June 25, 2025 • 36 mins
“Those moments of connection when you can have them with people who seem so different from you on the outside, I really do think that it braids a level of connectiveness and empathy, and it is much harder to harden your heart.” — Gayle Forman
What does it mean to rise to the occasion, not once, but over and over again? Sometimes it means reckoning with grief. Other times it means stumbling forward, messing up, and trying again. And sometimes it means simply showing up, imperfect, but still trying to be better.
Gayle Forman is the bestselling author of If I Stay, Frankie & Bug, Not Nothing, Afterlife and more. Whether it’s Mia in If I Stay, Alex in Not Nothing, or Amber in Afterlife, her characters often walk a jagged path toward healing, falling short, trying again, and inching closer to the people they hope to become.
In this episode, Gayle talks about growing up as a self-described “odd duck,” the Ramona books that shaped her childhood and parenting, and the formative years she spent traveling solo. She opens up about why she is so drawn to flawed characters and how fiction became a way to survive grief and stay connected to the people she has lost.
***
For her reading challenge, Flawed, Gayle is going to bat for the prickly, messy, not-here-to-be-liked protagonists. She points out that kids are used to reading about heroes, but it can be just as powerful, maybe even more so, to read about characters who fall short and grow anyway.
Peruse selected titles and Gayle’s full reading challenge for free at thereadingculturepod.com/gayle-forman.
This week’s Beanstack Featured Librarian is Lori Shallio, media specialist at Heritage Intermediate School in Middlebury, Indiana. She shares how a Hot Ones-style challenge involving her principal and spicy nuggets helped students smash their community reading goal.
Show Chapters
Chapter 1: What We Carry
Chapter 2: Odd Ducks
Chapter 3: Top School, Bottom Marks
Chapter 4: Beezus and Ramona
Chapter 5: University of Life
Chapter 6: What We Share
Chapter 7: Mind the Gap
Chapter 8: Embrace It
Chapter 9: Rise to the Occasion
Chapter 10: Reading Challenge
Chapter 11: Beanstack Featured Librarian
Links
- The Reading Culture
- The Reading Culture Newsletter Signup
- Follow The Reading Culture on Instagram (for giveaways and bonus content)
- Gayle Forman
- Gayle Forman Instagram
- Beezus and Ramona
- Countesthorpe Academy
- If I Stay (film)
- Sassy Magazine
- Yom Kippur
- Beanstack resources to build your community’s reading culture
- Jordan Lloyd Bookey
Host and Production Credits
Host: Jordan Lloyd Bookey
Producers: Mel Webb and Lower Street Media
Script Editors: Josia Lamberto-Egan, Mel Webb, Jordan Lloyd Bookey
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gayle Forman (00:04):
Those moments of connection, when you can have
them with people who seem sodifferent from you on the
outside, I really do think thatit it breeds a level of
connectiveness and empathy, andit is much harder to harden your
heart.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (00:21):
Life and writing are all about
connection, true connectionbetween people, the kind that
bridges across differences,across borders, across years,
and even across our own flawsand worst mistakes. That kind of
relationship can inspire us tobecome our best self, though
progress in that direction ofteninvolves showing up, getting it
(00:45):
wrong, and trying over and over.
Gayle Forman (00:50):
In some years, I've done better than others.
And on the years that I've donereally well, I know that, like,
I'm gonna atone and start overand screw up all over again, and
that's just the work of life.It's just inching closer to the
person that I wanna be.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (01:03):
Gail Foreman is the best selling
author of If I Stay, Frankie andBug, Not Nothing, Afterlife, and
many more. Before becoming anovelist, she was a journalist
for 17 magazine. Her workexplores grief, memory,
identity, and this slowimperfect process of growing
into the person we hope tobecome. In this episode, Gail
(01:26):
talks about growing up as a selfdescribed odd duck, the Ramona
books that shaped both her lifeand her parenting, and the
formative years she spenttraveling solo. She opens up
about the loss that inspired IfI Stay, why she's drawn to
flawed characters, and howfiction became a way to survive
grief and stay connected to thepeople she's lost.
