December 3, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, I chat with Bruce Holsinger about stories, community, publishing, teaching, and the craft behind his latest novel, Culpability.
Bruce brings a rare lens to contemporary fiction. As a medievalist at the University of Virginia, he teaches medieval literature and applies his enthusiasm to craft classes where the basics—point of view, character arcs, structure—become living tools. He explains why paratext—chat logs, interviews, and excerpts from Lorelei’s AI book—lets a novel breathe beyond exposition, capturing how we really encounter the world: through fragmented feeds, competing voices, and the uneasy mix of intimacy and spectacle.
Culpability Synopsis:
When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident.
During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenage daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.
Subscribe, share with a reader friend, and tell us: which moment changed how you see the story?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly, and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week I present interviewswith authors, independent
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(00:32):
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listen to this podcast.
You're listening to episode 314.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm so glad you're here becausetoday on the podcast we're
celebrating stories, community,and the joy of gathering around
(00:52):
books.
So let's begin.
It's the holiday season, myfavorite time of the year.
It's a time for giving, cooking,and sharing.
The weather is cooler here inSouthern California, and thanks
to recent rain, the surroundinghills and mountains are tinged
with green.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
I have some exciting news andadditions coming up in 2026 that
(01:13):
I can't wait to share with you.
I'll save a few surprises forthe first week of January, but
I've already shared others withyou in recent episodes.
For the 2026 Lunch with anAuthor Literary series, I've
partnered with the UniversityClub in Santa Barbara and Hotel
El Roblah in Ojai.
Hotel El Roblah, established in1919, is Ojai's longest-standing
(01:36):
hotel.
The two-acre property has beenrecently restored to its
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For literary lovers wanting amidweek escape to Ojai,
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(01:56):
and citrus blossoms, and what'sknown as the OHI Pink moment, El
Robla offers a special roomdiscount for our literary
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The discount becomes availableonce you've purchased your
ticket to one of the monthlyliterary luncheons.
For more information, you cancontact me at
mandyjacksonbeverly atgmail.com.
Okay, in this episode, I'mchatting with author Bruce
(02:19):
Holsinger.
Bruce is the author of fivenovels, including Culpability,
The Displacements, and TheGifted School, as well as many
works of fiction, most recentlyon parchment, animals, archives,
and the making of culture fromHerodotus to the digital age.
His books have been recognizedwith the Colorado Book Award,
the John Hurt Fisher Prize, thePhilip Brett Award, the John
(02:42):
Nicholas Brown Prize, the ModernLanguage Association's Prize for
a First Book, and others.
His essays and reviews haveappeared in the New York Times,
Vanity Fair, and many otherpublications.
And he has been profiled onNPR's Weekend Edition, Here and
Now, and Marketplace.
A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellowof the Medieval Academy of
(03:03):
America, he teaches in theDepartment of English at the
University of Virginia andserves as editor of the
quarterly journal New LiteraryHistory.
He also teaches craft classesand serves as board chairman for
Writer's House, a non-profit inCharlottesville.
Here's a short synopsis ofBruce's latest novel,
Culpability.
(03:24):
When the Cassidy ShawsAutonomous minivan collides with
an oncoming car, 17-year-oldCharlie is in the driver's seat
with his father, Noah, ridingShotgun.
In the backseat, tweens Aliceand Izzy are on their phones,
while their mother Lorelei, aworld leader in the field of
artificial intelligence, isabsorbed in her work.
(03:44):
Yet each family member harbors asecret that implicates them in
the accident.
Hi, Bruce, and welcome to theshow.
It's great to have you hereagain.
SPEAKER_00 (03:53):
Thank you, Mandy, for having me back.
SPEAKER_01 (03:55):
Well, you've been a very busy man since the last
time I spoke with you.
Oprah chose your new book,Culpability, as her July summer
bookpick.
How was that for you?
SPEAKER_00 (04:05):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been really thecraziest period of my life.
I mean, it's like when the kidswere firstborn or something like
that.
It's like it's just been nuts.
SPEAKER_01 (04:14):
Yeah, I can imagine.
But isn't it great to beacknowledged for your writing?
SPEAKER_00 (04:18):
Yeah, thank you.
It has been, it's, you know, itreally has felt um yeah,
overwhelming at times.
It still doesn't feel real, Iguess.
It's uh, but you know, what areyou gonna do?
It's uh it's just a huge strokeof luck.
I've I've talked to otherfriends who have gotten these
picks, and um, you know, it justfeels like a bolt from the blue.
SPEAKER_01 (04:38):
Well, it was well deserved, Bruce.
Um now you and I have spoken inperson and on the podcast about
your life in general, and Iencourage listeners to listen to
our previous conversations aboutthe displacements, a book I
absolutely adore.
Uh, and I'll put the link tothat episode in the show notes.
This time I'd like to focus onyour writing and your latest
(04:59):
novel, Culpability.
But I do have a couple ofprequel questions.
Did you always envision yourselfas both a teacher and a writer,
or did one vocation lead you tothe other?
And how do those roles nowinform and challenge one another
in your life?
SPEAKER_00 (05:16):
I suppose when I started graduate school, one of
the first things you do when yoube when you become a graduate
student in the humanities is youteach.
And so from a very young age, Iguess I started graduate school
probably when I was 21, 22 yearsold.
Um, I was just kind of throwninto a classroom.
This was at the University ofMinnesota, where I did my
master's degree, um, without anytraining on how to teach, how to
(05:40):
teach literature, poetry, how toteach philosophy.
So it was kind of trial by fire,just being thrown into the pool.
Um, but from the minute Istepped into the classroom, I
really loved it.
And the first kind of writing Idid was not fiction writing, it
was scholarly writing as agraduate student, and then at
Minnesota, and then at ColumbiaUniversity, where I did my uh
(06:02):
PhD work in comparativeliterature.
And it then my first job at theUniversity of Colorado, and now
for the last 20 years, I'vetaught at the University of
Virginia.
And in my scholarly world, thewriting of scholarship and the
teaching of literary tradition,literary culture, those things
go hand in hand, and it's alwaysvery hard for me to separate
(06:25):
them.
But I only started writingfiction seriously about 15, 16
years ago, only published myfirst novel 11 years ago, which
sounds like a long time ifyou're 25, right, and an
aspiring writer.
But when you get up to my age,it's it's nothing.
And it feels like I've onlyreally been publishing fiction.
(06:45):
It feels like the blink of aneye, um, even though culpability
is my fifth novel.
So, you know, now those tworoles, I I think of them,
they're more, they're more andmore inseparable.
I still work on scholarship.
Just this morning, I was in acoffee shop doing footnotes on
an essay for uh uh, you know, anacademic book.
Um, but earlier this morning Iwas working on a new novel.
(07:07):
So, you know, these these thingsare now, they've become so
intertwined that it's hard forme to separate them in my mind.
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
Have you found that your students influence your
creative process andor yourcreativity?
SPEAKER_00 (07:20):
Oh, yeah, for sure.
At the University of Virginia, Idon't teach fiction, I teach
medieval literature, but I teachfor a community writing center,
writer house here inCharlottesville.
And I'll very often, you know,when I'm teaching a craft class,
let's say on point of view or oncharacter arcs or on story
structure, you know, going backand getting, you know, seeing my
(07:44):
students' perspectives on thesequestions, which for them will
sometimes be new.
It'll be a way for me to getback into my own writing and see
some weaknesses.
I'll often, you know, throwsomething I'm working on, I'll
I'll start talking about it tothem.
And someone will make a reallysmart point and I'll just slap
my forehead and think, oh,right, of course, I need to be
working on that too.
It's just, you know, I was uh incollege, I was a musician, I was
(08:06):
a clarinet performance major.
And, you know, ever like thething that you know when you're
a musician is practicing thebasics uh is a daily routine.
You just always do your scales,you always do your arpeggios and
etudes.
And those, I think, you know,writers um can use a little more
of that.
And I always try, I I sometimesforget that, and I'll be in the
(08:29):
middle of a you know, a chapterof a novel and I'll just kind of
lose my way.
And often it's teaching thatgets me back into it, gets me
more on the road.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
Bruce, it really hit me how passionate you are about
teaching and the process ofteaching writing.
When you and I first chatted inperson, I think it was at Alan
Canto in Santa Barbara a coupleof years ago.
We were talking about thedisplacements.
And uh I remember I asked you aquestion about teaching, and you
jumped out of your chair.
(09:00):
You were so excited about theprocess of teaching.
And not for the first time, Iwas reminded that yeah, there
are people who teach becauseit's their profession, their
job, and there are people whoteach because it is a big part
of who they are.
And I really felt that aboutyou.
SPEAKER_00 (09:18):
Yeah, you know, it's funny you should say that.
I I um, you know, I teach mostfall semesters, I teach a huge
lecture course with two or threehundred students.
The uh it's the first part ofthe English sequence from
Beowulf to Milton.
And I'm just a very activeteacher in the classroom.
I'll walk up and down the rows.
I'll often show a um, I'll showa video of a campfire when I
(09:39):
tell them the story of Beowulf.
