>> Shari Werb:
I'm Shari Werb,
the Director of
the Library's Center
for Learning, Literacy
and Engagement.
And the theme
for this year's festival
is Books Bring Us Together.
So let me say how wonderful
it is to see
all these book lovers here
in person for the first time
at the festival since 2019.
(Applause)
Any first-timers here?
Ooo! Welcome.
We're glad you're here.
Today, you'll be hearing
from authors
who have written novels
about crime and evil murderers.
We'll be asking whether there's
anything funnier than politics
on this stage today.
How being in a family
can feel wonderful
and sometimes not so wonderful.
And we'll also feature actors
performing a scene
from The First American Mystery,
featuring an all-black
cast of characters,
and readings from actors
from the library's
National Library Services
for the Blind
and Print Disabled,
among other topics.
You'll learn a lot
on this stage today.
And we hope that you will
have a lot of fun here.
We also hope that
you'll visit us
at the Library of Congress
to do research about subjects
you're interested in,
or to see the beautiful
Jefferson Building.
Or to attend one of our live
at the library events.
When we keep the library open
until 8:00 p.m.
Most Thursday evenings.
And present dynamic free events.
For example, on September 15,
actor Frances McDormand
will appear
with The Kitchen Sisters.
And on September 22nd,
the Mosaic Theater
will present a preview
of The Till Trilogy.
And also on that night,
Ian McEwan will be talking about
his new novel Lessons.
Our first event features
writer Marion Winik,
moderating a conversation
with Kirstin Chen,
Amanda Eyre Ward
and Katie Gutierrez.
Talking about their new novels.
We are thrilled you're here.
Have a wonderful day
at the Library
of Congress National
Book Festival
and welcome writers.
We've turned it on somehow.
Is it on?
Oh, yes. Hi.
I'm Marion Winik
and I'm so glad
to welcome you to this event.
We have quite a powerhouse
of talent here,
the creators of three incredibly
vibrant novels.
While the session title
describes these as books
about swindlers and murderers,
they could just as easily
have been described
as novels about
female friendship
or motherhood,
or women and class.
I hope we'll get to dig
into all these topics today,
and since you can read the bios
of these panelists
on your phone or whatever,
I'm not going to read them.
I'm going to introduce instead
their characters.
So, ah--as I introduce the--
After I introduce the characters
from each book,
the author will read
a brief excerpt
to give you a flavor.
Then I have some questions.
And at the end
I'll save some time for
if you have questions.
So here we go.
Okay. From Kirstin Chen's
Counterfeit...
Counterfeit.
(audience clapping)
Meet Ava Wong,
a Chinese-American
living in San Francisco
who has left her
corporate law job
to be a full-time mom.
Unfortunately,
her kid is such a terror
that she ends up delegating him
completely to a nanny.
And her workaholic surgeon
husband isn't around much.
So she's at loose ends
when she reconnects
with Winnie Fang,
her roommate from freshman year
at Stanford.
Awkward Winnie,
who hails from Mainland China,
had to withdraw from school
under the cloud of some
SAT cheating scandal.
But all these years later,
she's back.
And boy, has she changed.
She has had eyelid surgery.
Lost her accent,
attained American citizenship,
and is carrying the ultimate
status symbol of Birkin.
A couple pages in we learn
that this narrative of
this renewed friendship
is being delivered
to a detective
because Winnie manipulated Ava
into working
for her global handbag scam.
Okay. Welcome, Ava
and Winnie and Kirstin.
(audience clapping)
>> Kirstin Chen: Thank you, Marion,
for that wonderful introduction
to my characters.
And thank you all for spending
your Labor Day weekend with us.
Really, really touched by that.
I'm just going to read from
the very beginning of the book,
this is when Ava sees Winnie
for the very first time
after a 20 year separation.
The first thing I noticed
was the eyes.
They were anime character,
huge with thick
double eyelid folds,
expertly contoured
in coppery tones,
framed by premium
lash extensions,
soft and full as a fur pelt.
Then there was the hair.
Sleek, yet voluminous
nipple length barrel curls.
And the skin,
poreless and very white.
And the clothes,
sumptuous silk blouse,
patent Louboutins.
And finally the bag,
an enormous Birkin 40
in classic orange.
Back then, I wouldn't have
known all these details.
Though, like most people,
I knew those bags
were absurdly expensive
and impossible to obtain.
All of this is just to say
the woman standing
in the doorway
of my neighborhood coffee shop
looked rich.
Asian tourist rich.
Mainland Chinese rich.
Rich. Rich.
Of course, I was surprised.
Almost 20 years had passed
since I had last seen her,
and she looked nothing like
my freshman year roommate.
In fact,
she didn't even sound like her.
Back at Stanford, she'd had
a thick singsong accent.
Each word she spoke,
curled in around the edges
like a lettuce leaf.
She struggled with "-th" sound.
So Mother came out "Mozer".
Other, "ozer".
Now, though, it would have
taken me a few lines
to figure out that
she was from China.
On the phone,
when she had identified herself,
she pronounced her last name
like the tooth.
"Ava, is that you?
It's Winnie Fang."
Why on earth
did she want to catch up?
How did she even get my number?
In hindsight, she must have had
her private investigator
track me down.
But when I asked her,
then she answered breezily,
"Oh, I looked you up
in the alumni listserv."
I didn't think
to question her further.
I agreed to meet for coffee.
A part of me curious to see
what had become of her.
She dropped out of school
so suddenly,
midway through our first year.
None of my college friends
were in touch with her.
And she didn't use social media,
at least not under
her real name.
Still, rumors drifted in
from time to time.
We heard she'd gone back
to her hometown of Xiamen
and graduated college there.
That she moved to Virginia
to care for an ailing aunt.
That she married an American
and quickly divorced.
A friend of a friend
had run into Winnie
while touring one of those
pricey Chinese immersion
private schools in LA.
Where she'd apparently
taught for a spell.
The woman in the doorway
caught sight of me.
"Ava!" she cried.
She hurried over,
holding out one arm for a hug.
