change
Speaker 2: the rules to eliminate it. But by doing that it
Speaker 2: was so important because as an entrepreneur, I need to
Speaker 2: do that. I needed to do that. As a writer,
Speaker 2: I could craft a vision for what I thought should happen,
Speaker 2: and I could write our story. As a politician, I
Speaker 2: knew how to talk to people and get them to
Speaker 2: buy in to what seemed like an impossible task. And
Speaker 2: as an organizer, I realized that you can't win elections
Speaker 2: if people can't vote for you. So I work to
Speaker 2: make certainly got more people registered to vote.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean talk about not taking no for an answer.
Speaker 1: It's just it's miraculous that you know, what's that scene
Speaker 1: when it's like dumb and dumber or something, and my
Speaker 1: one it's like, I would never date you if you
Speaker 1: were the last person on the face of the earth,
Speaker 1: and you had and he's saying, so you're saying, there's
Speaker 1: a chance, a chance, there's a chance. You know, you
Speaker 1: just find that I'm just are yours are shocked that
Speaker 1: more people don't think like you do. No, I don't.
Speaker 2: I actually I really don't think about things that way.
Speaker 2: I focus on what can I control, what can I do.
Speaker 2: I've always jokingly called myself a stoic, and then I've
Speaker 2: done more reading. You know, I've read Marcus Aurelius's meditations.
Speaker 2: I've given more thought to stoicism, and one of the
Speaker 2: principles is that you can only live your life. You
Speaker 2: can't do You can't make anyone else do or be anything.
Speaker 2: I can't make people vote for me, I can't make
Speaker 2: people like me. I can't make them hire me, I
Speaker 2: can't make them date me. I can't make them read
Speaker 2: my books. But what I can do is put out
Speaker 2: the best product, be the best person, do the best work,
Speaker 2: and trust that my efforts are sufficient for what I
Speaker 2: can do, and then after work as hard as I
Speaker 2: can to convince them that their choices could change if
Speaker 2: they only knew more information.
Speaker 1: So when you did not become governor in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: which was shocking. And we'll get to the bigger issue
Speaker 1: about voters. But with that attitude, how did that attitude
Speaker 1: apply to what it felt like with that loss? What
Speaker 1: did you say to yourself.
Speaker 2: That I didn't get the job, but the work still remained.
Speaker 2: You're not entitled to win an election, but you're responsible
Speaker 2: for the work you said you were going to do.
Speaker 2: And the work didn't suddenly end because my campaign ended.
Speaker 2: And so I pivoted and created fair Count or sorry
Speaker 2: for a fight, which was on democracy. Fair Count, which
Speaker 2: actually focused on the census, because that harkened back to
Speaker 2: when I became leader. And the reason we've lost so
Speaker 2: many seats was that we had an undercount and the
Speaker 2: census of communities of color, and so I made certainly
Speaker 2: created an organization to improve the census. And then all
Speaker 2: of this is because people want better policies for their lives.
Speaker 2: So I created an organization called the Southern Economic Advancement
Speaker 2: Project or SEEP, and so I created this constellation of
Speaker 2: groups to do this work. And that goes to my
Speaker 2: point about the way I approached things. Yes, we have
Speaker 2: different sectors, the corporate sector of the public sector, of
Speaker 2: the nonprofit sector inhabit all three sectors, and it's disconcerting
Speaker 2: to people who think, well, you should be here or
Speaker 2: you were there. No, our lives are intersected by those sectors.
Speaker 2: Why shouldn't If they can come and affect me, why
Speaker 2: can't I affect that? Well?
Speaker 1: Well, also, you can't act. You can't live in a
Speaker 1: silo and act in a silo because it's not as
Speaker 1: effective at all.
Speaker 2: And there are lessons to be learned from all of
Speaker 2: those places. There are lessons to be learned. There are
Speaker 2: ways that things intersect and connect and influence that may
Speaker 2: not be visible but are valuable. And so after twenty eighteen, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I was angry for I like to say,
Speaker 2: you know, I did the stages of grief and I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed anger. I hunkered down for you. But then
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, what can anger do for me?
