July 28, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, I chat with Danielle Teller about how her creative journey defies conventional wisdom about career paths. From Yale-trained pulmonologist studying lung disease to acclaimed novelist, her story demonstrates how life's unexpected turns might lead us exactly where we're meant to be.
"I was a huge bookworm when I was a kid, but I was too chicken to actually write," Teller says. She explains how her fears centered on financial insecurity and feeling she lacked stories to tell, until a cross-country move disrupted her academic medical career and her husband encouraged her to pursue this long-held dream.
Teller's latest novel, Forged, transports readers to America's Gilded Age through the story of Fanny, a desperate young woman navigating a Darwinian world of social stratification and ruthless capitalism. What makes this historical fiction particularly compelling is Teller's revelation that our current era mirrors that period of extreme wealth disparities and political corruption. "I think that my research reinforced my feeling that we are in a second Gilded Age," she explains, describing the disturbing parallels between past and present.
Our conversation ventures beyond the novel to explore the publishing industry's subjective nature, including how finding the right agent resembles "matchmaking." Teller's unique perspective shapes characters who defy traditional female protagonist tropes, creating women who actively forge their own destinies despite societal constraints.
Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode to help more readers discover thought-provoking historical fiction that illuminates both past and present.
Danielle Teller
The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (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
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, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to Episode 300.
Danielle Teller received hermedical training at McGill
University, brown University andYale University.
She has held faculty positionsat the University of Pittsburgh
(01:00):
and Harvard University.
In 2013, danielle pursued herchildhood dream of being a
writer.
Danielle pursued her childhooddream of being a writer.
She co-wrote the nonfictionbook Sacred Cows the Truth About
Divorce and Marriage with herhusband, astro Teller, and has
written numerous columns forQuartz.
She lives with her husband andtheir four children in Palo Alto
, california.
Her first book of fiction wastitled All the Ever Afters the
(01:22):
Untold Story of Cinderella'sStepmother, and her latest novel
is titled Forged.
Hi, danielle, and welcome tothe show.
It's lovely to have you here.
Hi, I'm very happy to be here.
Thank you.
I thoroughly enjoyed readingyour new book, forged, and
here's a quick synopsis of thebook.
In the Gilded Age, a time ofabject poverty and obscene
(01:43):
wealth, a desperate andambitious young woman strikes
out for a new life in the risingindustrial cities of America.
Naive Fanny is thrust into aDarwinian world where she is
cast out and preyed upon, butshe's a survivor and quickly
learns from her struggles.
Thanks to her closeobservations of the mercenary
actors around her, fannydiscovers the power of illusion
(02:06):
and how it can overcome theimmutability of social class and
the ruthless rules ofcapitalism.
It's a fun read, thank you.
Let's start by learning a bitabout your background in
medicine and academia Beforeyour transition into writing.
What inspired the shift?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I think, like a lot of people, I always wanted to
write a book.
I always wanted to be a writer.
I was a huge bookworm when Iwas a kid but I was too chicken
to actually write.
I think it was two issues.
One was I wanted a secureincome and it's very hard to
(02:45):
make a living to feed yourselfwriting.
And then the other was I, whenI was young.
I felt like I didn't havestories that I needed to tell,
even though I loved consumingthem and I wanted to share that
experience with other people,but I didn't feel like I had the
material in my head.
Other people, but I didn't feellike I had the material in my
(03:07):
head.
So I embarked on a career inmedicine and I was really happy
in academic medicine.
It's a bit of a niche job.
I had a small lab and had a lotof freedom of inquiry in the
lab and I loved teaching thehouse staff super bright, super
motivated young people Lovedworking with them.
And what happened was you know,through the course of life and
(03:32):
the changes that we don't expectI had to move to California
from Boston because I wasremarried, getting remarried and
we were blending our youngfamilies getting remarried and
we were blending our youngfamilies, and I couldn't find a
job at that time that I loved asmuch as the one I was leaving.
(03:53):
So I was pretty unhappy aboutthat, and it was actually my
husband who said you've alwayswanted to write.
You don't have to bow down tothe sunk cost fallacy that
you've spent all this timestuffing your head full of
information.
But that's okay, you can change, you can do something
completely different, and so,yeah, that's why I changed.
(04:18):
I wish I could say that it wasmore of a choice on my part,
where I was driven to do it, butit really took a bit of a
carrot, and my part where I wasdriven to do it, but it really
took a bit of a carrot and stickto get me there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Well, it's never easy taking that first step into the
unknown, and it reminds me ofyour character, fanny, in your
book.
You know it took her a lot ofcourage to do what she did and
to take that first step.
Now you co-wrote a nonfictionbook titled Sacred Cows the
Truth About Divor, divorce andmarriage, with your husband,
astro Teller, and it waspublished in 2014.
(04:48):
And then, in 2018, your firstnovel, all the Ever Afters, the
untold story of Cinderella'sstepmother, was released, and
recently your novel Forged waspublished.