Her other weighted down
by the duffel size Birkin.
The coffee shop patrons
looked up with idle curiosity,
probably pegged her for another
one of those influencers
and returned to their screens.
I dressed carefully,
changing out of
my usual leggings
for pants that zipped,
stippling concealer
under my eyes.
Now, however, I felt
as plain as a brown paper bag.
Winnie ordered a double espresso
at the counter.
And toted the doll-sized
cup and saucer
back to the table.
I asked what had
brought her to San Francisco.
And she said
she was here on business,
handbag manufacturing,
boring stuff.
She waved a hand ladened
with emerald and
Sapphire Eternity bands
to think I'd left
my engagement ring at home
for fear of appearing
too flashy.
(all laugh)
>> Marion Winik: Thank you.
(audience clapping)
From Katie Gur--Gutierrez novel
More Than You'll Ever Know.
(audience clapping)
Gutierrez.
It's a debut novel.
I just want to point that out
because that's so special.
Meet Cassie Bowman
and Lore Rivera.
Like the lifeguard moms
in Amanda's book
that you'll meet soon.
Cassie lives in Austin,
having left behind
a very rough childhood
in Enid, Oklahoma.
So rough, in fact,
that she has completely
concealed it from her fiancee.
Cassie is scraping along
as a freelance journalist
with a true crime blog
when she reads
about a Laredo woman
who married two different men
in the 1980s.
One husband is still in jail
for killing the other one.
Can you even imagine the woman
who did this?
Well, here she is. (All laugh)
Adoring mother of twin boys
married to her
high school sweetheart.
Lore Rivera had a great career
as an international banker.
That kept her family
going through the recession
that hit Laredo in the 1980s,
decimating her husband's
iron works business.
This sharp-witted,
big-hearted woman
was on a business trip
to Mexico,
when she met a man
with a motorbike
who she assumed would be
a one night indiscretion.
Then spent the next 40 years
dealing with the fallout
from the mistakes
that came toppling like dominoes
after that.
Katie, can you read to us?
Thank you.
What a beautiful introduction.
>> Marion Winik: I love the book.
>> Katie Gutierrez:
So this section is when
Lore begins talking
to Andres on the phone.
For months after
Laura gave birth,
she spent her sleepless hours
weeping silently
as she stared
at her newborn sons
asleep in their bassinets,
imagining their possible deaths
one by one.
She killed them
so many times in her mind,
convinced she had to conjure
every excruciating detail.
Endure every horror
completely in imagination
to protect them in reality.
One night she fell asleep
with Mateo
breastfeeding beside her in bed.
Gabriel's shriek awoke her.
And she saw that Fabian,
still snoring,
had stretched a heavy arm
across Mateo's face.
Mateo's mottled red legs kicked.
Lore gasped,
shoved Fabian's arm away
and drew Mateo to her chest,
too shocked to even cry.
Later, she stroked the soft spot
on Gabriel's head,
letting him pummel her breast
with his jerky little fist.
Whispering, you saved him.
She didn't know how he knew
to scream right then,
but he knew.
It wasn't a coincidence.
She forced herself to stop
imagining their deaths
after that.
Sure, she had invoked
this danger.
She feels similarly now,
talking to Andrés on the phone,
erasing her family call by call.
This fear of invocation.
But the calls are short,
and the rest of the time
there's no escaping
her family's realness.
In fact, there's only room
for thoughts of Andrés
and the edges of her days
idling behind other mothers,
always mothers, in the school
drop off and pick up lines
during her evening shower.
Rushed because the Guatez
have used all the hot water.
And her favorite
before dozing off to sleep
when time belongs to her alone.
And how quickly
memory turns to fantasy.
Sometimes she imagines them
riding the caged elevator
at the Grand Hotel.
She curls her hands around
the bars of the iron car,
stares down
at the dancing wedding guests
as Andrés lifts
the red silk of her dress
and slides his fingers
inside her.
She imagines the crowd below,
suddenly stopping,
tilting their heads up,
watching.
Everyone fantasizes,
she tells herself,
men sneak their
playboys and hustlers
obsessing over women
whose allure could never survive
the relentless
banality of marriage.
Motherhood.
Imagine those parted lips,
pursed grimly at the sink,
hands scrubbing burn Milanese
off the pan,
those endless legs unshaved
for weeks,
heaving breasts smashed tight
in a sports bra during the rare,
clumsy half-hour
of home aerobics.
Every movement, a second behind
the neon leotarded women
on the screen.
It doesn't work.
Fantasy never holds against
the assault of reality.
That's why it's so important.
And safe outlet
and escape hatch to nowhere.
But women have
no such magazines,
nor do they have
dedicated spaces
to act out their desires.
Should it come to that?
Lazona Letorarancia,
a walled compound of brothels,
strip clubs and cantinas
only three miles
south of the border
is nick--nicknamed Boystown
for a reason.
Women have only the potent force
of their imagination.
And that's all
Andrés is to Lore.
Despite the phone calls,
he is essentially a figment.
The memory of kissing him
as unreal as the idea
of making love with him.
She's always considered
herself lucky,
meeting the love of her life
before the world had a chance to
harden them against each other.
And it's not as if she's never
had the opportunity to stray.
Lore is no Cindy Crawford,
but she knows she could have
had any number of men
in the Effe hotel bars.
She's never even considered it.
She loves her husband.
She loves her son.
She would never compromise
her life with them.
And yet here she is
with thoughts of Andres crowding
the periphery of her mind
as she makes pancakes
and checks pre-algebra homework
and folds load after load
of laundry...
(speaks Spanish)
materializing like dark magic
on the floor by the washer.
As close as anyone can get
to the tour itself.
And takes the boys
to basketball and track
and make small talk
with stay-at-home moms
who still, though none of their
kids are home during the day,
judge her for working
even in this economy.
And of course,
she has to actually work.
And then it's dinner.
Something easy
because Lore hates cooking
and cleaning the kitchen,
because it's always been
a point of pride
with Fabian's mother
that Fabian's father
never had to lift
a finger around the house.