You know, I'll do all this kindof thing, pretend they're in a
big mead hall or something likethat.
So yeah, I I can tend to be alittle too exuberant.
So sometimes I have to dial itdown when I'm doing, especially,
you know, this summer when I'vebeen doing all these interviews
and podcasts, I'll just, youknow, get carried away a little
bit.
So sometimes I have to dial itback.
SPEAKER_01 (09:59):
It shows you're passionate, Bruce.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
Your novels often weave unconventional points of
view into the narrative, from ATouch of Tessa in the Gifted
School to the Digital Chroniclein the Displacements, and the
layered voices in culpability,Alison Blair's chats and inserts
from Lorelei's book.
Do you imagine these devicesfrom the start or do they emerge
(10:23):
as you discover the story?
You've said before that youdon't plan out your novels, you
just sit and write.
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
Yes, yeah.
You remember that from last timethat I'm not a big outliner.
Yeah.
You know, they those elements, Ithink of them as kind of
paratextual elements.
They're, as you said, um, youknow, a bit a video blog or a
digital chronicle, or in thecase of my earlier historical
novels, I wrote a, you know, aMiddle English chronicle of the
deaths of kings.
(10:51):
Um, and and in the case ofculpability, yes, it's these
chat, this chatbot conversationthat Alice has with this this
chatbot named Blair, and thenalso excerpts from Laura
Lyshaw's book, and there's a fewother, the New Yorker interview.
Um, you know, I don't plan whatthose are that those are going
to be, but I know they're gonnabe in there.
I think that's just become how Iwrite.
(11:13):
And the reason, and I imagine Iprobably talked about this when
we talked about thedisplacements, is especially
these these last four novels umare, or last three novels,
they're they're aboutcontemporary families.
And they're the novels aremostly about a small story in
the scheme of things that dealswith a family in crisis, whether
(11:36):
that crisis is, you know, parentparental angst about getting a
kid into a gifted school or afamily dealing with a category
six hurricane, or in this case,um a family dealing in the
aftermath of an accident.
And so, but I what I like to dois put those small stories into
a larger national or even globalframework.
(11:57):
And there's different ways ofdoing that.
You know, I've experimented witha lot of different ones.
You know, you can do exposition,you can just kind of back off
and tell, you know, have in acharacter's interior monologue,
you know, some recounting ofglobal events and how they fit
in.
But uh sometimes that can bevery forced to me.
And when I'm teaching fiction, II often the those moments in a
(12:21):
in a novel can feel clunky.
And so I try to, I use thosemoments, those paratextual
moments, to get the flavor ofthe world in and get the a much
larger texture into the intimatedetails that I'm telling about
these these families.
SPEAKER_01 (12:38):
And because you're an historian uh and you've read
so many historic novels, haveyou found any of this uh
layering while reading uhhistorical manuscripts?
SPEAKER_00 (12:50):
Oh, yes.
In fact, you know, it I I had aninteresting conversation with
somebody about a month ago aboutjust this.
And I realize one of my favoritegenres in the Middle Ages is um
the frame narrative, storieswithin stories.
So you think about somethinglike the Canterbury Tales, which
um, or Boccaccio's DeCameron.
(13:10):
But in the case of theCanterbury Tales, you know, it's
a story of these folks ofdifferent state classes of life
going on a pilgrimage fromLondon to Canterbury.
Um and the stories are of thatthey tell, the pilgrims tell,
are of all different genres.
Some people, the knight tells agreat romance, a kind of epic
romance.
(13:31):
The Wife of Bath tells thisweird autobiography, the Miller
tells a fabio, an obscene story.
Um, there's a sermon, there's areligious tale.
There's all these differentgenres mixed in.
And I really like that way ofstorytelling.
I like stories within stories.
I like the the idea of, youknow, jarring the reader a
(13:53):
little bit with a with a newbeginning, um, a new way to see
the world that that we'redescribing in a novel as a
whole.
And so I guess it is.
You know, I I've never reallythought about it that way.
But I suppose it's a maybe myease with doing that.
The reason that it feels naturalis that I uh spend so much time
with my head immersed inmedieval forms of storytelling,
(14:15):
that that there's a kind ofnatural fit.
SPEAKER_01 (14:18):
Perhaps subconsciously it weaves its way
into your stories.
SPEAKER_00 (14:22):
Yeah, it makes me it makes me want to write about it,
you know, write, write itbecause I've been thinking about
a craft book and it would justbe interesting to do that, you
know.
SPEAKER_01 (14:29):
Oh, I'd read that, definitely.
And please come out to SantaBarbara and Ohi and teach a
workshop based around the book.
Um now, while we're chattingabout history, in 2014 a
burnable book was published,followed in 2015 with the
invention of fire, but then youmade a jump into contemporary
fiction.
Was that because a story enteredyour mind and you needed to get
(14:50):
it onto paper, or was thereanother reason why you made that
jump?
SPEAKER_00 (14:55):
No, that happened because my publisher dropped me.
Um after my after my secondnovel.
This is a very common story, asI'm sure you, you know, once you
get into inside baseball, youknow, if you your debut novel,
everybody's all excited aboutit.
Maybe you have a two-book deal,maybe your debut novel doesn't
sell quite as well as they'dhoped.
(15:16):
And then your second novel isjust kind of blah, you know, um,
not in terms of quality, butjust it's uh doesn't get the
kind of attention.
And then it's just was veryclear that they weren't at more
this was at Moro, that theyweren't gonna do a third novel
with me.
And so I was just kind of out inthe wilderness for a while and
casting around for I say awhile.
(15:37):
It wasn't that long, it was afew years.
And I said, you know, I'm justgonna get my head out of the
Middle Ages.
And I had I had actually thoughtof the story of the gifted
school years before I evenpublished my first novel.
It was in my head.
I I went back and looked, and Ithink I'd really started working
on that story like in 2010,something like that.
It's on an old hard drive.
(15:58):
And uh and then so I went backto that, and it was my agent at
the time.
Um, I have a different agentnow, but but I told her some of
the ideas I was kicking around,and I told her about it.
And she's oh, work on that.
That's a great idea.
And so that she sold that bookon proposal to Riverhead.
And that's that then I was offto the races with that and the
displacements.
SPEAKER_01 (16:18):
And the timing couldn't have been better for
the gifted school.
I mean, you just ace that.
SPEAKER_00 (16:23):
Well, that was just like a yeah, that was a through
no fault of my own, but it was apublicist dream because it came
out the ARCs, the advancedcopies, were circulating right
when the college admissionsscandal broke.
So that's it, it got writtenabout that way, and it got seen
almost as kind of weirdlyprophetic of that scandal.
So yeah, it was it washilarious.
SPEAKER_01 (16:45):
Yeah, that was remarkable.
I'd like to talk about Noah, oneof the main characters in
Culpability.
In the story, he's oftenreminded of his wife's
brilliance.
And Julia tells him few menwould marry their intellectual
superior.
Do you see Noah as resistingthese hierarchies or haunted by
them?
(17:05):
And what larger culturaltensions were you exploring
here?
SPEAKER_00 (17:09):
Now, what about explain what you mean by the
hierarchies?
SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
The in particular, it would be Lorelei's family.
SPEAKER_00 (17:16):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because he's kind of amiddling attorney, right?
He went to a very a middle, verymiddling law school.
He went to a kind of so-so firm,but he married into this family
where, you know, hissister-in-law is the dean of a
law school at Penn, and his wifeis like a world leader in the
field of ethical AI.
(17:37):
And so he's just got a big, abunch of chips on his shoulder,
right?
But he's not he's not superbitter about it, you know.
And I wanted to, I don't know, II I really wanted to write this
book solely from his point ofview.
And I love my last, all mynovels before have been from
multiple points of view.
And somehow the creative juicesin me were just fly I I just
(18:00):
really wanted him, his blindnessto his own situation, to his own
goodness, actually, too, was wassomething I wanted to explore.
You know, he's not necessarily aum unreliable narrator, but he
is a little bit oblivious.
And I don't know if it if I if Iwas gonna do it again, I don't
know if I do it exactly thisway, but it was a for me, it was
(18:23):
part of the part of telling thestory of Larley and and AI
actually, making it making herand making it a mystery, as it
is to so many of us, this kindof perplexing mystery that makes
us feel like we're kind oftrapped in this world where we
don't know what's going onaround us.
And and in some ways, Noah, hismarriage, this family, it kind
(18:45):
of casts in that problem inminiature.
I don't know if that answersyour question.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:49):
It does.
And at the same time, I'd liketo bring up something that I've
been uh considering lately, justan idea.
Uh, you and I both have twosons.
Mine are older than yours, butsomething that has come up in
discussion that I've kind oftaken to heart and wanted to
explore is that there are a lotof young men in university and
(19:11):
high school who've become almosttoo scared to speak their truths
or to make a comment.
Too scared that they're gonnasay the wrong thing.
And I'm wondering where thatcomes from.
Has it come from uh the wave offeminism and the Me Too
movement, uh patriarchy,bullying?
And from what uh I've been toldby, you know, friends who have
(19:34):
sons or younger men, a lot ofthese young men who feel wary to
speak up about anything, theyhave become very lonely.
