On Writing and Publishing Memoir, with Zibby Owens

ZIBBY OWENS IS AN author, publisher, podcaster and what is now known as a bookfluencer, meaning she knows what makes books work, and she is here on the QWERTY podcast to talk to us on writing and publishing memoir. Listen in and read along and we discuss that, and so much more.

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Marion: It’s possible that Zibby Owens is publishing’s very best friend. She’s the founder of Zibby Owens Media, a privately held media company designed to help people live their best lives, by connecting to books and to each other. It includes podcasts, publications, a publishing house, and a vibrant, book-loving community. Named New York City’s top book-fluencer by Vulture and on Oprah’s list of top literary podcasts for two years in a row, Zibby is a frequent contributor to Good Morning America, The Washington Post, Good Day LA, and a bunch of other places.

And now, Zibby has released not one, but two books of her own this season. The first is a children’s book called Princess Charming, released in April of this year. And now out, her memoir, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature. Welcome, Zibby.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s a joy to be here.

Marion: Well, it’s a joy to have you. Your turn away from type A perfectionism and toward what you refer to as letting things unfold organically. And what unfolds is your true self, and you use a device of the books you read along the way to plot that journey. So, many people recall what they were wearing or what they ate at totemic moments of their lives. But for you, it’s what you were reading. So let’s talk process for a moment. There are many books referenced in this memoir. So, do you keep a list, a reading diary of some sort? Or does your mind work like some kind of, I don’t know, literary twin set, when every memory is served up with the book that accompanied the life experience?

Zibby: A literary twin set. I like that.

Marion: Just need some pearls, right?

Zibby: No, I love it. I love it. I’m all about sweater sets. Then there’s one less decision to make. It all comes in one shot.

Marion: Right.

Zibby: A lot of times my mind just goes back to what I was reading at a certain time. So in the book for instance, when I was on the plane going to visit my mother-in-law when she was in the hospital, I will never forget reading Widowish on that airplane. That is how I see events and things. However, I don’t remember that well all the time, so sometimes I had to go back and look through my books and think, what was I reading when? When did I read this? Occasionally I Googled, what was best selling in this season? Then I’m like, oh yes, I was reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when I had that breakdown or whatever. So I needed some prompts to remind me.

Marion: That’s just a wonderful image. Of all the things to be reading when you’re having a breakdown, a kinetic book like that. Yeah, good. So soothing, so comforting. Yeah. Oh God. So, Drinking, A Love Story, is the title of chapter three, and the device of the chapter titles provides the lens that it should, putting this lens on the nose of the reader to read through. And that one of course is taken from the peerless book by the late, great Caroline Knapp. And it opens a chapter that is deeply revelatory of teenage drinking as a coping mechanism.

And in the hands of another writer, these books that you list could be used as a shield. Just saying, this is what I was reading, that’s all I’m going to tell you. Kind of protecting you behind the title. But instead, you use the book as the title of the chapter and then show us what lies behind it, and that brave feeling alcohol provides for the shy young person that you were at that time. And this is the kind of transparency that memoir demands, since that’s how we’re going to connect to you. So transparency is key, but how does a writer best develop a sense of what to be transparent about and what does not need to be in the tale?

Zibby: Yes, that was at the top of mind, what to share, what not to share. This book went through many drafts and a lot has come out. I erred on the side of just getting it all on the page to begin with and parsing back as I went.

Marion: Good.

Zibby: The chapter on teenage drinking, my mother called me after and she’s like, “I didn’t know you were drinking like that.” It’s okay, I’m fine. I turned out okay. There were definitely some surprises. Caroline Knapp’s book is one of my favorites. That’s an example of an author who I never knew, but who’s writing affected me so deeply that when I found out she passed away, I mourned her loss like I was a friend of hers. Which I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have taken that grief on, but I felt like I knew her from her memoir. Her words stay with me, even her subsequent stories about her dogs.