And now this is
Lore's burden to bear.
And she has to listen,
really listen.
When Fabian tells her about
the store's abysmal sales
and brainstorm ways to get
customers through the doors,
which Fabian will
automatically reject
because people aren't buying.
And then finally, finally,
the Guatez are showered
and asleep
and she's in bed.
And now she's grateful.
Fabian is too distracted
and upset for sex
because it means
she can close her eyes
and conjure Andres,
who is, of course, all too real.
(audience clapping)
>> Marion Winik: Okay.
And from Amanda Eyre Ward
to The Lifeguards.
We have a rather
glamorous group of moms,
three women from the fancy
Austin, Texas suburb
of Barton Hills.
There's Whitney,
a real estate mogul
who, along with
her British husband,
sells underground bunkers
to tech billionaire bro's
who are thinking ahead
to climate apocalypse.
There's Eliza,
a struggling writer
who is barely making rent
with odd jobs,
and dog walking.
She's desperately clinging
to her membership
in the Rich Moms Club,
praying no one finds out
how broke she is
or asks her anything
at all about her past.
Then there's Annette,
an undocumented
basketball superstar from Laredo
turned reluctant trophy wife
of the obnoxious heir
to a west Texas oil fortune.
Over the years of raising
their three sons together.
These women have forged
what they believe to be
an unbreakable friendship,
and they're happily
sending the boys off
to be lifeguards
at Barton Springs,
which is an iconic
Austin swimming hole.
But the cracks appear
almost immediately
when the boys find a dead body
and seem to have something
to do with it.
Take it away, Amanda.
Thank you for that
wonderful introduction.
I'm starting off
from the point of view of Liza,
the single mom.
Our boys were lifeguards,
we told ourselves,
and were surely safe.
Weren't they safe?
They knew CPR had shown us
their fanny packs
filled with Band-Aids
and plastic breathing tubes.
Xavier, Bobcat
and Charlie, my son,
had taken the course together.
Weekend mornings
at Barton Springs.
We'd drop them off at dawn.
The Texas sun just starting
to climb above the horizon,
making the surface
of the spring-fed swimming hole
flash red and orange.
We'd said we'd walk
Lady Bird Lake together,
or we'd stand up paddleboard
or grab coffee.
Instead, we smiled
as we dropped the boys,
went home to the adult lives
we'd begun to create again.
Now that our children were 15.
I was ghostwriting a cookbook.
Annette was working
at Ola Amigos Daycare,
and Whitney had become
an Austin real estate titan.
Now that we no longer had
endless summer days
with elementary schoolers
underfoot,
it was harder to connect.
But our friendship
was unbreakable,
as safe as the neighborhood
where we'd raised
our sweet little kids.
Or so we thought.
>> Marion Winik: Thank you.
(applause)
So as you can see,
these books are about
a lot more than crime,
though each one of them
has a big crime in the middle
that it revolves around.
My first question
for the panelists
is every friendship,
particularly friendship
between women,
is some kind of stew
of contradictory elements;
Affinity and jealousy.
Admiration and competition.
Loyalty and betrayal.
Honesty and deception.
Rarely,
especially in real life.
I was going to say,
even in real life,
but especially in real life,
the whole truth
of the friendship
is visible on the surface,
which is all GNO
and BFF and LMAO. (all laugh)
And, yeah, the darker elements
of the relationship
tend to be glossed over
until somehow things break open.
I don't know about you, but
this is actually happened to me.
The lifeguards is pretty much
a morality tale of justice.
Would you agree, Amanda?
I would agree.
I mean, The Lifeguards
is about a lot of things.
To me, it's about Austin,
which has changed a lot.
It's about money.
And yes, it's about
relationships between women.
My first son
just went to college
and I became fast, immediate
soul sister, friends with women
when he was
a baby and a toddler.
And now we're forced
to re-examine
if we really have
anything in common at all.
(Laughs) Be honest.
We would spend hours
talking and drinking margaritas
while the kids played.
But now that the kids
aren't there, I'm sober.
You know, do I really want to
spend hours with these people?
And some of them, absolutely.
Yes.
Some of them we just have
nothing to say.
So it has been a really
interesting process
of re-examining
what I need in my life
for friends
and who those friends are.
And now I haven't necessarily
had a situation
where my friends and I have
had to cover up a murder. [all laugh]
But it was just sort of
heightening it.
But yeah, the bonds
between women are
important and amazing
and fraught.
And yeah, I do think that's
what the book is about.
>> Marion Winik: One of
the aspects of the book that...
so Whitney,
the rich real estate lady,
is actually the landlord
of Liza, the single mom.
And as much as
she's constantly pretending
that she's this
best friend in the world,
she doesn't even
send the exterminator
to get the roaches.
A terrible landlady.
And it's kind of like...
It's the literal seamy underside
of a friendship
is crawling
right through the kitchen.
But, so what about
Winnie and Ava?
Were they ever really friends
or what?
>> Kirstin Chen: Yeah. Yeah,
it's a good question,
because, you know,
in the beginning of the book,
Ava and Winnie
are very much frenemies,
I think we would say.
And I was thinking a lot about
how women, especially
women from marginalized groups
are sometimes resistant
to befriend each other,
you know, because, you know,
let's say if you're the only
Asian American person
in your workplace, let's say,
or any other marginalized group
and another Asian person
comes in,
you know that you're going to be
automatically lumped together.
And that if one of you
makes a mistake,
everybody will say
they made this mistake.
And so there's this
kind of natural push and pull
because everybody is
resistant to kind of
being defined by someone else.
But that's something that
people from marginalized groups
go through all the time, right?
Whatever it is, whatever group
that may be.
And so I was thinking a lot
about that.
And then I was also
thinking about
the way that Asian Americans
look extremely homogenous
to the greater society.
But within there are all these
different layers.
And so on the surface,
Ava and Winnie are both
highly successful
Stanford graduates
of a certain
socioeconomic class.
But underneath
they're really different.
You know, Ava is from...
She grew up in an all white
upper middle-class
suburb of Boston,
where she worked her entire life
to assimilate.