(01:50):
My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie,and this is the reading culture,
a show where we speak withdiverse authors about ways to
build a stronger culture ofreading in our community. We
dive deep into their personalexperiences and inspirations.
Our show is made possible byBeanstack, the leading solution
for motivating people to readmore. Learn more at
(02:11):
beanstack.com, and make sure tocheck us out on Instagram at the
readingculturepod and subscribeto our newsletter for bonus
content at thereadingculturepod.com forward
slash newsletter alright on tothe show Hey, listeners. Are you
(02:32):
looking for a fun, easy way totrack your reading and earn cool
rewards?
Well, meet Beanstack, theultimate reading app used by a
community of over 15,000schools, libraries, and
organizations nationwide. Areyou an avid reader? Check with
your local library to see ifthey offer Beanstack for free. A
(02:53):
parent? Ask your child's teacherif the school library already
uses Beanstack.
And if you are an educatorsearching for a fresh
alternative to acceleratedreader, Beanstack is the perfect
tool to cultivate a thrivingreading culture. Ready to turn
the page? Visit beanstack.com tolearn more. Before she became a
(03:17):
best selling author, before If IStay was turned into a film that
topped the charts, Gailexperienced a real life brutal
tragedy.
Gayle Forman (03:28):
The big loss that I think informs a lot of my work
and definitely is the DNA ofthis book and was the reason I
wrote If I Stay in the FirstPlace was in 02/2001, my husband
and I are two best friends andtheir two kids died in a car
crash. And it was just sort of alife altering event because it
(03:49):
was this huge loss, but alsojust that an entire family
ceased to exist in an instantwas sort of horrible and mind
blowing. And, you know, Iassumed that I would either
never see my friends again or ifthere was some afterlife, which
I kind of doubted there was atthat point, I would see them
when I died. Neither of whichsort of felt very comforting in
the moment. But then thesereally strange things started to
(04:10):
happen, which is I had a dreamthat felt so distinctly like a
visitation.
I've never had a dream like thatsince where my friend was
bringing me the little boy who'svery much like the Teddy in If I
Stay to say goodbye to. And itjust shook me to the core. And
then a couple months later, myhusband and I were traveling in
New Zealand, we were in thiscamper van on a remote road. We
(04:32):
just turned to each other. Andat the same time, we said,
Robert's with us right now,isn't he?
And we both felt this presence.And I started doing some more
reading and understanding of howother traditions do not have
this big giant wall between lifeand death. And I started to see
that they were still with me ina way that I couldn't really
(04:53):
comprehend. And then seven yearslater, I sat down one morning to
write a book that was very muchinformed by the loss of those
friends. And I had no idea itwas coming.
Just one day I woke up and itwas there. And when I wrote that
book, this is If I Stay, thefamily in If I Stay, the mom and
the dad and Teddy are basicallyreplicas of the friends that I
(05:16):
lost. And Mia is the fictionalcharacter that I created and
everybody else. But when I wrotethat book and particularly the
family scenes, they were in theroom with me. It was an ecstatic
experience.
I could not believe how presentthey were. And I understood how
profoundly writing about themhad brought them back. And it
(05:37):
was a real lesson in how memoryand love, and when you keep it
alive like that, it makes youimmortal.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (05:51):
Those words reminded me of something from
the afterword of Gale's mostrecent novel called Afterlife
and it goes like this. Quote,recollection is how we hold
close the people we love but whoare no longer with us. It is
how, in my experience, wesurvive loss, end quote. I read
(06:11):
those words back to Gail, andhere is how she responded.