Anyway, the power of an author to connect by sharing their most intimate selves is something I’ve learned from greats like her and something that I’ve always aspired to do myself. I have just always been one of those people who can translate my thoughts through my fingertips. And I started writing from a very young age and the first thing I published was written in a moment of pure emotion when I was upset about having gained some weight after my parents’ divorce at age 14, that I then went on to sell to Seventeen. And so this instinct of mine to share and use whatever I’m thinking and feeling to help other people or to connect to other people, is something that has been just part of my DNA from day one. And so now that it’s finally in memoir form, it’s just sort of coming full circle for me.

Marion: Oh, that’s lovely. I give Caroline Knapp’s book as the only suggestion for a memoir to read when people ask me of a memoir to read. And it’s because the structure is perfect. It is an extraordinary experience to go through that book. And also, she taught me that if you write from one area of your expertise at a time, you can have a writing life. She wrote Drinking, she wrote a book Pack of Two, chronicling her relationship with her dogs.

Zibby: Yes.

Marion: She wrote about other things, but she didn’t write that from that autobiography sort of, kind of fly over point of view. She just took it on from one area of her expertise at a time, and I love her for that. And I too mourned her like she was a sister. I just feel that many of us did. I’m so glad that you gave that nod to her and using that book that way, beautiful. And along with the chapter titles, there are other terrific devices in this book. For instance, before you become a type A, you were quiet, almost non-speaking. And early in the book, we meet you and your very best friend, Stacy, the person you credit for drawing you out from that previously shy person you portray yourself to be.

And I’m not giving anything away since this is all in the promotional copy, when I say that Stacy works in the World Trade Center. And when she can’t be reached on that terrible day, you run out from the business school you’re attending, grab your textbooks, but when you’re packing to go back to Manhattan, you grab Malcolm Gladwell’s, The Tipping Point. So the books are not merely used as references of personal growth, but also as characterization of a moment. I mean that title, The Tipping Point, kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Beautiful.

Zibby: It’s true. It’s amazing how much the titles end up reverberating, even through the years of what was going on then. And yeah, sometimes when you grab a book, you don’t know that it’s going to be such a big moment for you. Right?

Marion: Right.

Zibby: You just happen to be reading it and then it’s forever seared in your memory as a result. Sometimes it makes perfect sense and dovetails nicely, and sometimes it’s random, like we were joking about earlier. But losing Stacy was heartbreaking and life changing. And while I read through that trip, my memories are far more of what it was like being in Manhattan the day after 9/11 and trying to find her and all of that fear and all of that.

But losing Stacy also really changed my life. You could just die sitting at your desk. I knew that before logically, but I think until it happens to somebody so close, you don’t totally understand it in every fiber. And I vowed after that, that if I was going to die sitting at my desk at work, like I believe she had, that I was going to have to bring my whole self to whatever I did. And so that’s something that I’ve lived by ever since.

Marion: And we’re really grateful you do, because you proceed through this book giving birth to four children, raising these children, and life continues to be challenging. And at a crucial moment in the book, life becomes nearly unbearable. And eventually you’ll divorce and things will change and I won’t give it all away, but in the terrible time of things coming apart, you introduce a device that communicates directly what’s at stake, which is so important for the reader to understand. When you develop a trick for not crying amid the pressures of having four kids and a wild life, full outrun, there you are reading aloud to your kids as your mother read to you. But you read the words aloud while simultaneously counting the numbers of each word so that the phrase, “Treehouse down a sunny dirt road,” in your head becomes 94154.

It’s a terrific device for showing us you’re trying to just stay on the page as it were and not crash off into the margins. So again, it’s true, but it’s so intimate in its reveal. So I mean, you say this is the way you think and this is the way you behave and this is the way you are. But how did you get to be comfortable with being that revelatory for us, the strangers reading your copy?

Zibby: It’s funny with you drawing attention to that, because I actually haven’t told anybody I do that ever. I never have talked about it.

Marion: You’re about to.

Zibby: And I put it in the book… No, I know. I mean, I put it in the book and now here we are talking about it.

Marion: Right.

Zibby: It’s almost like my subconscious is chuckling at this. And it is something I do because I really was trying so hard not to cry in front of my kids. And I still rely on this technique of counting words if I’m really trying to hold back the floodgates and read aloud at the same time.