Versus Winnie,
who migrated much later in life.
And she's from China.
And there's a sense of
security and ease
that comes from being
from a large country
where everybody looks like you.
And so, you know,
they're even
stereotyping each other.
And so Ava looks at
Winnie and says, like,
oh, this person,
she's socially clueless,
she's conniving, she's ruthless.
And Winnie looks
at Ava and says,
Oh, she's so innocent.
She's never experienced
anything in life.
And so, you know, even within
marginalized groups,
we stereotype each other
and, you know,
because we're resistant
to being lumped together.
And so it's that complexity,
I think,
that I was trying to bring
to the friendship.
>> Marion Winik: Well, I think
you could say as far as
something positive
that's in their friendship--
their relationship,
In a way, Winnie helps Ava
find her inner badass,
you know, because Ava
is so self-effacing
and, you know, she has no
self-confidence, literally.
She doesn't even think
she can handle her own son.
But yet with Ava, you know,
getting her into this thing,
she gets her to behave
completely differently.
And in a way, even though
it's criminal behavior,
it's self-actualizing
Winnie's improvement program.
And I think that's part
of the push and pull.
You know, she's so envious
of Winnie's brashness
at the same time
that she's put off by it.
And I think that's
so often the way that
when we're attracted to people,
the things we love about them
are also the things you know
we hate in ourselves
and that kind of paradox.
And then there's just
also the layer
that you get this
all through this book,
you realize that Ava's telling
this story to a detective.
Even though you don't know
all the details of that.
And that, you know,
she's telling it to make
the detective think well of her.
So there's always
that there too.
Okay. And now Lore and Cassie.
I mean, at the beginning
they are definitely
pretending to be friends.
It's a whole big phony
like Janet Malcolm,
The Journalist and the Murderer,
which I think
you mentioned in the book,
where someone
who's interviewing someone else,
you pretend
to be their best friend.
And you hope they believe you
for an hour and a half,
and then they never hear
from you again.
But Lore has her
own reasons to do this, too.
But a lot more happens
than just that.
So I'll let you tell.
>> Katie Gutierrez: Yeah. I was really
interested in examining
the power dynamics between
a journalist and a source,
and Janet Malcolm's book
'The Journalist and the Murderer'
was such a fascinating read
for me.
She describes journalists
as being a kind of a con artist
and that,
like Marion was saying,
that for that hour or day
or however long they may
spend with the source,
the source believes
in this relationship.
And so the source can be
sort of devastated
when a piece
eventually comes out
that the source feels
misrepresents them in some way.
Right. Like a journalist
always has some ulterior motive,
some way that they're going
to shape the narrative
that just inherently
is probably going to shock
the person about whom
the narrative is about.
And so I wanted to play
with that dynamic,
particularly when it comes to
true crime
and our obsession
with true crime.
So Cassie,
at the beginning of the story
is working for this
pretty salacious crime blog
where she's just kind of
capturing the most
sensational murders
on the Internet,
and just posting them
in a series of short blog posts.
There's not even any real
reporting involved.
She's 30, she's engaged,
but she feels in a lot of ways
that she's sort of
dead-ending in this career
that has obsessed her
for so long.
And so when she comes across
Lore's story,
she sees an opportunity
to frame a different
kind of crime story
in which it's not a white woman
who ends up dead,
or a woman
who ends up dead at all.
It's a Mexican American woman
who's in some way
the perpetrator,
and whose and who is
still very much alive.
And so she tells herself
that she wants
to tell a more
feminist crime story.
Or a crime story
that she can feel
morally superior about, I guess.
But Lore has her own reasons
for agreeing to talk to Cassie,
and I think part of the friction
in the relationship
is that Cassie is trying
to excavate the truth.
And Lore is trying to keep
some aspects of it buried.
And I wanted to, you know,
when it comes to
true crime so often,
A, it does revolve
around dead white women.
And then when we
kind of examine that
critically, we have to ask,
okay, well, why is the figure
of the white woman
this symbolic, blameless victim?
Right. Why don't we hear
about the other stories?
Why don't we hear about
the black women who get murdered
at 2 to 3 times to white women,
or violence against trans women,
which they experience
at 4 to 5 times
the rate of violence
against cis women.
Who is framing and packaging
these stories for us?
And so in the story,
Cassie holds the power of
being able to shape
a written narrative.
But ultimately, Lore is the one
who actually knows
what happened.
And she is shaping
the story for Cassie.
And so I think that this
push and pull between them
informs their relationship
throughout the book.
But then I think
that they become...
They're both, I think
fundamentally women who want.
They're women who yearn.
And I think that they become
mirrors and foils
for each other.
And there's also a 30-year
difference between them.
>> Marion Winik: Well,
I was just going to say that.
So Cassie's much younger
than Lore.
And Lore interviews her.
I mean, every time that Cassie
is asking her questions,
Lori is right back at it,
probing into Cassie's life.
And in a way,
this woman who's had this,
you know, really bad outcome
in her life,
becomes sort of a mentor
to Cassie who's having,
I mentioned that
she has this dark past
that she doesn't want
anyone to know about.
And her relationship
with her fiancé
is kind of fraying,
especially because he doesn't
want her doing true crime.
And so I think to me,
this was part of the way
that you made the reader
see Lore as a much fuller person
because she's...
Did you see her doing that?
Is what I'm saying
resonating with you?
>> Katie Gutierrez: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
One of the things
that I was most interested in
exploring with the book
is their relationship
in the present day
and how--how their relationship
would develop, especially
because Cassie's mom died
when she was younger.
And so she has this
sort of gap in her life.
And Lore, despite what she did,
is maternal.
You know, she ends up
caring for Cassie,
and Cassie ends up
caring for Lore.
And so there's this
complicated idea
of motherhood
between them, right?
And the idea of
what is a good mother?
What is a bad mother?
If Lore... Can she still be
a good mother?
Despite what she did
and despite the fallout,
can she still serve
in a maternal role with Cassie,
despite the fact that
they're both attempting
in some way
to manipulate each other?