They don't go out as much, theyjust stay at home.
I don't know why, but I saw someof this in Noah.
Maybe not in him, but he wasaware of it happening.
(19:54):
Is this whole topic somethingthat you think about, that
you're aware of?
SPEAKER_00 (19:59):
Yeah.
Yeah, I I did.
And I've I mean, uh the the bookI'm working on now, I can't
really talk about it, but I Idon't I you know, but it's it's
attacking that problem head-on,this kind of so-called crisis of
masculinity.
And I think about it a lot, likewith you know, this is a book,
it's not just about AI and afamily, but it's also about a
father and a son, right?
(20:20):
That's one of its primary kindof that's where it gets very
heated, I think.
And my la not my last novel, butreally the um the gifted school
that was very much about afather and his very athletically
gifted sons and the pressure offatherhood and what what the
(20:41):
world is doing to boys.
And I don't want to blame it onfeminism.
I I think feminism is a reactionto different forms of
patriarchy, and it's patriarchy,I think, that is making boys
where they are.
It's these pressure to pressuresto be a certain type of man.
Um, I think, you know, themanosphere, this kind of um
(21:05):
alpha culture.
You know, I think all movementshave excesses, have rhetorical
excesses.
And I do think that, you know,during the pandemic, me too, and
so on, there's those those couldbe very, very much heightened.
But I think the um, you know,when I when I look around, I I
just see so much um ugly kind ofrhetoric that that boys and men
(21:29):
feel they need to measure up to.
So I think a little bit of Noah,and maybe this is another way of
looking at it, is is looking atCharlie, you know, this
superstar athlete, brash,confident, you know,
Adonis-like, and yet there's afragility right underneath the
surface.
And what happens in thataccident and then what happens
afterwards, that's what exposesit, right?
(21:51):
It's just that confidence iskind of shot.
And that's even before, youknow, before they get down to
the bay, the house where theywhere they where their good part
of the novel takes place.
But thank you for noticing that.
I think that's really wonderful.
SPEAKER_01 (22:05):
Well, it was a big part of the novel for me.
I've listened to a lot ofinterviews that you've done
about culpability, and everyonezeroes in on AI, and obviously
it is a big part of the book.
But as with most of your books,it's what's going on around the
characters that creates therelationships and the and the
(22:25):
hurdles within the relationshipsthat you're writing about.
So for me, that is a big part ofyour writing.
And in culpability, I see thisbetween Noah and his son.
Uh, it it comes up again andagain, as you call it, this
crisis of masculinity.
But it's also brought up towardthe end of culpability when
(22:46):
Lorelei gives this uh monologueabout how she feels about Noah.
Uh, and it's kind of jugglingthis crisis of masculinity with
the feminism.
I'm interested in what you saidabout feminism being born from
patriarchy.
That's fascinating to me andsomething I want to research a
(23:07):
little bit more.
But I do worry about uh thesensitive young men or the and
the young boys we have aroundbecause right now all they're
being shown by our politicians,specifically our president and
the people around him, is thatto be masculine means it's okay
to be a bully, to call peoplenames, to put people down.
(23:27):
And I think that is going tohave major consequences with our
youth as they grow older.
SPEAKER_00 (23:33):
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
This um I I always wonder, youknow, you always wonder where
these things come from and theimpulses come from.
And obviously, my concern withboys comes from my own
experience as a father of twoboys, um, two very athletic
boys, unlike me.
I was not athletic at all.
Um and uh and so that I but italso comes from, you know, my my
(23:56):
mother was a uh teacher and awriter, and she wrote a book
called The Little Boy Book, AGuide to the First Eight Years.
And this was back in the 1980s,and um, it was from Ballantine.
Um, and it was a co-writtenbook.
And it was about, you know, itwas a she one of the things she
(24:18):
noticed is that all these childraising books were very much
geared towards girls, and thatthere weren't um, you know, she
was she was very much a bigbeliever in genetics, uh, nature
over nurture too.
So whatever you want to think ofthat.
But she also felt like um child,you know, the rhetoric around
child raising was not giving, asa Montessori school teacher, she
(24:39):
observed this, was not givingenough credit to um differences
between boys and girls and howthey are as little kids, how
they, you know, how theydevelop.
So she was, you know, I I alwayswonder if um, you know, if that
that influenced me in some ways.
I think it's still in printafter all these years.
SPEAKER_01 (24:57):
I need to look that one up.
And what was the author's name?
SPEAKER_00 (25:00):
Uh Sheila.
And but then she went by a uhshe used her middle name as her
last name, but Sheila Moore andRune Frost.
SPEAKER_01 (25:06):
Thank you.
I'll try and pick that up.
Now, across your novels,families cope with crisis in
very different ways, from snowplow to helicopter parenting.
In culpability, how did you wantto complicate those archetypes?
And what do you hope readerstake away about resilience and
healing?
SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
Yeah, so I feel like the um you know, every member of
this family has their own, Iguess their own issue with
culpability, with guilt, right?
So I think the the network inthat family, the web of
relationships, has everything todo with that.
It's how they how they cope withtheir relationships um during
(25:50):
during this crisis, you know,how their their relationships
change based on it, um, howthey're you know, how they have
to find their own sources ofresilience or not.
Like I feel like no spoilers,but I do feel like you know,
Alice is really struggling.
You know, she's having to find away to deal with her parents.
(26:11):
You know, you use the word, youknow, helicopter parenting,
which I'm always interested in.
But you know, in this case,maybe, maybe one way to look at
it is that Alice is the, youknow, she's the middle child.
And maybe Noah and and Lorelaiare not being helicoptery enough
with her, right?
They're like, oh, finally shehas a friend that she's texting
(26:32):
with.
Um, and it's it's really, andIzzy, of course, she's the the
little kid, and she's just fine,super charismatic, friends to
burn.
And Charlie obviously is theapple of his dad's eye.
And so he's the one who's beensnowplowed and helicoptered all
over.
And it's poor Alice, neglectedonce again.
So I like that.
You know, I think that those arevery realistic ways of looking
(26:53):
at parents.
I've explored them in in allthree of my last three novels
from different directions.
I think the gifted school ismuch more about snowplow
parenting, you know, clearingthe way for your child um to get
what she needs.
But those archetypes, as yousay, are also very complicated.
And we want, you know, I thinkthat um, you know, they these
(27:14):
these characters find resilienceand they heal in different ways.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
Bruce, you and I have spoken before about you
surviving a plane crash.
I think you said it was betweenjunior and senior year.
Of the plane crash, you wrote,quote, your life is no longer
your own in crisis situationslike that, and you're entirely
dependent on the competence andgoodwill of others.
In culpability, the car crash isdepicted with jagged fragments
(27:40):
of perception.
Do you feel your own experienceswith trauma shape the way you
rent a crisis in fiction?
SPEAKER_00 (27:48):
Yes, that's exactly right.
And it's funny, that planecrash, I don't know if I would
call it a trauma, because I wasasleep until right before it
happened.
And and we were all okay.
But what I do remember is, andthat's this is probably where
this came from, is firstresponders, you know, just being
taken away in an ambulance, mysister, you know, bleeding from
(28:10):
her nose, and just thinking, ohmy God, like this whole we're
we're really being, you know,taken care of here.
Um thank God it wasn't moreserious.
But the one of the other thingsI remember from that is a few
days later, we all were down atthe beach, because that's where
we were going, to the OuterBanks of North Carolina, and
somebody had dug up this, foundin the newspaper from a physical
(28:33):
newspaper from the town wherethe accident had happened.
And there was a headline, and itsaid Lucky Five Escape Crash.
And if you've read culpability,you know that that headline
appears in the um in the story,yeah.
Yeah, so that actually was partof that has always stuck with
me.
And I almost one of the titlesfor the book that I was thinking
(28:54):
about was the lucky five.
You know, and I'm glad I didn'tend up calling it that.
But um, you know, that's andwhen Noah reads that headline,
of course, he's he's reactingwith a lot of kind of jaundiced,
you know, yeah, we're reallylucky.
We're so lucky, right?
We're not the ones who died inthe crash, the people in the
other car did.
We just have concussions andbroken legs and what, you know,
(29:17):
you know, and I part of me,there was all these different
decisions I had to make earlyon.
Part of me wanted to have hadoriginally had Lorelei have a
traumatic brain injury um ratherthan just a concussion so that
it would affect herintelligence, right?
It would infect her capacity asa as a genius.
And I thought, but that was justtoo much and I couldn't make it
(29:39):
work.
But anyway, so yeah, so Ithought about those issues a
lot.
SPEAKER_01 (29:43):
I've often made the comment that reading well
written fiction builds empathyin the reader.
Now, as a novelist, do you findthat writing fiction also
deepens your empathy?
SPEAKER_00 (29:54):
Oh, absolutely.
I I think pe people argue aboutthis.
I do see fiction as a kind ofEngine of empathy, right?
And getting it's one of thereasons I try to talk my
students, try to talk my kidsinto reading more fiction, you
know, just um because you youreally are putting yourselves in
other people's position in a waythat can be very profound.