Marion: I’m going to try it.

Zibby: Why am I so comfortable? I wish I had a specific answer for it. At times, I wonder if maybe I’m erring too far in the sharing direction. I also share a lot on Instagram now and in multiple ways. I’m like why am I doing this? Does anybody care? But the thing is, is that I am fully cognizant of the fact that I am not such a special creature on this planet. Right? If I am thinking and feeling something, I’ve realized that other people are thinking and feeling it. Whether it’s something funny or something sad, I’m just one of a million. But I do think I have the ability to communicate it and share it in a way that will make people feel a little better or a little understood. That’s what great memoir does for all of us, right? You find that little something where you relate or you see yourself in it. And I don’t know why I feel comfortable, I probably shouldn’t. People are always saying that I’m so brave. Right?

After 9/11 when I wrote for the school paper, the next week, “Oh my gosh, you’re so brave.” As I would share all these things, even feelings about how I felt being called on at school in this very competitive arrangement. I’m like, I don’t feel it’s brave. I just, it comes very naturally and it’s also so positively reinforced for me and always has been. And not in terms of external prizes or anything like that, but in terms of the emotional connections that I’m always making, where I write these essays and maybe some of the student body thinks I’m crazy, right, for sharing all of this. But then I’ll never forget the one student who came over and said, “I could never have shared this. I feel the same way. You’ve gotten me through this whole week. Thank you.” That’s it for me. That’s it.

And so every time I put something out there and I think, oh my gosh, is this too much? I think there’s somebody this is going to help who is sitting there reading and it’s going to help them. And now, because I’ve become a little more of a public-facing person, now on Instagram I’ll get these DMs, from a podcaster, from an article or something, that say this is what got them through. This is exactly what they needed to hear at the right time. And it’s just everything to me. And it’s also why I work so hard trying to bring other books to people. I mean, it’s not just my story that people relate to and feel good about, but I like to try to help people find that right book for them at the right time, by whoever it is. Because for me, both on the receiving and the giving end of that, I’ve gotten just the most amazing feeling from it that I want others to have.

Marion: Well, I agree with you about all of those points, and I’m going to ask you in a minute about the community you provide for people, connecting people to books. But I want to talk for a minute about this, stay on this idea of what memoir requires that you referenced just now. There are several losses in this book, and at one point a beloved person dies a violent death in New York City. You grab The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. You show us what you’re packing for these things. And I interview a lot of writers, and every time I have a memoir writer on I always ask this question, so I really want to ask you this.

Through these large losses, what are we asking a memoir writer to do when she goes back and writes about trauma? Are we asking her to reimagine it? Are we asking her to stand back and write from here with a cool perspective? Are we asking her to reanimate it with all the attendant pain? A lot of people don’t want to do that. And as you said, you have a comfort with this communal, this universal sharing, and maybe it advances somebody’s experience. So what are we asking a writer to do when we say, go back and look at Stacy’s death, go back and look at this violent New York City death of a beloved person? What are we asking of the writer at that moment do you think?

Zibby: I think we’re asking the writer to help put others in that same spot. We can’t all go through these experiences. But if I’m writing about that day, I want to take people to where I was, to who I was, and how it affected me and make them feel it. I want them to feel the loss. I want them to get to know the people I’ve lost. And I think in that moment it’s not supposed to be gratuitous sharing for the sake of sharing. It’s just to get to that place of emotion and feeling that anyone could put themselves in. And maybe it reminds them of someone they’ve lost or an experience they’ve had. But it’s a way to get right into the feelings.

And I think sometimes, I’ve noticed in some books, this is not a criticism, but I want to dive straight in. So sometimes the language, although absolutely beautiful, sometimes distracts me when I’m trying to get into this emotional connection moment. So I made a conscious choice of how I was going to write about it. That I was going to write about it the way I would talk about it, the way two friends would sit and chat about it. And I wasn’t going to write it in a highly literary way, where the reader would for even a second be taken out of the moment and the feeling. So I don’t know, right or wrong, that’s how I went about this one.