Gayle Forman (06:19):
Now whenever anybody tells me about having
lost somebody, whether it was aparent when they were younger or
somebody recently, the firstthing I do is I ask for a
specific story. I ask, like, oh,tell me, like, what were they
like? Tell me, like, a funnything that happened. And it's
amazing because withoutexception, people are so
comforted by that. And I'veheard from people how grateful
(06:39):
they are because there's areluctance in our culture to
engage with death and the dyingand and the dead like that.
People wanna steer clear. Theythey don't wanna pry they wanna
give you space and privacy. Andit doesn't invite opportunity to
sort of reignite the memory ofthat person and reignite the
love. So it was a real learningexperience for me. It sort of
(07:00):
changed how I go about dealingwith other people's loss.
And then when it came toafterlife, it was a very
specific that was really thecore of the book, which is how
some people estrange themselvesfrom the dead because it's too
painful and what that does tothem and how other people weave
them into their lives just in adifferent way. Like, they still
(07:22):
exist, and they still have arelationship. It's a different
kind of relationship, but it'sstill a relationship.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (07:27):
We really started off very deep, but let's
go back to the beginning alittle bit. And if you could
paint some broad strokes of whatyour early childhood was like.
Gayle Forman (07:35):
I feel like it was a pretty typical Jenex childhood
of that benign neglect Yeah. Anda lot of boredom. Whenever kids
ask me, when did you become awriter? I talk about these hikes
that my parents who were, like,not quite hippies. They're too
old to be hippies.
They're so they were hippieadjacent, and they they used to
drag us on these hikes everyweekend in, like, the Santa
(07:56):
Monica Mountains. Now I lovethose areas, but back then, they
were just the most atrociouslyboring things. Because I was the
baby, my older sibling kind ofaged out. So it would just be me
and my parents and my momstopping to look at every single
flower, which of course is nowsomething that I do. And I have
my little picture of this app soI could be like, what is that?
And take a picture and it tellsme. Yeah. But it was born out of
(08:17):
my skull, so I just startedmaking up these stories. I would
walk behind them and I would besome mixture of Nancy Drew and
Wonder Woman, and they wereNazis or Jewish, but it's my
imagination. I could do what Iwant.
And I think that's where Istarted, like, concocting this
story. So that was very much mychildhood, like, suburban
childhood, riding my bike aroundthe neighborhood, pretending it
was a horse. But I was also Iwas on a panel recently and
(08:41):
somebody was talking about howseventh grade is the year that
you get to test how awful aperson you can be and live with
yourself. And I guess my faceblanked out. She's like, Gail
thinks something different.
I'm like, yo. Because I wasbullied. I was so such a weird
girl. I look back and I'm like,was I really? I I liked thrift
shopping clothes and I lived inmy imagination and I like weird
music, which sort of feels justvery of a type.
(09:03):
But I guess for the San FernandoValley, the suburbs where I grew
up, it it felt weird. So Ididn't really have super close
friends. I would say until mythirties, started making, like,
really, really close friends. SoI think I spent a lot of time in
my imagination.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:19):
And did you feel like the odd duck of your
family, or were you, like, inline with your family? You know?
Gayle Forman (09:24):
I mean, my family is all odd ducks.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:26):
Okay. That's what I mean.
Gayle Forman (09:27):
So I mean, with the exception of my sister, my
sister growing up was, like, thepretty social one. But it turns
out in adulthood, in retrospect,you know, she felt alienated
because everybody I don't thinkanybody doesn't feel like an odd
duck.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:42):
I know. Ain't that the truth? Were you
into reading as a kid? Oh,totally. Yeah.
Gayle Forman (09:48):
I was a little bit of a late reader, I think. And
for whatever reason, didn'tthink I was a strong reader. And
then I remember one day I stayedafter school because I was going
to my friend Alison Rod's houseafter school and she was in the
advanced reading group and Istayed with her and then they
saw me read like, Oh, wait, youshould be in this group too. So
I loved reading. I started outreading, I think, like the
Ramona books, which I think wewill get back to and the Beverly
(10:10):
Cleary and all the early You,like the Cat Ate My Gymsuit, the
Pauls and Dell, all those greatbooks.