(30:15):
So I'm a big believer in that.
I think writing and reading canget us to those places in in
really substantial ways.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (30:24):
And in culpability, was there a character whose
emotion stayed with you afteryou finished the book?
SPEAKER_00 (30:31):
I think Laura, actually, because she was the
one that I was very I tried towrite initially from her point
of view, and I ended up justwriting her book, right?
Excerpts from her book aboutartificial intelligence.
And I think just getting andtrying to get as much as I could
inside her head, even though Iknew she was a mystery, was one
of the most creative challengesI've ever set myself.
(30:54):
And I love doing it.
And I kind of fell in love withher as a character and and just
kind of got completely wrappedup with her.
So I think that's that's that Ithink maybe more than any other
character I've written, it wouldbe Lorelei, even though I didn't
write anything from her point ofview except her kind of dry
academic prose.
SPEAKER_01 (31:11):
Personally, I think you nailed her personality by
writing around her.
Bruce, you've written bothnonfiction and fiction.
What has writing novels taughtyou about truth, empathy, and
narrative that nonfiction couldnot, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
Well, the the second one is easier.
I definitely have gained fromthe nonfiction writing I do, and
and I would just even furtherqualify as that the academic
nonfiction.
You know, my books are publishedby university presses, and they
have, you know, they can be onpretty arcane subjects.
Um, but what I've learned fromthat is the power of research, I
think, and and incorporatingresearch into what I do.
(31:49):
So I teach seminars often on theart of research and fiction.
I'm teaching at the uh Writer onBoxed conference in Santa Fe in
a couple months.
And that is, I'm doing a wholeseminar on research, the
creative aspects of research.
And I think as an academic, I'mvery unintimidated by research.
And I want fiction writers to beless intimidated.
(32:11):
I think there's a misconceptionthat in order to sit down and
write a book about, you know, ahistorical period or about
something that requires a lot ofresearch, like AI or technology
or whatever, that you have tosit down and read books and
books for months or years beforeyou're qualified to start
writing a story.
And I think that's wrong.
And so I really push people toum think of themselves as think
(32:34):
of research as part of thatcreative process from the
archive to the page.
Now, the other part of thatequation, what I learned from my
fiction writing that I take tomy academic writing, I think if
you read my dissertation fromback in, I won't even say what
date I finished it, and read mymost recent academic work, you
(32:55):
would see I'm a much betterwriter.
And that I'm much more, I write,I think of my academic research
on this as telling stories now.
I I'm telling, you know, that Ieven think about protagonists in
some ways.
So I think I have a much livemore lively sense of story now
in my academic writing for sure.
SPEAKER_01 (33:13):
And I think it's easier for the reader then to
take in the information that thewriter is wanting to get across.
Uh, that's why I think I I reada lot of creative nonfiction
now, because it's through reallife stories that I'm able to
retain the information and Ifind it easier to learn.
SPEAKER_00 (33:32):
Yeah.
And I love those kinds of books.
And it's funny, I've I've triedthat idiom.
So the and this is an and whoknows what this means about me.
Maybe we can talk more about itin in California next month.
Um I've tried writing in thatidiom of creative nonfiction.
It's hard for me.
I've I I haven't nailed it.
I can do fiction all day, alldifferent kinds of fiction, and
(33:55):
I can do my academic writing.
But I, you know, I'm I'm tryingand I maybe I just haven't hit
on the right topic yet.
I don't know.
But I really admire that kind ofstorytelling.
SPEAKER_01 (34:06):
Do you think it could be because you write about
historical nonfiction?
SPEAKER_00 (34:09):
Yeah.
That could be.
That could be.
But I've written historicalfiction, and that's no problem.
So yeah, I don't know.
I'll have to I'll have to thinkabout it.
It makes me want to do itbecause I like a challenge.
SPEAKER_01 (34:21):
Now, looking across the gifted school, the
displacements and culpability,is there one of those books that
feels closest to your heartbecause of what it demanded from
you as a writer?
SPEAKER_00 (34:32):
I would say, well, they all are in their own
different ways.
They all had differentchallenges, but the
displacements for me is that's abook about what I fear the most,
uh climate change and warmingand what it's going to do to us
and what it's doing to us now.
And I think that is the one thatlike when I wake up in the
middle of the night and thinkabout one of my novels, it's
(34:53):
that one.
And I'll sometimes be back inthat world.
Um, and that one is that thatjust took a lot out of me, that
novel.
It really did.
And um, it took me a while toget my gears going again.
I think finishing it was veryshattering for me in a way, in a
good way, and but also in a itkind of sapped me a bit.
Um, so it took a little while toget going.
SPEAKER_01 (35:14):
Yeah, the displacements has a uh big place
in my heart.
And over the last couple ofyears, when we've seen these uh
rather large hurricanes coming,I've been thinking about that
book a lot.
SPEAKER_00 (35:28):
Yeah, that's the yeah, it's like with the gifted
school and the admissionsscandal.
You don't want it to come real.
But you know, with all thesenovels, these and the one I'm
writing now, I like to write onthe edge of the present.
I like to think of what I'mdoing as as really thinking
about that, writing about nextmonth.
You know, it's not futuristic,it's about next month or next
year.
(35:49):
Um, and thinking about what theworld will be like when it comes
out, you know, or what will thewhat the world will almost be
like.
SPEAKER_01 (35:56):
Ooh, Edge of the Present is a great title for
your next book.
SPEAKER_00 (36:01):
Maybe that's what I need to do.
Yeah, yeah, Edge of the Present.
Yeah, the edge of now.
SPEAKER_01 (36:06):
Um now Culpability was chosen as Oprah's July
summer read, which is fantastic.
Congratulations.
Yet she only discovered the bookthrough a friend, not the
publisher.
With authors now oftenresponsible for their own
publicity.
How do you see the role ofpublishers shifting?
And do you think they stilladequately support authors?
SPEAKER_00 (36:28):
Well, I can say uh it's yes and no.
The that last question.
I am so lucky I have uh the mypublisher now is Spiegel and
Grau, and they are a um a sortof relatively recent startup.
They were an old establishedsuper prestigious imprint at uh
Penguin Random House for a longtime.
(36:50):
And in the last few years,they've started up as an
independent publisher, and theyare you know working with a
smaller group.
You really feel like you're partof the team.
And every author I know who'sbeen working with them is just
ecstatic with their theirattention.
Every book is front list, everybook is uh taken care of and
(37:11):
nurtured, and we have a long,every title has a long tail.
Now, I was really lucky to be anOprah pick, obviously, and that
is just crazy.
That's like a bolt from theblue, and you can't you can't
predict that you you can hopefor it, but uh it's never it
never occurred to me thatsomething like this would
happen.
So, and that just obviously is apublicist dream.
(37:34):
But I do feel like the you know,things are changing a lot, and
there's a lot of you know,publicity budgets are really
limited.
I know a lot of author friends,I mean, I've I've been one of
them in the past, who just likelook at their book and just
think, what is this?
You know, why is this just kindof died on the vine?
What is going on here?
So it's gonna be verydemoralizing.
And, you know, publishers buyum, you know, different kinds of
(37:58):
books and and and there's justno predicting, you know, what
the market's gonna want.
And when you write a book for acommercial publisher, your book
is a commodity and you you it'sintellectual property.
It's no longer yours once itstarts getting into production.
So you have to, I think you haveto understand that like your I
and I get very cynical aboutthis stuff.
(38:18):
Um when I when I teach, I say,you know, you just have to
understand that you're signingit away and it becomes one of
many brands of cereal, right?
And some people aren't gonnalike it.
The grocer's gonna put it on thebottom shelf and forget about
it, they're not gonna stock itanymore, um, because not enough
people are eating it.
So um, and you just have verylittle control of that.
(38:41):
You you can there's a lot youcan do.
And I think we try, you know,but um that that alone can be
demoralizing too, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (38:48):
Yeah, and with teaching, writing, and whatever
else one is doing to earn money,it's not like you have a lot of
spare time to be on socialmedia.
SPEAKER_00 (38:58):
Well, I will say it's difficult, but when you get
a national book club pick likethis, it's just joyful and you
feel like you keep pinchingyourself.
So I would never want to likeit's just uh uh pure luck.
SPEAKER_01 (39:10):
I think that's why I feel that for writers building
relationships with readers inany way possible, social media,
in person, podcasts, uh YouTube,it's so important because
readers want to connect with theauthor.
They've got questions of theirown.
Well, Bruce, I know you and Ican talk forever, but uh I've
(39:30):
taken up enough of your time.
Thank you for being on the show.
It was great speaking with youuh in Los Angeles at the
California Club and in SantaBarbara.
Uh it's just been wonderful andI can't wait to see you again.
I'm going to suggest to ourlisteners that they go back now
and read your backlist becausethey are wonderful books.
SPEAKER_00 (39:50):
Oh, good, good.
Well, thank you.
It's been such a pleasure totalk with you, Mandy.
SPEAKER_01 (39:54):
You've been listening to my conversation
with author Bruce Holsingerabout his novel Culpability.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media.
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(40:14):
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And make sure to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
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If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
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(40:36):
the contact form at thebookshoppodcast.com.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly.