And so I think playing with
those sorts of strategies
that happen, I think,
in these relationships,
while these two women
are forming a very deep bond
that neither anticipated,
that was, I think, one of the
greatest pleasures
of writing it.
It was seeing how their
relationship evolved.
>> Marion Winik: Well, unbelievably enough,
my next question is
all these books
are about motherhood.
We have some bad mothers,
some good mothers,
some good mothers
who think they are bad mothers
and bad mothers who think
they are good mothers. (All laugh)
Amanda, would you like
to comment on that
with The Lifeguards?
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: Yes, I have a lot
to say about that. (all laugh)
(Microphone falls) 
>> Marion Winik: Oh, no, dear. It's me.
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: 
I thought that was me,
I thought that was the world exploding 
because I was about to say...
(all laugh)
Gosh. That's such
a great question, Marion.
I do think,
honestly, all of my books
probably feature
how one can be
mothered or be a mother.
You know how you find that
sense of home with someone,
how you're cared for?
One of my friends
was saying to me recently,
"All your books are about
badly parented children."
I thought, Really?
Are they? Wow.
But I think that, you know,
when you're a child, you want
a certain kind of parents.
And then when you
become a parent,
I will say when
I became a parent,
I kind of overcompensated.
We were just
talking about this, Katie,
how I found that
I overcompensated
to try to become the kind of
mother I yearn for still.
So I think it's a really
interesting dance when you're...
Especially I come
from a household
that was a bit chaotic,
so I had a single mom.
That's like the main character
in the book.
Liza. And so I'm still
trying to figure out
what it means to be a mother.
Even though I have
an 18 year old son
who just went to college,
I have absolutely no idea
what I'm doing day to day.
And I think everyone
probably feels this way.
But certainly those of us
who had a chaotic household
just, you know,
you watched The Cosby Show,
like maybe that's what a family
is supposed to be like.
So I think
it's really interesting.
And then also to get old enough
that you realize my kids will
tell a story about my parenting
and I've just been trying
to figure it out as well.
And it's yeah,
that's not a great answer.
>> Marion Winik:
But one thing you really see
because Amanda The Lifeguards
are what 16 years old.
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: 15 now.
>> Marion Winik: 15.
The disconnect between
who the mothers think they are
and who the kids really are.
Because she writes
from both perspectives.
And the mothers
are completely deluded
about what they're, you know,
it's pretty big, actually.
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: 
Well, actually, it was inspired.
Inspired by the summer.
My first son was 15.
I was visiting my mom
in Savannah
and he would call me and
kind of tell me about his day.
And for the first time
in my life,
I really had no idea
where he was a lot of the time.
He was out with his friends.
He was jumping the cliffs
at Barton Springs
along the Green Belt.
So one night he said to me,
Oh yeah, I had a great day.
Nothing happened.
And then another mother
called and said,
"Oh, well, as you know,
we all just got back
from the hospital."
(all laugh)
I have just talked to my son.
Well, it hadn't been him.
It had been his best friend
he was with.
They were jumping the cliffs
and the boy had an ear problem.
It wasn't a big deal.
But they had just gotten back
from the hospital.
And it was this moment
where I thought,
wow, he is his own... 
you know... person now.
He had this day with his friend
in the hospital
and who knows what else.
And then my biggest
takeaway was,
oh, I'm not 15 anymore
because I remember being 15
and thinking I knew everything.
So, yeah. It's nuts.
>> Marion Winik: You all, the book 
really shows the complications
added by social media.
Because there's just a whole...
Kids are having a whole life
that you have no idea.
>> Amanda Eyre Even when they're in their room.
Seemingly doing their homework.
(all laugh)
Yes. Those little phones.
Well, so.
Talk about Ava's motherhood.
Yeah, sure. Yes.
So Ava has a two and a half
year old named Henry, who is,
I think we would all agree,
challenging.
He has these tantrums
that nobody really understands.
She tries to get him
speech therapy
that her husband,
who himself is a doctor,
is extremely resistant to
because he thinks
she's overreacting.
And so these are all the kind
of complications in Ava's life.
And, you know,
when I first conceived of Henry,
I was thinking really about Ava
as a character.
You know, Ava is...
So those of you
who don't know the book,
she is this straight laced,
rule abiding
Chinese American lawyer
who has followed...
Who has done everything
right in her life.
She is in complete control
of every aspect of herself,
of where she went to school,
of how she dresses,
of who she married,
even she's in control
of her emotions.
Because she's spent so much time
kind of tamping them down.
And I was thinking like,
how would someone like this
get drawn into this illegal
counterfeit handbag scheme?
What would compel her
to do such a thing?
And I was thinking about
how she would reach
a breaking point,
what would be a point
in her life
that she could
no longer control.
And the answer was,
obviously a son, a child.
Because as many of you, probably
as many of you likely know,
you know,
within a couple of months,
babies have
a complete personality,
their own motivations
and desires,
and they are completely
themselves.
And so that was kind of
where I started with Henry,
but because I myself
am not a parent,
I think he started out
as a device,
you know, as a way of pushing
Ava out of her comfort zone.
And I'm so lucky that all my
early readers are parents.
And I remember my dear friend
Vanessa Hua, a novelist,
read an early draft of my book,
and she said to me,
Kirstin, even the most
troubled children
have moments of sweetness.
And I thought to myself.
>> Marion Winik:
Well, I was going to say,
I didn't know you weren't
a mother until right now.
And I think it's great
because Henry is a holy terror.
I think most people
who are mothers
probably wouldn't
write Henry this way
because it would seem
to reflect on yourself
that you hate your kid,
you know,
and but you...
I think in some ways,
it was easier
for me to write that child
because...
As anyone who has, I mean,
we don't all have kids
that are as bad as Henry,
but you recognize this behavior
and the stuff that goes on
and her reaction to it.
And I think that part of you
having the courage to do it
is just coming from the outside.
I do think so.
And people have said, you know,
one of a kind of one chapter
of the book is dedicated
to the completely absurd
preschool application process
in San Francisco.