So what prompted the shift fromnonfiction to fiction?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
So what prompted the shift from nonfiction to fiction
?
I don't think of it really as ashift.
Sacred Cows was really aone-off.
It was a project that myhusband and I decided, kind of
on a whim, to do together, andit was really born of the fact
that we had both been throughdivorces and that's a tough time
in life, and we spent a lot oftime talking about it and we
(05:29):
were really surprised atourselves in a way, because,
like most people, we neverthought we would end up getting
divorced, and so I hadn't reallythought critically about the
process and about society'sattitudes surrounding marriage
and divorce, and what reallystruck us was the sort of
(05:53):
hypocrisy in so many of themessages that we get from
society.
And my husband, astro, is anentrepreneur and of course he's
so optimistic and thinks we cando anything, and so he said we
should write a book, and Ithought he was crazy, but I went
along with it, and so it was abit of catharsis for us, and it
was also trying to get a messageout to people who are in that
rough time that there arecompassionate people and that
(06:17):
you don't have to listen to allof the harsh, harsh messages
that you're getting from society.
So it wasn't that I everintended to become a nonfiction
writer.
It was just a spontaneousproject.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
All the Ever Afters and Forged center around strong
female protagonists, women borninto poverty who rise in society
, only to stumble as Fanny doesin Forged.
Was it the underdog struggleand rise to success that drew
you to these stories?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's interesting because they were both inspired
in completely different ways.
All the Ever Afters was reallyinspired by my own struggles
being a stepmother and realizinghow challenging it is for
stepchildren and stepparents.
You know that that is a veryfraught relationship.
And just again, thinking abouthow stepmothers are portrayed in
(07:19):
literature that I listened toabout this real life woman who
was born on a subsistence farmin Canada and ended up
defrauding banks of millions ofdollars and it wasn't until I
started writing Forge that Irealized how similar these, that
both rags to riches stories and, as you say, both underdog
(07:44):
stories.
So it wasn't deliberate on mypart, but I do think that I want
to write stories about womenwho have some agency and who
really actively take part intheir fates.
I think too often when we readstories about a male protagonist
(08:05):
, they're the heroes, and femaleprotagonists often are acted
upon by the world, which ofcourse, they are in my stories
as well.
But I did love the little twistat the end.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I found that Grace arguably emerged as the true
hero.
I wondered while writing thenovel did you ever consider
having Fanny stay with Grace,and what ultimately made you
decide to have her take the lesssafe or perhaps more courageous
step and leave the householdless safe or perhaps more?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
courageous step and leave the household.
I think that Fanny was alwaysgoing to be a bit of a villain.
I like these morally ambiguouscharacters.
I think both stepmother andFanny slash Kitty are not great
people in some ways and theydon't always act with integrity.
Certainly not Kitty.
She is a criminal and hurtspeople around her in many ways,
(09:12):
and so I think Grace really isthere as a sort of moral
counterweight, sort of showingthe path of a woman who had just
as many challenges, maybe more,than Fanny had, and who stuck
to the straight and narrow.
(09:33):
I think Kitty was always goingto be a duplicitous and criminal
actor.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The rebel.
Yes, let's talk a little aboutthe process of writing this
story, because I'm wonderingwhat came first in your process
the story of an impoverishedyoung girl or the idea of using
extreme societal and wealthdisparities of the Gilded Age as
your backdrop?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I can't say that one came first.
I was really interested in both.
Again, I listened to thispodcast and was fascinated with
this real life character fromthe Gilded Age and being a
Canadian and she was Canadian Ithought, why have I never heard
of this woman?
And so I got really interestedin her story.
But I also have long felt thatwe are moving into a second
(10:21):
Gilded Age in many ways, and soI wanted to tell that story as
well.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, you think of the Gilded Age and the perfect
word is disparity, the hugespace between the rich, the
wealthy in New York at that timeand the people living in
poverty.
I mean, if you look at oldphotographs of that time, it's
just tragic and, as you said,somewhat scary, because we're
seeing a lot of that imbalanceacross the country now.
(10:50):
As you were researching forForged, were there any
historical facts or details thatyou found especially surprising
, fascinating or disturbing?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
So I think that my research reinforced my feeling
that we are in a second GildedAge.
The amount of cronyism andpolitical corruption was much
deeper than I realized before Istarted doing my research.
You know there was so muchoverlap between public and
private enterprises, which againwe're seeing now in spades, and
(11:26):
I also wasn't aware.
We think of progress, as alwaysmoving in a positive direction,
and of course there were somany changes with
industrialization that broughtgood to the world.
But I hadn't realized that lifeexpectancies took a big step
(11:48):
backward, that people were a lotless healthy, that during that
time when people were shovedtogether in these big cities
without proper sanitation, thatthere were cholera outbreaks and
, yeah, child mortality was veryhigh.