Theme music provided by BrianBeverly and my personal
assistant is Kaylee DeShinger.
Thanks for listening, and I'llsee you next time.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly, and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe, and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media.
(00:32):
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
You're listening to episode 314.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm so glad you're here becausetoday on the podcast we're
celebrating stories, community,and the joy of gathering around
(00:52):
books.
So let's begin.
It's the holiday season, myfavorite time of the year.
It's a time for giving, cooking,and sharing.
The weather is cooler here inSouthern California, and thanks
to recent rain, the surroundinghills and mountains are tinged
with green.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
I have some exciting news andadditions coming up in 2026 that
(01:13):
I can't wait to share with you.
I'll save a few surprises forthe first week of January, but
I've already shared others withyou in recent episodes.
For the 2026 Lunch with anAuthor Literary series, I've
partnered with the UniversityClub in Santa Barbara and Hotel
El Roblah in Ojai.
Hotel El Roblah, established in1919, is Ojai's longest-standing
(01:36):
hotel.
The two-acre property has beenrecently restored to its
historic charm, reflecting bothits Spanished revival and early
California roots, while blendingclassic design with a modern
sensibility.
For literary lovers wanting amidweek escape to Ojai,
surrounded by mountains,streams, the scent of lavender
(01:56):
and citrus blossoms, and what'sknown as the OHI Pink moment, El
Robla offers a special roomdiscount for our literary
series.
The discount becomes availableonce you've purchased your
ticket to one of the monthlyliterary luncheons.
For more information, you cancontact me at
mandyjacksonbeverly atgmail.com.
Okay, in this episode, I'mchatting with author Bruce
(02:19):
Holsinger.
Bruce is the author of fivenovels, including Culpability,
The Displacements, and TheGifted School, as well as many
works of fiction, most recentlyon parchment, animals, archives,
and the making of culture fromHerodotus to the digital age.
His books have been recognizedwith the Colorado Book Award,
the John Hurt Fisher Prize, thePhilip Brett Award, the John
(02:42):
Nicholas Brown Prize, the ModernLanguage Association's Prize for
a First Book, and others.
His essays and reviews haveappeared in the New York Times,
Vanity Fair, and many otherpublications.
And he has been profiled onNPR's Weekend Edition, Here and
Now, and Marketplace.
A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellowof the Medieval Academy of
(03:03):
America, he teaches in theDepartment of English at the
University of Virginia andserves as editor of the
quarterly journal New LiteraryHistory.
He also teaches craft classesand serves as board chairman for
Writer's House, a non-profit inCharlottesville.
Here's a short synopsis ofBruce's latest novel,
Culpability.
(03:24):
When the Cassidy ShawsAutonomous minivan collides with
an oncoming car, 17-year-oldCharlie is in the driver's seat
with his father, Noah, ridingShotgun.
In the backseat, tweens Aliceand Izzy are on their phones,
while their mother Lorelei, aworld leader in the field of
artificial intelligence, isabsorbed in her work.
(03:44):
Yet each family member harbors asecret that implicates them in
the accident.
Hi, Bruce, and welcome to theshow.
It's great to have you hereagain.
SPEAKER_00 (03:53):
Thank you, Mandy, for having me back.
SPEAKER_01 (03:55):
Well, you've been a very busy man since the last
time I spoke with you.
Oprah chose your new book,Culpability, as her July summer
bookpick.
How was that for you?
SPEAKER_00 (04:05):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been really thecraziest period of my life.
I mean, it's like when the kidswere firstborn or something like
that.
It's like it's just been nuts.
SPEAKER_01 (04:14):
Yeah, I can imagine.
But isn't it great to beacknowledged for your writing?
SPEAKER_00 (04:18):
Yeah, thank you.
It has been, it's, you know, itreally has felt um yeah,
overwhelming at times.
It still doesn't feel real, Iguess.
It's uh, but you know, what areyou gonna do?
It's uh it's just a huge strokeof luck.
I've I've talked to otherfriends who have gotten these
picks, and um, you know, it justfeels like a bolt from the blue.
SPEAKER_01 (04:38):
Well, it was well deserved, Bruce.
Um now you and I have spoken inperson and on the podcast about
your life in general, and Iencourage listeners to listen to
our previous conversations aboutthe displacements, a book I
absolutely adore.
Uh, and I'll put the link tothat episode in the show notes.
This time I'd like to focus onyour writing and your latest
(04:59):
novel, Culpability.
But I do have a couple ofprequel questions.
Did you always envision yourselfas both a teacher and a writer,
or did one vocation lead you tothe other?
And how do those roles nowinform and challenge one another
in your life?
SPEAKER_00 (05:16):
I suppose when I started graduate school, one of
the first things you do when yoube when you become a graduate
student in the humanities is youteach.
And so from a very young age, Iguess I started graduate school
probably when I was 21, 22 yearsold.
Um, I was just kind of throwninto a classroom.
This was at the University ofMinnesota, where I did my
master's degree, um, without anytraining on how to teach, how to
(05:40):
teach literature, poetry, how toteach philosophy.
So it was kind of trial by fire,just being thrown into the pool.
Um, but from the minute Istepped into the classroom, I
really loved it.
And the first kind of writing Idid was not fiction writing, it
was scholarly writing as agraduate student, and then at
Minnesota, and then at ColumbiaUniversity, where I did my uh
(06:02):
PhD work in comparativeliterature.
And it then my first job at theUniversity of Colorado, and now
for the last 20 years, I'vetaught at the University of
Virginia.
And in my scholarly world, thewriting of scholarship and the
teaching of literary tradition,literary culture, those things
go hand in hand, and it's alwaysvery hard for me to separate
(06:25):
them.
But I only started writingfiction seriously about 15, 16
years ago, only published myfirst novel 11 years ago, which
sounds like a long time ifyou're 25, right, and an
aspiring writer.
But when you get up to my age,it's it's nothing.
And it feels like I've onlyreally been publishing fiction.
(06:45):
It feels like the blink of aneye, um, even though culpability
is my fifth novel.
So, you know, now those tworoles, I I think of them,
they're more, they're more andmore inseparable.
I still work on scholarship.
Just this morning, I was in acoffee shop doing footnotes on
an essay for uh uh, you know, anacademic book.
Um, but earlier this morning Iwas working on a new novel.
(07:07):
So, you know, these these thingsare now, they've become so
intertwined that it's hard forme to separate them in my mind.
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
Have you found that your students influence your
creative process andor yourcreativity?
SPEAKER_00 (07:20):
Oh, yeah, for sure.
At the University of Virginia, Idon't teach fiction, I teach
medieval literature, but I teachfor a community writing center,
writer house here inCharlottesville.
And I'll very often, you know,when I'm teaching a craft class,
let's say on point of view or oncharacter arcs or on story
structure, you know, going backand getting, you know, seeing my
(07:44):
students' perspectives on thesequestions, which for them will
sometimes be new.
It'll be a way for me to getback into my own writing and see
some weaknesses.
I'll often, you know, throwsomething I'm working on, I'll
I'll start talking about it tothem.
And someone will make a reallysmart point and I'll just slap
my forehead and think, oh,right, of course, I need to be
working on that too.
It's just, you know, I was uh incollege, I was a musician, I was
(08:06):
a clarinet performance major.
And, you know, ever like thething that you know when you're
a musician is practicing thebasics uh is a daily routine.
You just always do your scales,you always do your arpeggios and
etudes.
And those, I think, you know,writers um can use a little more
of that.
And I always try, I I sometimesforget that, and I'll be in the
(08:29):
middle of a you know, a chapterof a novel and I'll just kind of
lose my way.
And often it's teaching thatgets me back into it, gets me
more on the road.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
Bruce, it really hit me how passionate you are about
teaching and the process ofteaching writing.
When you and I first chatted inperson, I think it was at Alan
Canto in Santa Barbara a coupleof years ago.
We were talking about thedisplacements.
And uh I remember I asked you aquestion about teaching, and you
jumped out of your chair.
(09:00):
You were so excited about theprocess of teaching.
And not for the first time, Iwas reminded that yeah, there
are people who teach becauseit's their profession, their
job, and there are people whoteach because it is a big part
of who they are.
And I really felt that aboutyou.
SPEAKER_00 (09:18):
Yeah, you know, it's funny you should say that.
I I um, you know, I teach mostfall semesters, I teach a huge
lecture course with two or threehundred students.
The uh it's the first part ofthe English sequence from
Beowulf to Milton.
And I'm just a very activeteacher in the classroom.
I'll walk up and down the rows.
I'll often show a um, I'll showa video of a campfire when I
(09:39):
tell them the story of Beowulf.
You know, I'll do all this kindof thing, pretend they're in a
big mead hall or something likethat.
So yeah, I I can tend to be alittle too exuberant.
So sometimes I have to dial itdown when I'm doing, especially,
you know, this summer when I'vebeen doing all these interviews
and podcasts, I'll just, youknow, get carried away a little
bit.
So sometimes I have to dial itback.