Speaker 2: Anger can galvanize you or can paralyze you? And I
Speaker 2: use the platform. I mean, it angered a lot of
Speaker 2: people that I use the platform of failure to proclaim
Speaker 2: a victory. But for me, victory is not about the
Speaker 2: people who get what they want. Victories about the people
Speaker 2: who don't know that they are entitled to more, that
Speaker 2: they have the right to more. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I would go and talk to voters who were denied
Speaker 2: the right to voter communities, who felt disenfranchised. I'm like, look,
Speaker 2: we won. We made them talk about this, we made
Speaker 2: them fight. That's a victory. It may not be the
Speaker 2: seminal victory we sought, but it is a valuable one, nonetheless,
Speaker 2: because if we only measure our success by one ring
Speaker 2: or one championship, we disregard all of the things that
Speaker 2: happened in between. And for most of us, we're never
Speaker 2: e get that thing, so that thing can't be the
Speaker 2: only metric of our progress.
Speaker 1: Now about voter suppression. That became a very impertinent fight
Speaker 1: for you, and rightfully so, you were directly affected by it.
Speaker 1: But how pervasive is voter suppression in this country?
Speaker 2: It is wildly, remarkably and stubbornly pervasive. Voter suppression is this,
Speaker 2: can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you
Speaker 2: cast a ballot? And does your ballot get counted? That
Speaker 2: suppression anytime the state takes action to impede one of
Speaker 2: those parts. That is the definition of suppression. Now we
Speaker 2: are used to in our historical understanding to see suppression
Speaker 2: as someone physically blocking you with guns or billy clubs
Speaker 2: or hoses. But voter suppression was also denying women the
Speaker 2: right to vote until the nineteen twenties. It was denying
Speaker 2: young people the right to vote until nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: It was denying black people the right to vote. It
Speaker 2: was denying Native Americans their citizenship in this country until
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. It is close a precinct in a
Speaker 2: county that is twenty miles wide when you don't have
Speaker 2: public transportation. It is telling people that they can only
Speaker 2: vote if you are a student. If you happen to
Speaker 2: have a form of ID, you can't get because the
Speaker 2: laws won't allow you to secure it. I don't have
Speaker 2: an issue with and people often reduce voter suppression to
Speaker 2: voter idea, but let me use that as an example.
Speaker 2: Voter identification has always been the law. The question is
Speaker 2: not do you have to have ID? It is what
Speaker 2: ID do you have to have? And is that ID
Speaker 2: reasonably accessible to the vast majority of the population, or
Speaker 2: are there rules being put in place to limit that
Speaker 2: access to exclude certain communities. If you are a disabled
Speaker 2: person in the United States of America. You face voter
Speaker 2: suppression in every single election. If you are a person
Speaker 2: of color, if you are young, if you are poor.
Speaker 2: There are pediments, and our mission as a democracy should
Speaker 2: be to remove those impediments. I want you to vote
Speaker 2: for my party when you get in the booth, but
Speaker 2: my job is to get you in.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask my girls to what extent they
Speaker 1: are cognizant of all of this. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: hear it in there in the conversation enough, and it's
Speaker 1: making me feel sort of ignorant about that because it's
Speaker 1: very easy to maintain that ignorance.
Speaker 2: Well, it's designed that way. The system is not designed
Speaker 2: for easy access. Let's remember, at the inception of this nation,
Speaker 2: only white men who owned land were actually considered voting citizens.
Speaker 2: Every other group that has gotten access to the right
Speaker 2: to vote has never actually had a constitutional right to vote.
Speaker 2: We simply can't be excluded because of who we are,
Speaker 2: what we look like, where we're from. Part of the
Speaker 2: success of suppression is to make it so complicated that
Speaker 2: you just get exhausted thinking about it, to make it
Speaker 2: seem overwhelming so you don't think you can fight it,
Speaker 2: or to make it so insidious you think it's your fault.
Speaker 2: The other side is going to say, well, it's not
Speaker 2: as bad as they pretend, and these are just common
Speaker 2: sense rules. Anytime someone starts with its common sense, it's
Speaker 2: because they want you to get distracted and they want
Speaker 2: to bring down your temperature. I don't let my temperature
Speaker 2: come down because someone tells me I don't have the
Speaker 2: right to be riled. But I'm also not going to
Speaker 2: be so angry that I lose the ability to think
Speaker 2: about what comes next.