And then I my dad would take meonce a week to the Crown
Bookstore, and I would buy SweetDreams Romance. And from there,
I graduated to, like, JackieCollins, Harold Robbins, like
It's a quick joke. Total smutwhen I was, like, 12 and 13. The
(10:32):
things I knew about things backthen were wild. And I always
tell parents this when they'reworried about what their kids
are reading.
It's like, as long as they'regetting lost in a book, who
cares?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (10:43):
Yeah. So was school then like an unhappy
place for you if you're beingbullied? Were you,
Gayle Forman (10:48):
like, aware of it? Shockingly, no. Even though I
went to for part of my I went toa really good school, but I was
a terrible student.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (10:55):
Oh, how so?
Gayle Forman (10:55):
I was really bad about doing my homework. And I
was lucky because I was, like, asmart enough kid that I could
get by just with the tests andin class, but I was so bad about
ever making a deadline. I don'tknow what it was. It was like
this real block. And then when Iwas a junior in high school, I
went to England for the year tobe an exchange student.
(11:16):
And I found out that I wouldjust be turning in a dossier of
work at the end of the year ortaking an exam at the end of the
year and that would account formy entire grade. And I flipped
out like, are you talking about?And strangely, once the sort of
daily deadline was taken away, II learned to budget my time
actually did fine. And then Icame back and never turned in an
assignment sort of late in mylife and that counts like all
(11:39):
twelve years of a journalist.But because I was constantly
missing homework and likeforging notes and hiding from
teachers and hijacking thereport cards that would come in
the mail from my parents.
Like, school was more fraughtthan it needed to be. And so I
loved the learning part of it. Iloved just the making of
(12:01):
connections and connectingideas. I just was really bad
about writing the paper aboutthat.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (12:07):
Aren't we all? But you said you weren't
unhappy socially. But was there,like, an age when you really
came into your own truly?
Gayle Forman (12:15):
This summer program at Cal State Northridge
called teenage drama workshop.And I went from being a kind of
quiet kid at my one schoolbecause I had sort of learned
just to sort of keep my headdown over the course of the
summer, like, my inner dramagirl just came out. And I was
(12:36):
just like this total Geminitransformation. So I think that
was really, really formative,and that was just like my happy,
happy place. So that was really,I think, instrumental.
Ramona wished she had a milliondollars so her father would be
fun again. There have been manychanges in the Quimby household
(12:57):
since mister Quimby had lost hisjob, but the biggest change was
in mister Quimby himself. Firstof all, missus Quimby found a
full time job working foranother doctor, which was good
news. However, even a secondgrader could understand that one
paycheck would not stretch asfar as two paychecks, especially
when there was so much talk oftaxes, whatever they were.
Missus Quimby's new job meantthat mister Quimby had to be
(13:19):
home when Ramona returned fromschool.
Ramona and her father saw a lotof one another. At first, she
thought having her father toherself for an hour or two every
day would be fun. But when shecame home, she found him running
the vacuum cleaner, filling outjob applications, or sitting on
the couch smoking and staringinto space. He could not take
her to the park because he hadto stay near the telephone.
Someone might call to offer hima job.
(13:40):
Ramona grew uneasy. Maybe he wastoo worried to love her anymore.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (13:46):
Gail read from Beezus and Ramona by
Beverly Cleary, and we couldprobably record an entire
episode on the influence ofRamona. I'm looking at you,
Renee Watson, Victoria Jamieson,many others. But Ramona is a
beloved, relatable character andhas been a constant through the
lives of so many readers. TheRamona book's humor and honesty
(14:06):
feel just as relevant adulthoodas they do in childhood. As a
kid, Gail saw herself as Ramona.
And as a parent, rereading themwas eye opening.