SPEAKER_01 (09:59):
It shows you're passionate, Bruce.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
Your novels often weave unconventional points of
view into the narrative, from ATouch of Tessa in the Gifted
School to the Digital Chroniclein the Displacements, and the
layered voices in culpability,Alison Blair's chats and inserts
from Lorelei's book.
Do you imagine these devicesfrom the start or do they emerge
(10:23):
as you discover the story?
You've said before that youdon't plan out your novels, you
just sit and write.
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
Yes, yeah.
You remember that from last timethat I'm not a big outliner.
Yeah.
You know, they those elements, Ithink of them as kind of
paratextual elements.
They're, as you said, um, youknow, a bit a video blog or a
digital chronicle, or in thecase of my earlier historical
novels, I wrote a, you know, aMiddle English chronicle of the
deaths of kings.
(10:51):
Um, and and in the case ofculpability, yes, it's these
chat, this chatbot conversationthat Alice has with this this
chatbot named Blair, and thenalso excerpts from Laura
Lyshaw's book, and there's a fewother, the New Yorker interview.
Um, you know, I don't plan whatthose are that those are going
to be, but I know they're gonnabe in there.
I think that's just become how Iwrite.
(11:13):
And the reason, and I imagine Iprobably talked about this when
we talked about thedisplacements, is especially
these these last four novels umare, or last three novels,
they're they're aboutcontemporary families.
And they're the novels aremostly about a small story in
the scheme of things that dealswith a family in crisis, whether
(11:36):
that crisis is, you know, parentparental angst about getting a
kid into a gifted school or afamily dealing with a category
six hurricane, or in this case,um a family dealing in the
aftermath of an accident.
And so, but I what I like to dois put those small stories into
a larger national or even globalframework.
(11:57):
And there's different ways ofdoing that.
You know, I've experimented witha lot of different ones.
You know, you can do exposition,you can just kind of back off
and tell, you know, have in acharacter's interior monologue,
you know, some recounting ofglobal events and how they fit
in.
But uh sometimes that can bevery forced to me.
And when I'm teaching fiction, II often the those moments in a
(12:21):
in a novel can feel clunky.
And so I try to, I use thosemoments, those paratextual
moments, to get the flavor ofthe world in and get the a much
larger texture into the intimatedetails that I'm telling about
these these families.
SPEAKER_01 (12:38):
And because you're an historian uh and you've read
so many historic novels, haveyou found any of this uh
layering while reading uhhistorical manuscripts?
SPEAKER_00 (12:50):
Oh, yes.
In fact, you know, it I I had aninteresting conversation with
somebody about a month ago aboutjust this.
And I realize one of my favoritegenres in the Middle Ages is um
the frame narrative, storieswithin stories.
So you think about somethinglike the Canterbury Tales, which
um, or Boccaccio's DeCameron.
(13:10):
But in the case of theCanterbury Tales, you know, it's
a story of these folks ofdifferent state classes of life
going on a pilgrimage fromLondon to Canterbury.
Um and the stories are of thatthey tell, the pilgrims tell,
are of all different genres.
Some people, the knight tells agreat romance, a kind of epic
romance.
(13:31):
The Wife of Bath tells thisweird autobiography, the Miller
tells a fabio, an obscene story.
Um, there's a sermon, there's areligious tale.
There's all these differentgenres mixed in.
And I really like that way ofstorytelling.
I like stories within stories.
I like the the idea of, youknow, jarring the reader a
(13:53):
little bit with a with a newbeginning, um, a new way to see
the world that that we'redescribing in a novel as a
whole.
And so I guess it is.
You know, I I've never reallythought about it that way.
But I suppose it's a maybe myease with doing that.
The reason that it feels naturalis that I uh spend so much time
with my head immersed inmedieval forms of storytelling,
(14:15):
that that there's a kind ofnatural fit.
SPEAKER_01 (14:18):
Perhaps subconsciously it weaves its way
into your stories.
SPEAKER_00 (14:22):
Yeah, it makes me it makes me want to write about it,
you know, write, write itbecause I've been thinking about
a craft book and it would justbe interesting to do that, you
know.
SPEAKER_01 (14:29):
Oh, I'd read that, definitely.
And please come out to SantaBarbara and Ohi and teach a
workshop based around the book.
Um now, while we're chattingabout history, in 2014 a
burnable book was published,followed in 2015 with the
invention of fire, but then youmade a jump into contemporary
fiction.
Was that because a story enteredyour mind and you needed to get
(14:50):
it onto paper, or was thereanother reason why you made that
jump?
SPEAKER_00 (14:55):
No, that happened because my publisher dropped me.
Um after my after my secondnovel.
This is a very common story, asI'm sure you, you know, once you
get into inside baseball, youknow, if you your debut novel,
everybody's all excited aboutit.
Maybe you have a two-book deal,maybe your debut novel doesn't
sell quite as well as they'dhoped.
(15:16):
And then your second novel isjust kind of blah, you know, um,
not in terms of quality, butjust it's uh doesn't get the
kind of attention.
And then it's just was veryclear that they weren't at more
this was at Moro, that theyweren't gonna do a third novel
with me.
And so I was just kind of out inthe wilderness for a while and
casting around for I say awhile.
(15:37):
It wasn't that long, it was afew years.
And I said, you know, I'm justgonna get my head out of the
Middle Ages.
And I had I had actually thoughtof the story of the gifted
school years before I evenpublished my first novel.
It was in my head.
I I went back and looked, and Ithink I'd really started working
on that story like in 2010,something like that.
It's on an old hard drive.
(15:58):
And uh and then so I went backto that, and it was my agent at
the time.
Um, I have a different agentnow, but but I told her some of
the ideas I was kicking around,and I told her about it.
And she's oh, work on that.
That's a great idea.
And so that she sold that bookon proposal to Riverhead.
And that's that then I was offto the races with that and the
displacements.
SPEAKER_01 (16:18):
And the timing couldn't have been better for
the gifted school.
I mean, you just ace that.
SPEAKER_00 (16:23):
Well, that was just like a yeah, that was a through
no fault of my own, but it was apublicist dream because it came
out the ARCs, the advancedcopies, were circulating right
when the college admissionsscandal broke.
So that's it, it got writtenabout that way, and it got seen
almost as kind of weirdlyprophetic of that scandal.
So yeah, it was it washilarious.
SPEAKER_01 (16:45):
Yeah, that was remarkable.
I'd like to talk about Noah, oneof the main characters in
Culpability.
In the story, he's oftenreminded of his wife's
brilliance.
And Julia tells him few menwould marry their intellectual
superior.
Do you see Noah as resistingthese hierarchies or haunted by
them?
(17:05):
And what larger culturaltensions were you exploring
here?
SPEAKER_00 (17:09):
Now, what about explain what you mean by the
hierarchies?
SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
The in particular, it would be Lorelei's family.
SPEAKER_00 (17:16):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because he's kind of amiddling attorney, right?
He went to a very a middle, verymiddling law school.
He went to a kind of so-so firm,but he married into this family
where, you know, hissister-in-law is the dean of a
law school at Penn, and his wifeis like a world leader in the
field of ethical AI.
(17:37):
And so he's just got a big, abunch of chips on his shoulder,
right?
But he's not he's not superbitter about it, you know.
And I wanted to, I don't know, II I really wanted to write this
book solely from his point ofview.
And I love my last, all mynovels before have been from
multiple points of view.
And somehow the creative juicesin me were just fly I I just
(18:00):
really wanted him, his blindnessto his own situation, to his own
goodness, actually, too, was wassomething I wanted to explore.
You know, he's not necessarily aum unreliable narrator, but he
is a little bit oblivious.
And I don't know if it if I if Iwas gonna do it again, I don't
know if I do it exactly thisway, but it was a for me, it was
(18:23):
part of the part of telling thestory of Larley and and AI
actually, making it making herand making it a mystery, as it
is to so many of us, this kindof perplexing mystery that makes
us feel like we're kind oftrapped in this world where we
don't know what's going onaround us.
And and in some ways, Noah, hismarriage, this family, it kind
(18:45):
of casts in that problem inminiature.
I don't know if that answersyour question.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:49):
It does.
And at the same time, I'd liketo bring up something that I've
been uh considering lately, justan idea.
Uh, you and I both have twosons.
Mine are older than yours, butsomething that has come up in
discussion that I've kind oftaken to heart and wanted to
explore is that there are a lotof young men in university and
(19:11):
high school who've become almosttoo scared to speak their truths
or to make a comment.
Too scared that they're gonnasay the wrong thing.
And I'm wondering where thatcomes from.
Has it come from uh the wave offeminism and the Me Too
movement, uh patriarchy,bullying?
And from what uh I've been toldby, you know, friends who have
(19:34):
sons or younger men, a lot ofthese young men who feel wary to
speak up about anything, theyhave become very lonely.
They don't go out as much, theyjust stay at home.
I don't know why, but I saw someof this in Noah.
Maybe not in him, but he wasaware of it happening.
(19:54):
Is this whole topic somethingthat you think about, that
you're aware of?
SPEAKER_00 (19:59):
Yeah.
Yeah, I I did.