And I think also when we seedepictions of the Gilded Age on
(12:12):
television or in movies, wedon't see the mountains of
garbage and manure that were inNew York at that time.
The streets were just awash init and apparently they would
pile the manure in any empty lot.
They were like these minimountains of horse manure and we
(12:33):
tend to think of the beautifulgowns and the fancy mansions
from that era, but don't thinkmuch about how the 99% were
living, which was not great atthat time I was also interested
because I was writing aboutwomen in that era.
I was surprised to find thatthere were women who were making
(12:56):
their way in a men's world inways that I hadn't realized.
There were women self-mademillionaires, and we don't hear
enough about those people.
I think.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Something that comes to my mind, which is just tragic
during that time, is the amountof children who are destitute,
abandoned.
They lost their parents andthey became orphans.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And the working conditions are horrendous.
And I feel, in a way, thatwe're going back to that a
little bit in.
When you think about Amazonworkers who can't afford to put
food on the table, and then wehave these billionaire CEOs
going to space and their littlephallic rockets.
It's very similar.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, it is similar and terrifying and just
heartbreaking.
Let's talk about your journeywith publishing.
Can you share your publishingstory with us, from your first
finished manuscript to signingwith an agent and securing a
book deal?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It was circuitous, as many of these journeys are.
We had an agent for Sacred Cowswho wasn't interested in the
novel, so I had to find a newagent and was lucky enough to
interest Michael Carlisle fromInkwell Management.
And it was a bit of a funnystory because I am absolutely
(14:24):
terrible at self-promotion and Ithought I had sort of sent a
very positive note to him withthe manuscript and he just
assumed he was going to tell meto go away and, you know, go to
a writing conference orsomething.
And then he read it andabsolutely loved it.
And it was so funny because Ithought I had done such a great
(14:45):
job Not a great job at the book,but I thought I had done such a
great job and not a great jobat the book, but I thought I had
presented myself in a goodlight.
And when he read what I wroteabout myself he was like, oh,
she obviously doesn't know whatshe's doing and it's not really
worth reading this.
But I'm glad he did, I'm gladhe read it and I'm glad he fell
in love with it.
I think so much of this processis like dating, where the
(15:05):
chemistry just has to be rightand because some people reject
it doesn't mean that someoneelse is not going to think it's
great.
So he took it on.
He knew from the outset that itwas a little bit of an unusual
book.
It didn't really fit neatlyinto any one category, and so it
took him a long time to find ahome for it.
(15:28):
And he did find a home withJennifer Brill at William Morrow
, and that was a similar storywhere she you know it just spoke
to her, and so she arguedforcefully for it to get it
published, and so that's how itfound a home after many
(15:49):
rejections.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Just to go back on a couple of things that you've
raised rejections.
Just to go back on a couple ofthings that you've raised.
One of them is that, yes, mostcreatives live a solitary life
while they're working on aproject and for authors, often
the difficult part of writing isactually writing that query
letter and, as you said, writingsomething about yourself which
is short, concise and kind offits in a nutshell.
(16:12):
And I think that unknown andthat insecurity for authors or
some authors, I should say isstill there when it comes to
self-promotion once their bookis published.
And I have noticed this throughspeaking with other authors,
you know, through interviews orconversations.
Nobody has taught these peoplehow to have a conversation with
(16:34):
someone who's interested intheir work and for many it's
difficult talking aboutthemselves and their work, not
to mention being on social media.
Talking about what they'redoing is also something that's
difficult for so many authors.
Yeah, oh, that's interesting.
And getting back to you andyour query letter, you were so
darn lucky that your agent readyour manuscript.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yes, so lucky, yeah, and there's so much luck in this
process which I think peoplewho haven't experienced it for
themselves don't realize.
There's so many great novelsthat never see the light of day,
and then there's some not sogreat that end up flourishing,
and I think there's just a lotof randomness.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yes, randomness and everything is subjective.
You never know what is going onin someone's life that day,
that moment that they startreading your query letter or
reading your first chapter.
You just don't know and thatcan affect how they relate to
your story and to your nutshellof information about yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, so that your book has some chemistry with
some reader.
That's really what it's.
Yeah, it's like matchmaking.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Oh, I like that matchmaking for authors.
I did want to ask you a littlebit more about your writing
process, in particular theresearch.
Did you do all of the researchat one time and then sit down to
do your first draft, or did youkind of go back and forth and
back and forth?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I always do research as I'm writing as well, but I am
, you know, not being ahistorian and not knowing that
much about that era.
I did read a bunch of books andtook a lot of notes before I
started, but even as I'm going,the internet is such a wonderful
resource now for historicaldetails, using people who post
(18:27):
videos of how historicalgarments are constructed and
interiors of historicalbuildings.
And it used to be in the olddays you had to actually go to
these places and now you can doeverything from your laptop
pretty much.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, I often wonder what my mom and dad would have
thought of all this.
Okay, Danielle, let's talkabout books.