Speaker 1: You are also, I want to just switch to this other,
Speaker 1: very prolific career, which is your writing. You have always written,
Speaker 1: you said, and you wrote a number of books, including
Speaker 1: several under the pen name Selena Montgomery. I'd love to
Speaker 1: know how you picked that name, but also how did
Speaker 1: that career come about writing?
Speaker 2: I've always loved writing, and I wrote my first novel
Speaker 2: when I was twelve, called A Diary of Angst. My
Speaker 2: mother is the only other person who's ever read it.
Speaker 2: She had it bound for me when I was in
Speaker 2: my thirties as a Christmas present, just to remind me
Speaker 2: of just how obnoxious I was as a twelve year old.
Speaker 1: Diary of angst come on, like, kosis doesn't even work.
Speaker 1: It was not even enough genius.
Speaker 2: I believe, I believe the word is insufferable. But so
Speaker 2: when I was in law school, I wanted I was
Speaker 2: writing a novel based on my ex boyfriend's dissertation. He
Speaker 2: was a chemical physicist. I'm like one of five people
Speaker 2: other than his board that read it, and I was like, ooh,
Speaker 2: he could do all of these really interesting things. He
Speaker 2: discovered these chemical properties, and I was expounding on what
Speaker 2: it could what could happen. He was like, oh, can't
Speaker 2: do any of that. He's like, that's just far fetched.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you have no imagination. This is why we
Speaker 2: broke up. It was a bad breakup. So in the
Speaker 2: book he's actually in prison for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: That was my petty revenge. But this goes to your
Speaker 2: point early about not taking no So I wanted to
Speaker 2: write a spy novel. I used to I loved espionage.
Speaker 2: I used to watch James Bond and you know, I
Speaker 2: mentioned General Hospital, Anna Davaine and Robert Scorpio, and I
Speaker 2: really wanted to do a spy novel. But women at
Speaker 2: in the late nineties, publishers did not believe that women
Speaker 2: wrote or read spy novels, so there were no espionage
Speaker 2: authors and I was told no, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 2: if you're not going to publish it as a spy novel,
Speaker 2: I'll just make my spies fall in love and call
Speaker 2: it a romance novel. And so I wrote Rules of
Speaker 2: Engagement as a romance because instead of taking no, I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I'm going to write this book. Someone's
Speaker 2: going to read it. I just have to give it
Speaker 2: a name. And when I decided to write Romance, it
Speaker 2: was the same time I was writing a treatise on
Speaker 2: the operational dissonance of the earned income tax exemption, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody cares about that. So you can publish romance under
Speaker 2: a pseudonym. You cannot publish tax articles under a pseudonym.
Speaker 2: And no one wanted to read Romance by Alan Greenspan,
Speaker 2: so I had to come up with a pseudonym. And
Speaker 2: I was watching an A and E biography of Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Montgomery at like two in the morning, and I loved
Speaker 2: her last name, and you know, her evil alter ego
Speaker 2: I'm bewitched was Serena, her cousin Samon Serena. I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't like Serena, but I like my l so
Speaker 2: I became Selena Montgomery, and that's how Selena was born.
Speaker 1: I love that, Oh, I love that so much. So
Speaker 1: in your new book, Rogue Justice, this is the second
Speaker 1: correct it's the second story that's following the adventures of
Speaker 1: Avery Keen. Now, how much of yourself is in Avery.
Speaker 2: Avery's a lawyer. Avery has a really good memory. Avery's
Speaker 2: family grapples with drug addiction, which is something that my
Speaker 2: family has dealt with and is an important conversation for me.
Speaker 2: I do love chess, and I do like poker and
Speaker 2: card games. I have never been responsible for Aupreme Court
Speaker 2: justice in a comatose state, and I have never been
Speaker 2: the center of international intrigue and pursued by a nemesis.
Speaker 2: So we diverged there. Although some might say some of
Speaker 2: my elections have had.