Marion: Well, it’s a great answer and I appreciate the generosity of it. And I want to talk a little bit more about memoir and all nonfiction is an argument and memoir is no exception. And in this new book, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, you seem to be arguing something about reading that I’d really like to explore. Because I think most of us, if pressed, could relate some or many of the immortal books in our lives, but we might not give so much thought to it for what they did for us.

And your argument seems to relate to the 360 degree aspect of books, that what we once read is there to draw from, what we can reach for in the moment is there to advise us, and that out there waiting for our big life moments, all manners of books await to inform us so that we can bravely move through this life with that support system. That’s actually about as gracious and remarkable an argument as I can imagine. So this book is not merely about reading, it’s about living. And living like this in the day to day, we have this sort of deep assurance that books are there for us. So how and when did this particular point of view drop into your head? Was it before you sat down to write or did it come to you as you were writing?

Zibby: It’s something that informs my every day. I am so grateful to books. That’s part of why I’ve dedicated my whole life now to helping them get out into the world. I feel that books are this… See, I know that books are not a secret. Nobody’s like, oh yeah, Zibby, a book, huh? You think? News flash. I know that. I do know that. But I also know that sometimes the most powerful thing is the one you overlook the most or you take for granted or you’re like, yeah, yeah, I know, books are great. But it’s not just that books are great. Books for me, transport, and all the good things you were saying, inform, educate, create, comfort. And I do feel that they are souls in waiting. They’re little bits and pieces of some of the most fundamental elements of who we are as human beings. And connecting through books, especially in a time of need, especially in a time where your own particular life is flaring up in some way, is so deeply helpful.

It’s not something I conjured up for this book. This is how I live, this is what I think. I mean, before I even started all my bookish professional activities, when I was getting remarried, my best friend and my mother threw me a book shower, because everybody knew how much I loved to read, so everybody just gave me a book with an inscription. Which by the way everybody should do. It’s the greatest thing ever, and then you can open it and get notes from your friends. But I do believe the way you’ve spelled out the point of view and the argument I’ve made in it, you did so in such a beautiful way. I have to go back and play this when it comes out and quote you. Because it is very true, books are a solace and a tool and a weapon and for getting us through the most difficult things. And from when I started reading, I’ve clung to that. And people ask if I get sick of reading. I’m like, sick of reading?

Marion: Sick of reading?

Zibby: No. I mean, it’s like, do you get sick of watching TV? No, because you get pulled into the stories of it. So that’s really it. It’s that so many people have taken their time to share their stories. And I’m sorry if this is sounding a little cheesy or whatever, but I view it as the greatest gift.

Marion: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s the first time, I have to tell you this, I had this image. And I grew up with books, both my parents were writers, my sister’s a writer, I’m married to an editor, God help me. And it is the first time in my life I had this image of books being… Remember that moment where one of your parents is standing in the swimming pool, if you’re lucky and you were taught to swim as a kid, and they’re standing in the pool and you’re standing on the side and they’re going, “Come on, I’ll catch you. I’ll catch you.”

It’s the first time I ever had the idea of a book being there to catch me. And it really choked me up thinking about it, because that assurance, your parents are not going to let you jump in the pool and sink, they are going to catch you. And that’s what it looked like to me throughout this. There were these books that caught you, these books that you rode like a magic carpet, these books that confirmed for you things that you believed. It’s a whopper of an argument and the book business should just throw you a book shower I think and say thank you.

Zibby: Oh, that’s funny. Thank you.

Marion: So we’re going to get to this whole idea of this amazing community you’ve developed for people, but I think it needs a little bit of background. And it’s best to say it this way, as you said, this is not your first publication. You started writing for Seventeen. But you currently command an entire brand, encompassing your podcasts, publication, communities that might seem to my listeners a bit overwhelming when they are currently aspiring to build their own brand. So let’s just dial this back to this and tell them this life you have was certainly maybe not started… Well, it was started when you started writing for Seventeen. But I think about that essay written from your own backyard, when in the madness of raising four children, you basically put your literary foot down and wrote an essay titled A Mother’s Right To Sanity, published it in The Huff Post to a wide acclaim.