What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I am reading Goddess Complex by Sanjana Sethian,
which is a really refreshinglydifferent book.
I have a wonderful book cluband we are reading Orbital by
Samantha Harvey, which is alsoan unusual book.
And I have a book it's notliterally on my bed stand, but
it's one of those books that yousort of pick up and you read in
(19:11):
little chunks which is theElements of Eloquence by Mark
Forsyth.
It's a wonderfully witty bookabout words and prose and it's
poetry and prose.
Actually it's a really fun readand it has very short chapters
and I just gobble up a littlechapter and then put it down
(19:32):
again.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I have that book and I love it, and I agree with what
you said about sometimes youjust need something to read when
you don't have a lot of time or, in the case of this book, you
just want to be nourished,literally.
I find I'm like that withnonfiction.
I find it difficult to sit downand read a whole nonfiction
book at one time, and quiteoften I'll get the audio as well
(19:54):
as the book, listen to it andone chapter and then go read it,
or the opposite read it andthen listen to it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Do you read books on paper exclusively?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I'd say for about the past nine years I've only read
paperbacks and hardcovers.
I'm in front of a computer or aphone for a big part of the day
and I just found it's too much.
I don't want to read a book ona Kindle or, you know, a tablet.
I went through a stage where Ienjoyed it, but not anymore, and
(20:25):
also for my work for thepodcast and for the in-person
interviews I do with authors, Isticky note all over the book,
so I, you know I like to be ableto do that Now.
I know that you can bookmark on, you know, an ebook, but that's
not how my brain works.
I do want to ask you one thingbefore we go what kind of
(20:48):
science were you?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
exploring.
So my specialty was pulmonary,which is lung medicine and
critical care.
Traditionally in the US, lungdoctors became the heads of the
intensive care units, notexclusively, but those two
things were married, becauseventilators were actually what
created the modern ICU.
(21:09):
And so for my research Istudied chronic lung disease and
more specifically, a conditioncalled idiopathic pulmonary
fibrosis, which is a bigmouthful, but it's a disease
that people die from progressivescarring of the lung tissue and
(21:32):
they have a harder and hardertime breathing.
It's a terrible disease and thecause of it is unknown, which
is what idiopathic means, and Iwas fascinated with that, and
not just that specific disease.
But when we have organ failureof any kind, the ultimate cause
(21:54):
of failure is scarring.
You know, when the tissue isattacked in certain ways and it
can't regenerate, normally whatwe end up with is scar tissue.
And so heart failure, liverfailure, lung failure, all in
the chronic sense, they allresult in scarring.
And so I was searching for waysto either prevent that scarring
(22:16):
or try to reverse some of it.
Do you miss it?
I miss certain aspects of it.
I mostly miss working withmentees and students.
I love that and I do miss thescientific inquiry part of it.
There are a lot of parts Idon't miss.
(22:37):
There is a lot of red tape anda lot of working through the
weekend and right now.
My friends who are still in thebusiness have had a really
tough time because of coursethey bore the brunt of the COVID
epidemic in the intensive, havehad a really tough time because
of course they bore the bruntof the COVID epidemic in the
intensive care units and they'velost a lot of staff and things
(23:01):
have just been tough from thatperspective.
And now with NIH money dryingup, it means there's a lot of
insecurity, you know peopledropping out of research and so
right now I'm very grateful tobe doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
A few years ago I had some conversations with nurses
who had moved from New York outto Los Angeles.
They worked in intensive careand they were working through
the worst of you know, thepandemic in New York.
They said they needed a littleself-healing and sunshine
because they were so physicallyand emotionally drained and, of
(23:43):
course, overworked.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, it was a terribly traumatic time for the
workers and so hard to see thesepeople dying without their
families close by, because ofcourse they weren't allowed to
let people, they weren't allowedto let visitors in, and that
was so heartbreaking for thestaff to watch.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
With this thought in mind, I have a question Do you
know if people in the medicalprofession are now getting the
mental health care that theyneed, that they were told they
would receive?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
There's a real ethos of stoicism in medicine, at
least in my generation.
I think things have changedquite a bit over the years and
that the younger generation aremore open to getting help and
they're taking better care ofthemselves.
But when we were going throughtraining and so on, it was all
about just being as tough as youcan and not showing emotion and
(24:34):
getting through and not eventhinking about yourself.
And I think it's a lot tougherfor nurses than doctors too,
because they're both in thesense of the trauma.
They're closer to the patients,they spend a lot more time with
them, they get to know theirfamilies better, but also they
have to take orders from otherpeople, and that just makes
(24:56):
everything a lot tougher.
I think they have a really,really hard job.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, they do.
I would be remiss if I didn'tsay anything about the cover of
Forged.
It is gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I love it.
Yes, I really love the cover.
There's so much to see.
I didn't actually that centralthe fountain pen shape.
I didn't realize what it was atfirst.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, it's very clever.