And I've I mean, uh the the bookI'm working on now, I can't
really talk about it, but I Idon't I you know, but it's it's
attacking that problem head-on,this kind of so-called crisis of
masculinity.
And I think about it a lot, likewith you know, this is a book,
it's not just about AI and afamily, but it's also about a
father and a son, right?
(20:20):
That's one of its primary kindof that's where it gets very
heated, I think.
And my la not my last novel, butreally the um the gifted school
that was very much about afather and his very athletically
gifted sons and the pressure offatherhood and what what the
(20:41):
world is doing to boys.
And I don't want to blame it onfeminism.
I I think feminism is a reactionto different forms of
patriarchy, and it's patriarchy,I think, that is making boys
where they are.
It's these pressure to pressuresto be a certain type of man.
Um, I think, you know, themanosphere, this kind of um
(21:05):
alpha culture.
You know, I think all movementshave excesses, have rhetorical
excesses.
And I do think that, you know,during the pandemic, me too, and
so on, there's those those couldbe very, very much heightened.
But I think the um, you know,when I when I look around, I I
just see so much um ugly kind ofrhetoric that that boys and men
(21:29):
feel they need to measure up to.
So I think a little bit of Noah,and maybe this is another way of
looking at it, is is looking atCharlie, you know, this
superstar athlete, brash,confident, you know,
Adonis-like, and yet there's afragility right underneath the
surface.
And what happens in thataccident and then what happens
afterwards, that's what exposesit, right?
(21:51):
It's just that confidence iskind of shot.
And that's even before, youknow, before they get down to
the bay, the house where theywhere they where their good part
of the novel takes place.
But thank you for noticing that.
I think that's really wonderful.
SPEAKER_01 (22:05):
Well, it was a big part of the novel for me.
I've listened to a lot ofinterviews that you've done
about culpability, and everyonezeroes in on AI, and obviously
it is a big part of the book.
But as with most of your books,it's what's going on around the
characters that creates therelationships and the and the
(22:25):
hurdles within the relationshipsthat you're writing about.
So for me, that is a big part ofyour writing.
And in culpability, I see thisbetween Noah and his son.
Uh, it it comes up again andagain, as you call it, this
crisis of masculinity.
But it's also brought up towardthe end of culpability when
(22:46):
Lorelei gives this uh monologueabout how she feels about Noah.
Uh, and it's kind of jugglingthis crisis of masculinity with
the feminism.
I'm interested in what you saidabout feminism being born from
patriarchy.
That's fascinating to me andsomething I want to research a
(23:07):
little bit more.
But I do worry about uh thesensitive young men or the and
the young boys we have aroundbecause right now all they're
being shown by our politicians,specifically our president and
the people around him, is thatto be masculine means it's okay
to be a bully, to call peoplenames, to put people down.
(23:27):
And I think that is going tohave major consequences with our
youth as they grow older.
SPEAKER_00 (23:33):
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
This um I I always wonder, youknow, you always wonder where
these things come from and theimpulses come from.
And obviously, my concern withboys comes from my own
experience as a father of twoboys, um, two very athletic
boys, unlike me.
I was not athletic at all.
Um and uh and so that I but italso comes from, you know, my my
(23:56):
mother was a uh teacher and awriter, and she wrote a book
called The Little Boy Book, AGuide to the First Eight Years.
And this was back in the 1980s,and um, it was from Ballantine.
Um, and it was a co-writtenbook.
And it was about, you know, itwas a she one of the things she
(24:18):
noticed is that all these childraising books were very much
geared towards girls, and thatthere weren't um, you know, she
was she was very much a bigbeliever in genetics, uh, nature
over nurture too.
So whatever you want to think ofthat.
But she also felt like um child,you know, the rhetoric around
child raising was not giving, asa Montessori school teacher, she
(24:39):
observed this, was not givingenough credit to um differences
between boys and girls and howthey are as little kids, how
they, you know, how theydevelop.
So she was, you know, I I alwayswonder if um, you know, if that
that influenced me in some ways.
I think it's still in printafter all these years.
SPEAKER_01 (24:57):
I need to look that one up.
And what was the author's name?
SPEAKER_00 (25:00):
Uh Sheila.
And but then she went by a uhshe used her middle name as her
last name, but Sheila Moore andRune Frost.
SPEAKER_01 (25:06):
Thank you.
I'll try and pick that up.
Now, across your novels,families cope with crisis in
very different ways, from snowplow to helicopter parenting.
In culpability, how did you wantto complicate those archetypes?
And what do you hope readerstake away about resilience and
healing?
SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
Yeah, so I feel like the um you know, every member of
this family has their own, Iguess their own issue with
culpability, with guilt, right?
So I think the the network inthat family, the web of
relationships, has everything todo with that.
It's how they how they cope withtheir relationships um during
(25:50):
during this crisis, you know,how their their relationships
change based on it, um, howthey're you know, how they have
to find their own sources ofresilience or not.
Like I feel like no spoilers,but I do feel like you know,
Alice is really struggling.
You know, she's having to find away to deal with her parents.
(26:11):
You know, you use the word, youknow, helicopter parenting,
which I'm always interested in.
But you know, in this case,maybe, maybe one way to look at
it is that Alice is the, youknow, she's the middle child.
And maybe Noah and and Lorelaiare not being helicoptery enough
with her, right?
They're like, oh, finally shehas a friend that she's texting
(26:32):
with.
Um, and it's it's really, andIzzy, of course, she's the the
little kid, and she's just fine,super charismatic, friends to
burn.
And Charlie obviously is theapple of his dad's eye.
And so he's the one who's beensnowplowed and helicoptered all
over.
And it's poor Alice, neglectedonce again.
So I like that.
You know, I think that those arevery realistic ways of looking
(26:53):
at parents.
I've explored them in in allthree of my last three novels
from different directions.
I think the gifted school ismuch more about snowplow
parenting, you know, clearingthe way for your child um to get
what she needs.
But those archetypes, as yousay, are also very complicated.
And we want, you know, I thinkthat um, you know, they these
(27:14):
these characters find resilienceand they heal in different ways.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
Bruce, you and I have spoken before about you
surviving a plane crash.
I think you said it was betweenjunior and senior year.
Of the plane crash, you wrote,quote, your life is no longer
your own in crisis situationslike that, and you're entirely
dependent on the competence andgoodwill of others.
In culpability, the car crash isdepicted with jagged fragments
(27:40):
of perception.
Do you feel your own experienceswith trauma shape the way you
rent a crisis in fiction?
SPEAKER_00 (27:48):
Yes, that's exactly right.
And it's funny, that planecrash, I don't know if I would
call it a trauma, because I wasasleep until right before it
happened.
And and we were all okay.
But what I do remember is, andthat's this is probably where
this came from, is firstresponders, you know, just being
taken away in an ambulance, mysister, you know, bleeding from
(28:10):
her nose, and just thinking, ohmy God, like this whole we're
we're really being, you know,taken care of here.
Um thank God it wasn't moreserious.
But the one of the other thingsI remember from that is a few
days later, we all were down atthe beach, because that's where
we were going, to the OuterBanks of North Carolina, and
somebody had dug up this, foundin the newspaper from a physical
(28:33):
newspaper from the town wherethe accident had happened.
And there was a headline, and itsaid Lucky Five Escape Crash.
And if you've read culpability,you know that that headline
appears in the um in the story,yeah.
Yeah, so that actually was partof that has always stuck with
me.
And I almost one of the titlesfor the book that I was thinking
(28:54):
about was the lucky five.
You know, and I'm glad I didn'tend up calling it that.
But um, you know, that's andwhen Noah reads that headline,
of course, he's he's reactingwith a lot of kind of jaundiced,
you know, yeah, we're reallylucky.
We're so lucky, right?
We're not the ones who died inthe crash, the people in the
other car did.
We just have concussions andbroken legs and what, you know,
(29:17):
you know, and I part of me,there was all these different
decisions I had to make earlyon.
Part of me wanted to have hadoriginally had Lorelei have a
traumatic brain injury um ratherthan just a concussion so that
it would affect herintelligence, right?
It would infect her capacity asa as a genius.
And I thought, but that was justtoo much and I couldn't make it
(29:39):
work.
But anyway, so yeah, so Ithought about those issues a
lot.
SPEAKER_01 (29:43):
I've often made the comment that reading well
written fiction builds empathyin the reader.
Now, as a novelist, do you findthat writing fiction also
deepens your empathy?
SPEAKER_00 (29:54):
Oh, absolutely.
I I think pe people argue aboutthis.
I do see fiction as a kind ofEngine of empathy, right?
And getting it's one of thereasons I try to talk my
students, try to talk my kidsinto reading more fiction, you
know, just um because you youreally are putting yourselves in
other people's position in a waythat can be very profound.
(30:15):
So I'm a big believer in that.
I think writing and reading canget us to those places in in
really substantial ways.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (30:24):
And in culpability, was there a character whose
emotion stayed with you afteryou finished the book?
SPEAKER_00 (30:31):
I think Laura, actually, because she was the
one that I was very I tried towrite initially from her point
of view, and I ended up justwriting her book, right?
Excerpts from her book aboutartificial intelligence.