So you tested your material on the public. From that came this huge brand, and we’re going to talk about that in a second. But give the listeners, if you would, a little encouragement about that starting small and testing an idea on the public. Because I think so many of them may be looking at you now and saying, “Oh my goodness, I mean, I can’t have that. I just want to publish a piece.”

Zibby: Okay. Well let me just say that four years ago I did not have any of this at all. And I never would have dreamed that this would’ve been built. This was not even a goal of mine. My goal was just to sell a book. I am trying to sell a book. I took a year off after business school. I wrote this story that I called Off Balance about… I wrote it four different times. I wrote it as memoir, I wrote it as fiction, I wrote it… I decided to try to sell it as fiction. This is back in 2004 and it was about 9/11 and people said no, they don’t want to hear about that. I’ve been writing and rewriting these stories about Stacy and all of these stories about losses in my life, and I’ve been trying to package it up and sell it for so many years.

And a couple years ago, after the article you referenced and I had started writing more after my divorce, I finally got a new agent and talked to her about selling. And she said, you know you don’t have a platform. All these things you say that are so discouraging to authors. I’m like, I’ve been writing since I was 14. Yeah, that doesn’t matter. Okay, so much for that. But I wasn’t on social media and this and that. And a girlfriend at that time when the agent had already told me I didn’t have enough of a platform and that by the way, parenting essays would never sell and there’s no market for that and blah, blah, blah. She suggested I start a podcast. And I had no experience in podcasting, didn’t listen to podcasts, couldn’t find it on my phone even how to listen to a podcast.

But I had this funny title from when my husband had suggested that I turn all my essays into a book and he had suggested I do that and I had said, “No, moms don’t have time to read books.” Then I thought, oh, that’s what I’ll call my book. Anyway, I decided to take that title, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, as a podcast title. And when I say that I had no ambition… I shouldn’t say no ambition. I had low expectations. I had high hopes, but low expectations. I literally snuck into my bedroom and read that essay as my first episode. And I was like, I’m not going to even tell anybody that I’m doing a podcast. I didn’t tell anybody. I was like, I’m just going to try it. I’m just going to see where it goes. And then I quietly told a few author… Like my one author friend from business school, Lee Carpenter. And I was like, “I’m trying out this new podcast idea, could you come here and I’ll interview you?”

And she did. And I sat here, where I’m sitting right now, and interviewed her, a friend for a long time, and learned all these new things about her and had the best time. And I was like, this is what I want to do. This is amazing. I read a book, I get to talk to the author about the book. I mean, for me, this is like the holy grail. As you’ve seen, I’ve read my whole life, I’ve connected so strongly to books, to the authors, even though I don’t know them. So I created this very recently. I just started doing it, realized I loved it, kept coming out with more episodes, and things unfolded from there. You said at the very beginning how life unfolded organically, that is a direct quote of my husband’s, who has that approach to life. I certainly do not.

And so for people feeling like I couldn’t do that, I mean, I didn’t know this was all going to fall in my lap, but I do feel… And not to say I wasn’t trying very hard. I always try really, really hard with everything I’m doing, and I’m very well prepared and I will never show up when I’m not ready to something. So I work hard and I love the branding behind everything and the marketing and all of that. So it’s not like, oh my goodness, look at that. I mean, I tried, but I never could have envisioned all of this. And now new ideas just keep coming to me every day and I’ve created something way more important than just the memoir I was trying to write.

And it is completely heartwarming to me that it’s finally coming out. I can’t explain how relieved I am, because I really didn’t think it was going to happen. I just didn’t think it was going to happen to me and I was trying to come to terms with that, my big life goal was just not going to happen. And I couldn’t even figure out why it was so important. Why it’s so important to me to write this book? But it’s just been something so important to me, and so finally I’ve done it. But I mean, my life has completely changed and I’ve met the most amazing authors, the most amazing people. I have a team now and they’re amazing. I am hard working, I do think I have some good ideas, and I have some skills that make me perhaps more uniquely suited to all the different things I’m doing. But I mean, if I can do this with all the things I am juggling, everybody can do something where they feel like they’ve brought their whole self to the table.