Thank you so much for being aguest on the show.
It's been great chatting withyou and I apologize for kind of
going off track a little bittowards the end, but I am
fascinated with people's lifestories, and yours is
interesting.
Thanks again, danielle, and Iwish you all the best of luck.
Thank you so much, mandy.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
This was really fun.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You've been listening to my conversation with
Danielle Teller about her newbook Forged.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(25:57):
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You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on Instagram
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If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
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(26:18):
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The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, mandy
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my executive assistant andgraphic designer is Adrian
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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, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to Episode 300.
Danielle Teller received hermedical training at McGill
University, brown University andYale University.
She has held faculty positionsat the University of Pittsburgh
(01:00):
and Harvard University.
In 2013, danielle pursued herchildhood dream of being a
writer.
Danielle pursued her childhooddream of being a writer.
She co-wrote the nonfictionbook Sacred Cows the Truth About
Divorce and Marriage with herhusband, astro Teller, and has
written numerous columns forQuartz.
She lives with her husband andtheir four children in Palo Alto
, california.
Her first book of fiction wastitled All the Ever Afters the
(01:22):
Untold Story of Cinderella'sStepmother, and her latest novel
is titled Forged.
Hi, danielle, and welcome tothe show.
It's lovely to have you here.
Hi, I'm very happy to be here.
Thank you.
I thoroughly enjoyed readingyour new book, forged, and
here's a quick synopsis of thebook.
In the Gilded Age, a time ofabject poverty and obscene
(01:43):
wealth, a desperate andambitious young woman strikes
out for a new life in the risingindustrial cities of America.
Naive Fanny is thrust into aDarwinian world where she is
cast out and preyed upon, butshe's a survivor and quickly
learns from her struggles.
Thanks to her closeobservations of the mercenary
actors around her, fannydiscovers the power of illusion
(02:06):
and how it can overcome theimmutability of social class and
the ruthless rules ofcapitalism.
It's a fun read, thank you.
Let's start by learning a bitabout your background in
medicine and academia Beforeyour transition into writing.
What inspired the shift?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I think, like a lot of people, I always wanted to
write a book.
I always wanted to be a writer.
I was a huge bookworm when Iwas a kid but I was too chicken
to actually write.
I think it was two issues.
One was I wanted a secureincome and it's very hard to
(02:45):
make a living to feed yourselfwriting.
And then the other was I, whenI was young.
I felt like I didn't havestories that I needed to tell,
even though I loved consumingthem and I wanted to share that
experience with other people,but I didn't feel like I had the
material in my head.
Other people, but I didn't feellike I had the material in my
(03:07):
head.
So I embarked on a career inmedicine and I was really happy
in academic medicine.
It's a bit of a niche job.
I had a small lab and had a lotof freedom of inquiry in the
lab and I loved teaching thehouse staff super bright, super
motivated young people Lovedworking with them.
And what happened was you know,through the course of life and
(03:32):
the changes that we don't expectI had to move to California
from Boston because I wasremarried, getting remarried and
we were blending our youngfamilies getting remarried and
we were blending our youngfamilies, and I couldn't find a
job at that time that I loved asmuch as the one I was leaving.
(03:53):
So I was pretty unhappy aboutthat, and it was actually my
husband who said you've alwayswanted to write.
You don't have to bow down tothe sunk cost fallacy that
you've spent all this timestuffing your head full of
information.
But that's okay, you can change, you can do something
completely different, and so,yeah, that's why I changed.
(04:18):
I wish I could say that it wasmore of a choice on my part,
where I was driven to do it, butit really took a bit of a
carrot, and my part where I wasdriven to do it, but it really
took a bit of a carrot and stickto get me there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Well, it's never easy taking that first step into the
unknown, and it reminds me ofyour character, fanny, in your
book.
You know it took her a lot ofcourage to do what she did and
to take that first step.
Now you co-wrote a nonfictionbook titled Sacred Cows the
Truth About Divor, divorce andmarriage, with your husband,
astro Teller, and it waspublished in 2014.
(04:48):
And then, in 2018, your firstnovel, all the Ever Afters, the
untold story of Cinderella'sstepmother, was released, and
recently your novel Forged waspublished.
So what prompted the shift fromnonfiction to fiction?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
So what prompted the shift from nonfiction to fiction
?
I don't think of it really as ashift.
Sacred Cows was really aone-off.
It was a project that myhusband and I decided, kind of
on a whim, to do together, andit was really born of the fact
that we had both been throughdivorces and that's a tough time
in life, and we spent a lot oftime talking about it and we
(05:29):
were really surprised atourselves in a way, because,
like most people, we neverthought we would end up getting
divorced, and so I hadn't reallythought critically about the
process and about society'sattitudes surrounding marriage
and divorce, and what reallystruck us was the sort of
(05:53):
hypocrisy in so many of themessages that we get from
society.