And many of my readers
have said, like,
"Oh, how did you even
know about this?
Like, how did you know
to write about this?"
And I think it's partly
because I'm on the outside,
and when I watch my friends
go through it,
they are so consumed by it
and so stressed out
that they can't...
they don't see it as funny.
(all laugh)
Because it isn't funny.
It really, I mean...
it is a terrible process,
but from the outside,
I can kind of laugh about it
and poke fun at it.
And so there is some advantages
as a writer to having
a little bit of distance
from the subject.
I mean Counterfeit
is a comic novel.
It's essentially different
that there's comedy
in The Lifeguards.
There's not much comedy in
More Than You'll Ever Know,
but I'd say Counterfeit
is full on comic novel.
So she can push things
to the edge of satire.
But that is
completely realistic.
(all laugh)
So application process
is not very...
I couldn't make it even fun,
you know,
more observant than it is.
(all laugh)
So in the excerpt
you read us Katie,
Lore was remembering
nursing the twins.
And you could see
that she's so, so, so bonded.
And it's a really big...
Is it too much to talk about
the other family that she has?
No, because they come up early.
So her boyfriend
later to be husband in Mexico
also has kids.
So can you explain to them
how she gets involved
with a set of kids
besides her twins?
Yeah.
Andrés, who is a professor
at a university in Mexico City,
has two children of his own.
He's divorced.
When Lore meets them,
Penelope is 15
and Carlitos is 12,
which is the same age
as her own sons.
And there's a moment
when she's sitting
with Carlitos at a table
and she's helping him
with his homework,
where she thinks
I have this double life.
But here I am,
sitting at a table
helping a 12 year old boy
with his homework.
Do all roads lead
to this one place.
(all laugh)
But that being said,
she loves both sets of children.
And I think that that is
one of her primary paradoxes.
And I think one of the
paradoxes of motherhood
is that you can
love your children
more than your own life.
And yet there is you know,
there may be things
that you desire
outside of motherhood itself.
Right.
And so I think that
when we enter the story,
Lotus 32 in the 1980s,
her twins are 12.
They don't need her with that
same kind of relentlessness
as newborns need.
And she is, you know,
she's now successful
in her career.
She's becoming
the primary earner
for her family.
And so she's entering sort of
this new phase of her life,
you know, like Amanda
was talking about earlier
of evaluating, well, who am I
and what are my relationships
and what do I want outside
of this primary family
that I've created
and outside of these children
who I love
more than life itself?
And I think one of
the most toxic things
about being a mother
in any time period,
including today,
is the fact that mothers
are expected to be
relentlessly positive
about the experience.
You know, it's always
hashtag blessed.
Best thing
that's ever happened to me.
Every moment is sacred.
Like the minute you start
to get a little more real,
people don't like it, you know,
like unless you're sort of
talking with people,
like, like-minded people.
And I write about motherhood
for magazines as well.
So in particular
for Time Magazine,
I've been doing a lot of
motherhood pieces for them.
And one of the pieces
that I wrote recently
was about losing myself
as a mother
during the pandemic
with a lack of childcare.
And having
two very young children.
And how I became a mother
that I never wanted to be
essentially.
That the qualities I knew
in myself as an individual
sort of became consumed
by this other part of
my identity as a mother
in this very specific,
challenging time.
And I got some pretty bad emails
as a response to that,
saying I should have used
contraception.
I'm not cut out to be a mom,
I should have gotten a puppy.
They fear for my
children's safety.
And that's I think,
why I keep talking
about motherhood
and its challenges
as an institution.
Right, and the ways
that you can separate
your love for your children
and the conflict
of being a mother.
Right. And I think
they're two different things.
And so I think that comes up
with Lore in the book
because she does love her
children more than anything.
And one of the things
Cassie is drawn to about Lore
is the fact that she is kind of
a good mom
despite what she did.
And she sees that
Lore has stayed in Laredo
for the 40 years.
She's never been
with anybody else
after all of this
kind of exploded.
You know, she's a very
involved grandmother now.
And one of the things
that baffles Cassie is
when does she decide,
when does she decide
when to sacrifice self
for her children
and when to claim
whatever it is she desires,
despite the fallout?
And I think
that's a question that
so many mothers have
in similar ways,
potentially throughout the
process of mothering children,
is when do you do things
that are solely for you,
and when do you do things
that are a sacrifice of self
for children?
And so I think that
that is a conflict
that sort of comes up
throughout the book.
>> Marion Winik:
Yes, let's see.
So we did motherhood.
(all chuckle)
We're onto another element
that is really strong
in all three books,
which is setting.
I kind of told you that
Amanda's in suburban Austin.
Well, you're in
two different time periods
in Laredo and Austin, too,
right.
And the upscale San Francisco
plus Singapore and China.
So I just thought maybe
we could talk about
how the setting
influenced your book,
and the process of
developing setting.
Setting is really strong
in these books.
It's really woven into the plot.
So you want to start?
>> Kirstin Chen: Yeah, sure.
I mean, so, yes,
a lot of Counterfeit
takes place in San Francisco.
And, you know, a lot of the book
is a critique of
consumerist culture
and of living in a late stage
capitalist society
with extreme inequality.
And I think we could all agree
that San Francisco
is the kind of epicenter
of that, you know,
like we're a town where you can
look out on the sidewalk
and 25 year old
tech billionaires are...
Routinely tech millionaires
are walking down the street.
And then we also have
an incredible problem
with homelessness
and getting our
homeless people housed.
And so I think in some ways,
this is a story that could
only have taken place
in a city like San Francisco.
And, you know,
you know a lot this panel
is about swindlers.
And a lot of people
have asked me,
you know, why do you think
there are so many stories
about swindlers,
especially in recent years.
And I think that
when you live in a society
with extreme inequality,
it's so easy to feel like
the system is rigged.
It's so easy to feel.
Like it can't be fair
that I'm working two jobs
and the CEO of my company makes
5000 times more than I'm making.
Right? Like,
just that can't be fair.