Speaker 1: Some elements a nemesis, I would think it falls under
Speaker 1: that category.
Speaker 2: Now I love best about Avery. She has these So
Speaker 2: Avery solves problems, she uses what she has, she finds
Speaker 2: others who can add to it. And so she's got
Speaker 2: this group of friends who are emblematic of friends that
Speaker 2: I have. And she knows that it's not her job
Speaker 2: to fix everything, but it's always her job to do
Speaker 2: something that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a great character, and it seems to
Speaker 1: me the way you approach your life. And now it
Speaker 1: has been optioned already the two books, probably right, how
Speaker 1: much of that, I mean, people don't know this. I
Speaker 1: have a little bit of an idea of it. But
Speaker 1: how much of of the process or will you be
Speaker 1: involved in?
Speaker 2: So I'm a producer, I'm actually right now we're going
Speaker 2: through the development process. So I read the notes when
Speaker 2: it comes back from the studio. I'm not the writer.
Speaker 2: The writer is an exceptional young woman. She allows me
Speaker 2: to interfere, but I'm respectful of the fact that I'm
Speaker 2: not the screenwriter, not the teleplay writer. But I am
Speaker 2: the architect of the story in terms of Avery is
Speaker 2: going to live for a while. She's got more stories
Speaker 2: to tell, and so part of my job in this
Speaker 2: process is to both help shape backstory but also to
Speaker 2: really think through what is her arc look like? And
Speaker 2: it may diverge from the books, but I just want
Speaker 2: to make sure that the character on the page and
Speaker 2: the character on the television screen come from the same person.
Speaker 1: I always like to ask our guests this because the
Speaker 1: show is called now What, and it's about those sort
Speaker 1: of now what moments that make you stop in your
Speaker 1: tracks and really say like, oh God, now, how what
Speaker 1: do I do? Are there any now what moments in
Speaker 1: your life that stand out?
Speaker 2: Most people would assume a now what moment for me
Speaker 2: would come from not winning an election, but those, while important,
Speaker 2: you're not entitled to win, and you always have to
Speaker 2: prepare yourself for not getting the job. The one for
Speaker 2: me that was more seminole was it happened when I
Speaker 2: was in college and I broke up with Oh, I
Speaker 2: broke up, I broke up nothing, he broke up with me,
Speaker 2: and the rather aggressive insults to me about why we
Speaker 2: were breaking up, mainly that I was too ambitious and.
Speaker 1: That's all about him.
Speaker 2: Well, but it's stun because you know, you're eighteen nineteen
Speaker 2: and the guy you think you've woven all these fantasies
Speaker 2: around telling you you're not enough. And so I went
Speaker 2: into a computer lab and did this spreadsheet. And people
Speaker 2: talk about the spreadsheet because of what's on it, But
Speaker 2: what always matters to me was that in that moment,
Speaker 2: instead of buying into his narrative, about who I was.
Speaker 2: I decided to write a narrative about what I could be,
Speaker 2: And whether I get all of the things that I
Speaker 2: am visioned for myself is not the point. Then, Now,
Speaker 2: what moment for me is the moment I realized I
Speaker 2: didn't have to be shaped by his sense of my deficits,
Speaker 2: that I was going to be shaped by my sense
Speaker 2: of my possibility, and that all of the things I do,
Speaker 2: whether I get them or not, is not the point.
Speaker 2: The point is do I give my best effort? Do
Speaker 2: I try? And to your point about imagination, do I
Speaker 2: imagine such an extraordinary world that these things could be true?
Speaker 1: That was the incomparable Stacy Abrams. If you're looking for
Speaker 1: a good read, do not miss her latest book, Rogue Justice.
Speaker 1: As for me, I'm taking a few weeks to wrap
Speaker 1: up some exciting projects and spend some time with my family,
Speaker 1: But I'll be back soon with another batch of new episodes,
Speaker 1: So keep an eye out on your podcast feed, and
Speaker 1: as always, thank you for listening. Now. What with Burke
Speaker 1: Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and
Speaker 1: wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by
Speaker 1: Darby Masters and Abu zafar Our. Executive producer is Christina Everett.
Speaker 1: The show is mixed by Baheed Fraser.