And my husband, astro, is anentrepreneur and of course he's
so optimistic and thinks we cando anything, and so he said we
should write a book, and Ithought he was crazy, but I went
along with it, and so it was abit of catharsis for us, and it
was also trying to get a messageout to people who are in that
rough time that there arecompassionate people and that
(06:17):
you don't have to listen to allof the harsh, harsh messages
that you're getting from society.
So it wasn't that I everintended to become a nonfiction
writer.
It was just a spontaneousproject.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
All the Ever Afters and Forged center around strong
female protagonists, women borninto poverty who rise in society
, only to stumble as Fanny doesin Forged.
Was it the underdog struggleand rise to success that drew
you to these stories?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's interesting because they were both inspired
in completely different ways.
All the Ever Afters was reallyinspired by my own struggles
being a stepmother and realizinghow challenging it is for
stepchildren and stepparents.
You know that that is a veryfraught relationship.
And just again, thinking abouthow stepmothers are portrayed in
(07:19):
literature that I listened toabout this real life woman who
was born on a subsistence farmin Canada and ended up
defrauding banks of millions ofdollars and it wasn't until I
started writing Forge that Irealized how similar these, that
both rags to riches stories and, as you say, both underdog
(07:44):
stories.
So it wasn't deliberate on mypart, but I do think that I want
to write stories about womenwho have some agency and who
really actively take part intheir fates.
I think too often when we readstories about a male protagonist
(08:05):
, they're the heroes, and femaleprotagonists often are acted
upon by the world, which ofcourse, they are in my stories
as well.
But I did love the little twistat the end.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I found that Grace arguably emerged as the true
hero.
I wondered while writing thenovel did you ever consider
having Fanny stay with Grace,and what ultimately made you
decide to have her take the lesssafe or perhaps more courageous
step and leave the householdless safe or perhaps more?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
courageous step and leave the household.
I think that Fanny was alwaysgoing to be a bit of a villain.
I like these morally ambiguouscharacters.
I think both stepmother andFanny slash Kitty are not great
people in some ways and theydon't always act with integrity.
Certainly not Kitty.
She is a criminal and hurtspeople around her in many ways,
(09:12):
and so I think Grace really isthere as a sort of moral
counterweight, sort of showingthe path of a woman who had just
as many challenges, maybe more,than Fanny had, and who stuck
to the straight and narrow.
(09:33):
I think Kitty was always goingto be a duplicitous and criminal
actor.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The rebel.
Yes, let's talk a little aboutthe process of writing this
story, because I'm wonderingwhat came first in your process
the story of an impoverishedyoung girl or the idea of using
extreme societal and wealthdisparities of the Gilded Age as
your backdrop?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I can't say that one came first.
I was really interested in both.
Again, I listened to thispodcast and was fascinated with
this real life character fromthe Gilded Age and being a
Canadian and she was Canadian Ithought, why have I never heard
of this woman?
And so I got really interestedin her story.
But I also have long felt thatwe are moving into a second
(10:21):
Gilded Age in many ways, and soI wanted to tell that story as
well.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, you think of the Gilded Age and the perfect
word is disparity, the hugespace between the rich, the
wealthy in New York at that timeand the people living in
poverty.
I mean, if you look at oldphotographs of that time, it's
just tragic and, as you said,somewhat scary, because we're
seeing a lot of that imbalanceacross the country now.
(10:50):
As you were researching forForged, were there any
historical facts or details thatyou found especially surprising
, fascinating or disturbing?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
So I think that my research reinforced my feeling
that we are in a second GildedAge.
The amount of cronyism andpolitical corruption was much
deeper than I realized before Istarted doing my research.
You know there was so muchoverlap between public and
private enterprises, which againwe're seeing now in spades, and
(11:26):
I also wasn't aware.
We think of progress, as alwaysmoving in a positive direction,
and of course there were somany changes with
industrialization that broughtgood to the world.
But I hadn't realized that lifeexpectancies took a big step
(11:48):
backward, that people were a lotless healthy, that during that
time when people were shovedtogether in these big cities
without proper sanitation, thatthere were cholera outbreaks and
, yeah, child mortality was veryhigh.
And I think also when we seedepictions of the Gilded Age on
(12:12):
television or in movies, wedon't see the mountains of
garbage and manure that were inNew York at that time.
The streets were just awash init and apparently they would
pile the manure in any empty lot.
They were like these minimountains of horse manure and we
(12:33):
tend to think of the beautifulgowns and the fancy mansions
from that era, but don't thinkmuch about how the 99% were
living, which was not great atthat time I was also interested
because I was writing aboutwomen in that era.
I was surprised to find thatthere were women who were making
(12:56):
their way in a men's world inways that I hadn't realized.
There were women self-mademillionaires, and we don't hear
enough about those people.
I think.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Something that comes to my mind, which is just tragic
during that time, is the amountof children who are destitute,
abandoned.