Marion: Yeah, I think so. And I think the story you told about how you wanted to write this book, you wanted to write this book, you started writing those essays, you wrote a bunch of them. You took on all kinds of issues about how moms should decide to lose weight later and take the pressure off and reclaim your sleep and all that. And your husband pipes up one day, “You should write a book,” and you say, “Moms don’t have time to read books.”

And there in that quote, a brand is born. You compile a book proposal, you go on social media, and all these things. But when you’re told that essays don’t sell, and then I read in the book, somebody basically just in passing says to you, “Well, then start a podcast.”

And so what that story says to me is that writers have to have community. They have to have people who are invested in their success. So if you would, as we start to wrap this up, just describe for us a little bit at least, about what kind of community you provide in your media company?

Zibby: Yes. Well, I have the community of the podcast listeners, which is wonderful and I love when people listen and reach out and all of that. We also have a magazine, online magazine called Moms Don’t Have Time to Write, where you don’t have to be a published author to sell an essay. But I love personal essays and didn’t think there were enough places to read them, so it’s a personal essay publication where people can share their stories and connect. There’s even a writing group associated with that publication that meets and discusses an essay and comes together on Zoom to discuss that. I have a book club that meets once a month to discuss a book that I pick. There are lots of different entry points, I would say, into the community that we’re building, whether it’s podcasts. Now I’ve also started a podcast network called Zcast, where other authors are starting podcasts the way I did and I’m trying to help them grow their shows the way I wish somebody had helped me and taught me how to grow my show.

And we’re starting classes that people can take and also teach, so looking for teachers of classes and then we’ll be launching that whole line of Z classes soon. I have the Zibby Awards, where we’re celebrating the under celebrated parts of books. I was supposed to have a retreat for moms who don’t have time to travel. I had a whole thing planned at the Ocean House in Rhode Island that had to get canceled with COVID. So I’ve not given up entirely. I would like to do more live events. I do salon events in my home here and want to expand those. And for Zibby Books, my publishing company, we have ambassadors all over the country, like 600 plus at this point who are out there spreading the word.

And they’re all doing like meetups together at different bookstores and it makes me so happy when I see people posting, like oh, Zibby Books meetup. It’s just the greatest. So I think our 22 in ’22 initiative helped that, which was encouraging people to visit 22 bookstores in the year 2022. Which has also been a community of people all getting together, accomplishing this goal together. So I feel like there are a lot of people out there who have thanked me for inspiring them to read. Also, an author came over the other day and said, “You know that essay you wrote about gaining weight during COVID?” She’s like, “Thanks for taking one for the team.”

So I do feel that I have this role that I embrace that is advocating for moms. I just wrote this essay about how there’s so much pressure for kids to specialize and for parents to push their kids to be good at one thing. And I’m like, it’s okay if your kid doesn’t find their thing. So I’m just trying to take a little bit of the pressure off of parents. I’m trying to get them back into the joy of reading. Not just parents, but I am a mom of four and so that is my point of view. And yeah, so it’s all on my website, zibby owens dot com. You can go where you want and there’s lots of different ways to enjoy.

Marion: Well, I so appreciate that, as does everybody. And I’ll put links in the transcript to all of those subdivisions of your publishing company and your media company. And I’m just delighted to thank you for all of us for all that you do, because community is everything and I don’t think anybody should try this alone. So thank you, Zibby. I so appreciate you coming on today and I wish you just the very best with these two books that you’ve published now and in the future with the books you intend to publish going forward. Thanks so much.

Zibby: Thank you.

Marion: That was author, podcaster, and publisher Zibby Owens. The book is Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature. Find more on her at zibby owens dot com, and more on the book at bookends memoir dot com. Follow her on Instagram @zibbyowens. I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overitstudios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont, our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach dot com, where I offer online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow QWERTY wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a starred review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.