And so I was thinking a lot
about that,
like this kind of feeling
that nothing you can do
can get you out of this hole.
And then also thinking about
sanction cheating versus
the kind of cheating
that we think of as illegal.
So all of that is kind of
mixed into San Francisco
as a setting.
And, you know, and I think, too.
So the other part
of this book happens
in Guangzhou, in Southern China.
And there's a different
kind of inequality there
because, you know,
that's a place
where every generation
is tenfold richer
than the generation
that has come before.
There's incredible
economic growth in China,
even though it's slowed
in recent years.
And, you know, that's a whole
different kind of society
where nobody can imagine
not continually getting richer.
And that creates
a different sense of striving.
>> Marion Winik: Hmm.
This is a little bit off topic,
but have you heard of
Celeste Ng's new book?
Ah, what is it called?
Our?
Our Missing Hearts.
Our Missing Hearts.
Yeah. I mean,
it's a dystopian future
where the wealth of China
has made it far overtake
the United States.
And all kinds of horrible things
are happening because of that.
But I just thought
from what you were saying,
have you read it?
No, I haven't yet.
If only someone would
send me a review copy?
Yeah. I'll see what I can do.
I'll see what I can do.
(all laugh)
So how about Barton Hill's,
Amanda? Tell us.
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: Oh, I'm
so glad you asked about setting,
because Austin is a crazy town,
and I'm from New York,
so as soon as I moved to Texas,
I thought, this place is amazing
and horrible and fascinating,
and I've felt the same way
in all the time
I've lived there.
But I even...
Since you asked about setting,
I'm going to show off
for the first time, I got a map.
Oh, I love this map.
So I was so excited.
I'd always wanted to write
a novel with a map in the front,
and it's a map of my
actual neighborhood
on the green belt of Austin.
And I just think
Austin is a crazy city
that's becoming
crazier and crazier
with tons of money
and inequality.
But we have this hiking trail
running through the middle
of the city,
and so there's different ways
to access it.
And what goes on down there
is everything from,
you know, drunk guys playing
boom boxes
to my children, hiking
when, I don't know,
they're down there
to all sorts of things.
And I know kids who aren't
allowed to go down there
because it's sort of,
I don't know,
but it's also beautiful
and it smells incredible.
And so all of that
kind of came together.
And then when I created
Whitney, the real estate titan,
I had heard there actually are
underground bunkers being built.
Driftwood apparently
has become this area
you could fly
from Silicon Valley.
A lot of the families
have bought...
It's like New Zealand
and they also go to New Zealand
in this book.
To look at the post-apocalypse.
>> Marion Winik: I wondered if
you had to take a research trip.
I have not. So much time.
There's this place
in New Zealand.
That's another one,
like the place outside of Austin
that's made for people to fly
primarily from Silicon Valley
directly to Auckland
or to Austin,
and then go
a little bit outside.
So that the starving hordes
won't take your food, basically.
And so this area
outside of Austin
that I made up,
but that actually
is based in reality,
they have everything from
gates to underground bunkers
with dental surgery
and bowling alleys
and fake sunlight and...
>> Marion Winik:
Eiffel Tower out the window.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah. The Eiffel Tower outside.
The simulated Eiffel Tower,
because, you know,
you have to figure out
what you want to look at
for the rest of time.
And one family in Barton Hills
chose that.
But it is very
interesting to me,
especially because no one knows
what to prepare for exactly.
You know, so some of them
have eye scanners
and they're more
worried about disease
and some are more worried
about starving hordes.
And anyway,
so I decided to create
a real estate agent in Austin
and through her character
got to visit
all of these various options
if you were a billionaire
in my neighborhood,
so that was pretty fun.
And now we catastrophically
tumbled to recession in Laredo.
(all laugh)
No bunkers there.
There are ground tunnels,
probably.
Yeah.
I grew up in Laredo, which is
right on the border of Mexico.
And when I was growing up,
it was 99% of the population
was of Mexican heritage.
So, you know, I grew up...
I was just talking with my
escort earlier about this.
You know, I sort of feel like
my life has been a bit of
a before and after.
And the before part was,
you know,
when our identity
and our culture
influenced every aspect
of our lives.
But it was never a source
of conflict in the way that
a marginalized identity
can be a source of conflict
when you're outside
of that bubble, right.
Because you can't be othered
when you're all there is.
And it's such a specific place
being sort of the skin
between two countries.
It's a place that really
doesn't exist anywhere else.
And I didn't realize
how special it was until I left.
And so it's also a place
that is dramatically
underrepresented
and not represented at all,
as far as I know, in fiction.
I grew up reading tons of books
and you know, I never read...
I read one book
by a Latina author
in my first 17 years
of life in Laredo.
And that book was set
in Chicago.
So, you know, I never read
about South Texas.
I never read about Laredo
or any kind of South Texas
border community.
And even now, I think
when you read books
that are set on the border,
many of them have to do
with immigration
and with struggle.
And those stories are necessary
and will continue to be
necessary.
But I wanted to write a story
in which Lore's identity,
it's infused into
every aspect of her life,
but it is not the source
of conflict in the book.
And Laredo
as a setting for a story
that's so many ways about
doubleness and duality
and border crossing of
internal and external borders.
It just sort of felt like
what could be
a more perfect place for this.
And it's also, you know,
the devaluation in the 1980s.
These were stories
that I grew up
hearing from my parents.
And so, you know, I...
when you are talking about
a woman who wants...
A woman who is so alive
and who wants to be
even more alive.
And you set her
in a place and in a time
that is defined in that moment
by lack and by loss,
what does that do to a person?
How does that
influence her decisions
in a way that
maybe if it were set
five years down the road,
it wouldn't?
And so, yeah, I wanted to
just really use the setting as
kind of like that metaphor
for duality that is inside
both of these women.
But then also just kind of just
see my own community in fiction,
which is not something
that I see.
Will you just quickly say
what it was like
to have your book come out
in Laredo.
I was seeing it on social media.
They had a huge festival
for you.
Not a festival. No, no, no.
Katie Festival.