They lost their parents andthey became orphans.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And the working conditions are horrendous.
And I feel, in a way, thatwe're going back to that a
little bit in.
When you think about Amazonworkers who can't afford to put
food on the table, and then wehave these billionaire CEOs
going to space and their littlephallic rockets.
It's very similar.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, it is similar and terrifying and just
heartbreaking.
Let's talk about your journeywith publishing.
Can you share your publishingstory with us, from your first
finished manuscript to signingwith an agent and securing a
book deal?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It was circuitous, as many of these journeys are.
We had an agent for Sacred Cowswho wasn't interested in the
novel, so I had to find a newagent and was lucky enough to
interest Michael Carlisle fromInkwell Management.
And it was a bit of a funnystory because I am absolutely
(14:24):
terrible at self-promotion and Ithought I had sort of sent a
very positive note to him withthe manuscript and he just
assumed he was going to tell meto go away and, you know, go to
a writing conference orsomething.
And then he read it andabsolutely loved it.
And it was so funny because Ithought I had done such a great
(14:45):
job Not a great job at the book,but I thought I had done such a
great job and not a great jobat the book, but I thought I had
presented myself in a goodlight.
And when he read what I wroteabout myself he was like, oh,
she obviously doesn't know whatshe's doing and it's not really
worth reading this.
But I'm glad he did, I'm gladhe read it and I'm glad he fell
in love with it.
I think so much of this processis like dating, where the
(15:05):
chemistry just has to be rightand because some people reject
it doesn't mean that someoneelse is not going to think it's
great.
So he took it on.
He knew from the outset that itwas a little bit of an unusual
book.
It didn't really fit neatlyinto any one category, and so it
took him a long time to find ahome for it.
(15:28):
And he did find a home withJennifer Brill at William Morrow
, and that was a similar storywhere she you know it just spoke
to her, and so she arguedforcefully for it to get it
published, and so that's how itfound a home after many
(15:49):
rejections.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Just to go back on a couple of things that you've
raised rejections.
Just to go back on a couple ofthings that you've raised.
One of them is that, yes, mostcreatives live a solitary life
while they're working on aproject and for authors, often
the difficult part of writing isactually writing that query
letter and, as you said, writingsomething about yourself which
is short, concise and kind offits in a nutshell.
(16:12):
And I think that unknown andthat insecurity for authors or
some authors, I should say isstill there when it comes to
self-promotion once their bookis published.
And I have noticed this throughspeaking with other authors,
you know, through interviews orconversations.
Nobody has taught these peoplehow to have a conversation with
(16:34):
someone who's interested intheir work and for many it's
difficult talking aboutthemselves and their work, not
to mention being on social media.
Talking about what they'redoing is also something that's
difficult for so many authors.
Yeah, oh, that's interesting.
And getting back to you andyour query letter, you were so
darn lucky that your agent readyour manuscript.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yes, so lucky, yeah, and there's so much luck in this
process which I think peoplewho haven't experienced it for
themselves don't realize.
There's so many great novelsthat never see the light of day,
and then there's some not sogreat that end up flourishing,
and I think there's just a lotof randomness.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yes, randomness and everything is subjective.
You never know what is going onin someone's life that day,
that moment that they startreading your query letter or
reading your first chapter.
You just don't know and thatcan affect how they relate to
your story and to your nutshellof information about yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, so that your book has some chemistry with
some reader.
That's really what it's.
Yeah, it's like matchmaking.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Oh, I like that matchmaking for authors.
I did want to ask you a littlebit more about your writing
process, in particular theresearch.
Did you do all of the researchat one time and then sit down to
do your first draft, or did youkind of go back and forth and
back and forth?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I always do research as I'm writing as well, but I am
, you know, not being ahistorian and not knowing that
much about that era.
I did read a bunch of books andtook a lot of notes before I
started, but even as I'm going,the internet is such a wonderful
resource now for historicaldetails, using people who post
(18:27):
videos of how historicalgarments are constructed and
interiors of historicalbuildings.
And it used to be in the olddays you had to actually go to
these places and now you can doeverything from your laptop
pretty much.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, I often wonder what my mom and dad would have
thought of all this.
Okay, Danielle, let's talkabout books.
What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I am reading Goddess Complex by Sanjana Sethian,
which is a really refreshinglydifferent book.
I have a wonderful book cluband we are reading Orbital by
Samantha Harvey, which is alsoan unusual book.
And I have a book it's notliterally on my bed stand, but
it's one of those books that yousort of pick up and you read in
(19:11):
little chunks which is theElements of Eloquence by Mark
Forsyth.
It's a wonderfully witty bookabout words and prose and it's
poetry and prose.
Actually it's a really fun readand it has very short chapters
and I just gobble up a littlechapter and then put it down
(19:32):
again.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I have that book and I love it, and I agree with what
you said about sometimes youjust need something to read when
you don't have a lot of time or, in the case of this book, you
just want to be nourished,literally.