And I think just getting andtrying to get as much as I could
inside her head, even though Iknew she was a mystery, was one
of the most creative challengesI've ever set myself.
(30:54):
And I love doing it.
And I kind of fell in love withher as a character and and just
kind of got completely wrappedup with her.
So I think that's that's that Ithink maybe more than any other
character I've written, it wouldbe Lorelei, even though I didn't
write anything from her point ofview except her kind of dry
academic prose.
SPEAKER_01 (31:11):
Personally, I think you nailed her personality by
writing around her.
Bruce, you've written bothnonfiction and fiction.
What has writing novels taughtyou about truth, empathy, and
narrative that nonfiction couldnot, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00 (31:27):
Well, the the second one is easier.
I definitely have gained fromthe nonfiction writing I do, and
and I would just even furtherqualify as that the academic
nonfiction.
You know, my books are publishedby university presses, and they
have, you know, they can be onpretty arcane subjects.
Um, but what I've learned fromthat is the power of research, I
think, and and incorporatingresearch into what I do.
(31:49):
So I teach seminars often on theart of research and fiction.
I'm teaching at the uh Writer onBoxed conference in Santa Fe in
a couple months.
And that is, I'm doing a wholeseminar on research, the
creative aspects of research.
And I think as an academic, I'mvery unintimidated by research.
And I want fiction writers to beless intimidated.
(32:11):
I think there's a misconceptionthat in order to sit down and
write a book about, you know, ahistorical period or about
something that requires a lot ofresearch, like AI or technology
or whatever, that you have tosit down and read books and
books for months or years beforeyou're qualified to start
writing a story.
And I think that's wrong.
And so I really push people toum think of themselves as think
(32:34):
of research as part of thatcreative process from the
archive to the page.
Now, the other part of thatequation, what I learned from my
fiction writing that I take tomy academic writing, I think if
you read my dissertation fromback in, I won't even say what
date I finished it, and read mymost recent academic work, you
(32:55):
would see I'm a much betterwriter.
And that I'm much more, I write,I think of my academic research
on this as telling stories now.
I I'm telling, you know, that Ieven think about protagonists in
some ways.
So I think I have a much livemore lively sense of story now
in my academic writing for sure.
SPEAKER_01 (33:13):
And I think it's easier for the reader then to
take in the information that thewriter is wanting to get across.
Uh, that's why I think I I reada lot of creative nonfiction
now, because it's through reallife stories that I'm able to
retain the information and Ifind it easier to learn.
SPEAKER_00 (33:32):
Yeah.
And I love those kinds of books.
And it's funny, I've I've triedthat idiom.
So the and this is an and whoknows what this means about me.
Maybe we can talk more about itin in California next month.
Um I've tried writing in thatidiom of creative nonfiction.
It's hard for me.
I've I I haven't nailed it.
I can do fiction all day, alldifferent kinds of fiction, and
(33:55):
I can do my academic writing.
But I, you know, I'm I'm tryingand I maybe I just haven't hit
on the right topic yet.
I don't know.
But I really admire that kind ofstorytelling.
SPEAKER_01 (34:06):
Do you think it could be because you write about
historical nonfiction?
SPEAKER_00 (34:09):
Yeah.
That could be.
That could be.
But I've written historicalfiction, and that's no problem.
So yeah, I don't know.
I'll have to I'll have to thinkabout it.
It makes me want to do itbecause I like a challenge.
SPEAKER_01 (34:21):
Now, looking across the gifted school, the
displacements and culpability,is there one of those books that
feels closest to your heartbecause of what it demanded from
you as a writer?
SPEAKER_00 (34:32):
I would say, well, they all are in their own
different ways.
They all had differentchallenges, but the
displacements for me is that's abook about what I fear the most,
uh climate change and warmingand what it's going to do to us
and what it's doing to us now.
And I think that is the one thatlike when I wake up in the
middle of the night and thinkabout one of my novels, it's
(34:53):
that one.
And I'll sometimes be back inthat world.
Um, and that one is that thatjust took a lot out of me, that
novel.
It really did.
And um, it took me a while toget my gears going again.
I think finishing it was veryshattering for me in a way, in a
good way, and but also in a itkind of sapped me a bit.
Um, so it took a little while toget going.
SPEAKER_01 (35:14):
Yeah, the displacements has a uh big place
in my heart.
And over the last couple ofyears, when we've seen these uh
rather large hurricanes coming,I've been thinking about that
book a lot.
SPEAKER_00 (35:28):
Yeah, that's the yeah, it's like with the gifted
school and the admissionsscandal.
You don't want it to come real.
But you know, with all thesenovels, these and the one I'm
writing now, I like to write onthe edge of the present.
I like to think of what I'mdoing as as really thinking
about that, writing about nextmonth.
You know, it's not futuristic,it's about next month or next
year.
(35:49):
Um, and thinking about what theworld will be like when it comes
out, you know, or what will thewhat the world will almost be
like.
SPEAKER_01 (35:56):
Ooh, Edge of the Present is a great title for
your next book.
SPEAKER_00 (36:01):
Maybe that's what I need to do.
Yeah, yeah, Edge of the Present.
Yeah, the edge of now.
SPEAKER_01 (36:06):
Um now Culpability was chosen as Oprah's July
summer read, which is fantastic.
Congratulations.
Yet she only discovered the bookthrough a friend, not the
publisher.
With authors now oftenresponsible for their own
publicity.
How do you see the role ofpublishers shifting?
And do you think they stilladequately support authors?
SPEAKER_00 (36:28):
Well, I can say uh it's yes and no.
The that last question.
I am so lucky I have uh the mypublisher now is Spiegel and
Grau, and they are a um a sortof relatively recent startup.
They were an old establishedsuper prestigious imprint at uh
Penguin Random House for a longtime.
(36:50):
And in the last few years,they've started up as an
independent publisher, and theyare you know working with a
smaller group.
You really feel like you're partof the team.
And every author I know who'sbeen working with them is just
ecstatic with their theirattention.
Every book is front list, everybook is uh taken care of and
(37:11):
nurtured, and we have a long,every title has a long tail.
Now, I was really lucky to be anOprah pick, obviously, and that
is just crazy.
That's like a bolt from theblue, and you can't you can't
predict that you you can hopefor it, but uh it's never it
never occurred to me thatsomething like this would
happen.
So, and that just obviously is apublicist dream.
(37:34):
But I do feel like the you know,things are changing a lot, and
there's a lot of you know,publicity budgets are really
limited.
I know a lot of author friends,I mean, I've I've been one of
them in the past, who just likelook at their book and just
think, what is this?
You know, why is this just kindof died on the vine?
What is going on here?
So it's gonna be verydemoralizing.
And, you know, publishers buyum, you know, different kinds of
(37:58):
books and and and there's justno predicting, you know, what
the market's gonna want.
And when you write a book for acommercial publisher, your book
is a commodity and you you it'sintellectual property.
It's no longer yours once itstarts getting into production.
So you have to, I think you haveto understand that like your I
and I get very cynical aboutthis stuff.
(38:18):
Um when I when I teach, I say,you know, you just have to
understand that you're signingit away and it becomes one of
many brands of cereal, right?
And some people aren't gonnalike it.
The grocer's gonna put it on thebottom shelf and forget about
it, they're not gonna stock itanymore, um, because not enough
people are eating it.
So um, and you just have verylittle control of that.
(38:41):
You you can there's a lot youcan do.
And I think we try, you know,but um that that alone can be
demoralizing too, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (38:48):
Yeah, and with teaching, writing, and whatever
else one is doing to earn money,it's not like you have a lot of
spare time to be on socialmedia.
SPEAKER_00 (38:58):
Well, I will say it's difficult, but when you get
a national book club pick likethis, it's just joyful and you
feel like you keep pinchingyourself.
So I would never want to likeit's just uh uh pure luck.
SPEAKER_01 (39:10):
I think that's why I feel that for writers building
relationships with readers inany way possible, social media,
in person, podcasts, uh YouTube,it's so important because
readers want to connect with theauthor.
They've got questions of theirown.
Well, Bruce, I know you and Ican talk forever, but uh I've
(39:30):
taken up enough of your time.
Thank you for being on the show.
It was great speaking with youuh in Los Angeles at the
California Club and in SantaBarbara.
Uh it's just been wonderful andI can't wait to see you again.
I'm going to suggest to ourlisteners that they go back now
and read your backlist becausethey are wonderful books.
SPEAKER_00 (39:50):
Oh, good, good.
Well, thank you.
It's been such a pleasure totalk with you, Mandy.
SPEAKER_01 (39:54):
You've been listening to my conversation
with author Bruce Holsingerabout his novel Culpability.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media.
And remember to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to this podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(40:14):
thebookshoppodcast.com.
And make sure to subscribe andleave a review wherever you
listen to the show.
You can also follow me at MandyJacksonBeverly, on Instagram and
Facebook, and on YouTube at theBookshop Podcast.
If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
(40:36):
the contact form at thebookshoppodcast.com.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly.
Theme music provided by BrianBeverly and my personal
assistant is Kaylee DeShinger.
Thanks for listening, and I'llsee you next time.
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