No, it was so amazing, though,
because we had to reschedule
my original launch event
in San Antonio,
where I live now.
And so my event in Laredo
a few days later
ended up being the launch.
And it was at a friend's
food park,
which there's a food park
in the book.
So I felt very appropriate.
And the night before I was
kind of counting in my head
like how many people I could
reasonably expect to turn up
as kind of my family.
I've got a pretty big family.
I was like, I think it's going
to be maybe 40 people.
Like, I'm not going to be
embarrassed, you know,
show up
and there's nobody there.
There'll be, I think about
40 people in the span of 3 hours
was kind of the space
of the event,
and it ended up
being like 150 people.
And they stood in
line for 3 hours,
signing books
for three straight hours.
And there were people that...
there were teachers
I hadn't seen in 20 years
and former classmates
and colleagues of my parents
and, you know,
like second cousins
that put me in the very
awkward situation of like,
do you recognize me?
(all laugh)
I'm like, "Why do you ask that?"
But it was just such an amazing
show of support
and like a reiteration
of the fact that, like,
this is kind of rare.
Seeing us in fiction
is still kind of rare.
And, you know, to have
people show up
and be so full of joy
without even having
read the book yet,
but just knowing that
it was written by a woman
who grew up in Laredo
and it features Laredo,
and it's not presenting Laredo
as this ideal city.
But I think, you know, I hope
that my affection for the city
comes through very,
you know, through Lore.
And so that was yeah,
that was incredibly
meaningful to me.
That's just one of those nights
that I think I'll
remember forever.
>> Marion Winik: You will.
So we don't have much time left,
but does anyone in the audience
want to come up
and ask a question?
Maybe we don't need that.
Okay.
I have another question.
(all laugh)
So I think these books
as a group
represent the evolution
of the crime genre
in the hands of women writers.
And where it's becoming
so much richer
than a plot driven narrative
about solving a crime.
And to the point that
you could almost forget
that that's what it's about.
But I was going to ask
if you guys have other authors
that were inspiring to you
in choosing your path
of this genre.
Got anything?
I don't even really think
of my novel as a crime novel,
and so I'll let somebody else
maybe answer.
I love reading crime.
Tana French is my
favorite writer in the world.
She's so incredible at crime.
And what I love is, again,
the crime plot.
Exactly as you said, Marion,
is just almost a vehicle
to get you to read
about lives and social class,
and it's also
a lot of real estate.
It's interesting
when you say that
because The Lifeguards
is a crime murder novel,
and yet they decided
to package it as a beach read,
which is interesting
and interesting to a lot
of readers I think as well.
But it is also a book about...
I hope is somewhat fun
and enjoyable.
But it's funny because
the traditional crime novel
is packaged in a certain way
and actually none of these
covers look like that.
And with the dark sky
in Scotland.
Titled: The Lifeguard.
Or Red and Black. You know?
Yes, and actually,
I saw a few covers
and they were going
back and forth with sales.
And in every country,
all of my books are this way.
My first novel is about
women on death row.
And in some countries,
it looks like a sexy romance.
In Italy, it looks like the most
terrifying book in the world.
And in America, it's like
a woman looking wistful.
So it's interesting how...
I don't think people...
I don't think marketing
has yet figured out
how to handle books
that are thrillers,
but also other things.
And sometimes I feel like
I would sell better
if I knew which genre I was.
And they carefully did that.
Hmm. Katie. I wanted to mention
a book to you.
Do you know Savage Appetites
by Rachel Munroe?
So Savage Appetites is a book
that is about women's
obsession with true crime.
And I wondered
if Cassie read it, actually.
Yeah, I think.
I think so.
Or I think she should.
If she hasn't,
I think that she needs...
I think Cassie probably
really needs to read that book.
But no, that was one of,
I think, my research sources
when I was sort of
starting to interrogate
my own interest in true crime,
but also like our
cultural interest in true crime.
And I think Rachel Monroe
does such an amazing job
of kind of honing in on A.
Why are women the biggest
audience for true crime.
Despite the fact...
>> Marion Winik: TV channel
Oxygen is devoted to true crime.
Right. Yeah.
Like it literally shifted from
like the kind of hallmark
romance movies to murder
because they're like,
women don't want romance.
Women want murder, you know?
(all laugh)
I'm very interested in that.
Her theory is that we relate
to one of four archetypes
in true crime
the detective, the victim,
the killer or the defender.
And that we might
relate to one or more,
depending on the story,
depending on our own
personal experience.
And that really resonated
with me because it's...
I think, a nuanced explanation
for what draws us to the genre.
And I think that
each of those archetypes
offers like a different
form of pleasure.
Like if you identify
with the detective,
then you're probably interested
in solving the mystery.
Like you're gaining pleasure out
of putting the pieces together.
If you identify with the victim,
you might be reading or watching
or listening to a story
that in some way gives voice
to your own violent experiences
that you may not have
another vehicle to express.
You know? And I think, like,
it's different with each one.
>> Marion Winik: Like Cassie?
>> Katie Gutierrez: Exactly.
>> Marion Winik:
It fits together.
>> Amanda Eyre Ward: I also
have to say Agatha Christie.
>> Marion Winik:
Oh, Agatha. Of course.
I've been researching her
for a story.
And, boy, I've probably read
or watched 20 Agatha Christie
books and movies...
>> Marion Winik: And have
you read The Christie Affair
by Nina Nina de Gramont?
>> Marion Winik:
It's not so good. Okay.
I could sit up here
and recommend books all day,
and I'm seeing the signs.
She and I interviewed
her great grandson.
I said, How did she do it?
Rich characters plot.
And he said, "Well,
she was a genius."
(all laugh)
I go, "Oh, that's not me."
I was looking for
a type of pen or, you know.
Oh, it's the margins,
it's the one inch margin.
So thank you all
for attending this session.
And thanks to the writers
for their generosity and...
(applause)
I'm sure you're all going to be
running down there
to buy those books because
they are really great reads.
And there's many mysteries
that we did not unfold today.
(all laugh)
All right. Thank you. Take care.
(instrumental music)