I find I'm like that withnonfiction.
I find it difficult to sit downand read a whole nonfiction
book at one time, and quiteoften I'll get the audio as well
(19:54):
as the book, listen to it andone chapter and then go read it,
or the opposite read it andthen listen to it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Do you read books on paper exclusively?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I'd say for about the past nine years I've only read
paperbacks and hardcovers.
I'm in front of a computer or aphone for a big part of the day
and I just found it's too much.
I don't want to read a book ona Kindle or, you know, a tablet.
I went through a stage where Ienjoyed it, but not anymore, and
(20:25):
also for my work for thepodcast and for the in-person
interviews I do with authors, Isticky note all over the book,
so I, you know I like to be ableto do that Now.
I know that you can bookmark on, you know, an ebook, but that's
not how my brain works.
I do want to ask you one thingbefore we go what kind of
(20:48):
science were you?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
exploring.
So my specialty was pulmonary,which is lung medicine and
critical care.
Traditionally in the US, lungdoctors became the heads of the
intensive care units, notexclusively, but those two
things were married, becauseventilators were actually what
created the modern ICU.
(21:09):
And so for my research Istudied chronic lung disease and
more specifically, a conditioncalled idiopathic pulmonary
fibrosis, which is a bigmouthful, but it's a disease
that people die from progressivescarring of the lung tissue and
(21:32):
they have a harder and hardertime breathing.
It's a terrible disease and thecause of it is unknown, which
is what idiopathic means, and Iwas fascinated with that, and
not just that specific disease.
But when we have organ failureof any kind, the ultimate cause
(21:54):
of failure is scarring.
You know, when the tissue isattacked in certain ways and it
can't regenerate, normally whatwe end up with is scar tissue.
And so heart failure, liverfailure, lung failure, all in
the chronic sense, they allresult in scarring.
And so I was searching for waysto either prevent that scarring
(22:16):
or try to reverse some of it.
Do you miss it?
I miss certain aspects of it.
I mostly miss working withmentees and students.
I love that and I do miss thescientific inquiry part of it.
There are a lot of parts Idon't miss.
(22:37):
There is a lot of red tape anda lot of working through the
weekend and right now.
My friends who are still in thebusiness have had a really
tough time because of coursethey bore the brunt of the COVID
epidemic in the intensive, havehad a really tough time because
of course they bore the bruntof the COVID epidemic in the
intensive care units and they'velost a lot of staff and things
(23:01):
have just been tough from thatperspective.
And now with NIH money dryingup, it means there's a lot of
insecurity, you know peopledropping out of research and so
right now I'm very grateful tobe doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
A few years ago I had some conversations with nurses
who had moved from New York outto Los Angeles.
They worked in intensive careand they were working through
the worst of you know, thepandemic in New York.
They said they needed a littleself-healing and sunshine
because they were so physicallyand emotionally drained and, of
(23:43):
course, overworked.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, it was a terribly traumatic time for the
workers and so hard to see thesepeople dying without their
families close by, because ofcourse they weren't allowed to
let people, they weren't allowedto let visitors in, and that
was so heartbreaking for thestaff to watch.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
With this thought in mind, I have a question Do you
know if people in the medicalprofession are now getting the
mental health care that theyneed, that they were told they
would receive?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
There's a real ethos of stoicism in medicine, at
least in my generation.
I think things have changedquite a bit over the years and
that the younger generation aremore open to getting help and
they're taking better care ofthemselves.
But when we were going throughtraining and so on, it was all
about just being as tough as youcan and not showing emotion and
(24:34):
getting through and not eventhinking about yourself.
And I think it's a lot tougherfor nurses than doctors too,
because they're both in thesense of the trauma.
They're closer to the patients,they spend a lot more time with
them, they get to know theirfamilies better, but also they
have to take orders from otherpeople, and that just makes
(24:56):
everything a lot tougher.
I think they have a really,really hard job.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, they do.
I would be remiss if I didn'tsay anything about the cover of
Forged.
It is gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I love it.
Yes, I really love the cover.
There's so much to see.
I didn't actually that centralthe fountain pen shape.
I didn't realize what it was atfirst.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, it's very clever.
Thank you so much for being aguest on the show.
It's been great chatting withyou and I apologize for kind of
going off track a little bittowards the end, but I am
fascinated with people's lifestories, and yours is
interesting.
Thanks again, danielle, and Iwish you all the best of luck.
Thank you so much, mandy.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
This was really fun.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You've been listening to my conversation with
Danielle Teller about her newbook Forged.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
(25:57):
thebookshoppodcastcom and makesure to subscribe and leave a
review wherever you listen tothe show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on Instagram
and Facebook and on YouTube atthe Bookshop 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
(26:18):
the contact form atthebookshoppodcastcom.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, mandy
Jackson-Beverly, theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly, and
my executive assistant andgraphic designer is Adrian
Otterhan.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you next time.
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