Gayle Forman (14:18):
I remember feeling the anxiety and the discomfort
of Ramona going through this. Iwas always aware neither of my
parents I mean, my mother hadher family had come for money,
then they lost it all. And myfather was one of seven and grew
up poor, depression baby. Sothat that sort of sense of
scarcity was always in in mychildhood. So I related to that.
(14:42):
But also just to sort of thefeeling like that she was part
of the family and she was notshielded from what was going on
in the family. And and I grapplewith that a lot because, you
know, intellectually, I thinkthat that's probably a good
thing for children. It buildsresilience, and it makes them
understand that they are not thecenter of the universe. And then
(15:03):
once you're a parent, you kindof do wanna protect your kids
from everything and make themthink that they're the center of
the universe. Even though I knowintellectually, that's not the
way to build the kind of personthat I hope my kids will be.
So those books really inform mefor lots of reasons. I think I
saw myself in just how flawedRamona was, that she was there
(15:24):
was this chasm between theperson she wanted to be and the
person that she was. And everytime, like, she stumbled, she
was aware of it. And she wantedto be better. But still she was
seven or eight or nine or 10.
Like, she was developing as ahuman in a way that her parents
both recognized that hermistakes were those of kids and
(15:46):
she's allowed to be flawed, butalso had this moral expectation
that, like, you know, you needto try and be your best self
here, your better self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (15:54):
In the hunt to discover her true and better
self, teenage Gail made awhimsical decision that would
wind up becoming a major turningpoint.
Gayle Forman (16:04):
I was an exchange student for my junior year of
high school, which was also justsuch a randomly weird thing. I
had not gone away. I wouldn'tcall myself particularly
adventurous. I've been to summersleepaway camp for, like, two
weeks, and I was miserablyhomesick for one of them. But
I'm like, no.
I wanna go to England because Iliked English bands. So I was
like, that's why I'm gonna go toI'm gonna go to live in London.
Right? And so I wound up livingin this Like, go
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (16:25):
to Kings Road or whatever that was
called.
Gayle Forman (16:27):
Exactly. Exactly. Hang out with Vivian Westwood
and Malcolm McLaren and headover to Ireland to hang out with
you too. Obviously, Bono and Iwere gonna be tight.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (16:35):
She ended up in a tiny village college
outside Leicester, England.There were no mandatory classes,
no required attendance, and thestudents called teachers by
their first names. For Gail, itwas a revelation. It was the
first time school felt freeing,and she loved it.
Gayle Forman (16:54):
That's where I learned to be an okay student.
But also, there was this hugegroup of weirdos and wonderful
people and we glom together andthat was like the first time I
really experienced being part ofa community. So that was really
the year that I think I changedfrom the person I might have
become to the person that I didbecome because I came back from
(17:15):
that year with an English accentthat that was really real
because nobody would understandme if I use my own accent and
I'm very suggest ible to accentslike that. So I told my parents
my senior year of high school, Ishall not be going to college. I
am attending the University ofLife.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (17:31):
Uh-huh. Did you attend the University of
Life?
Gayle Forman (17:33):
I did attend the University of Life. Where did it
take you? Where was it? It tookme to a health food store where
I got a job and I worked all ofsenior year because you used be
able to do something called workexperience and leave school at
noon to work. And then I boughta one way ticket.
When I graduated, my parentsbought me a backpack and a
Eurail pass, and I traveled forthree months with one of my
friends from the year in Englandand wound up staying in
(17:55):
Amsterdam. And I I lived inAmsterdam on off for year and a
half. I worked as a maid in abackpacker hotel in the middle
of the Red Light District.Amazing. It sort of ignited my
love of travel, which has sortof continued.
And then when I was 21, I waslike, well, I should probably
maybe go to college. Andrandomly decided to go to
University of Oregon because ithad rolling admissions. It was
(18:16):
too late to apply to the UCschools. And I went there to be
a doctor, and that didn't panout. But I wound up studying
journalism, and they had thisincredible journalism program.
And there was also thiswonderful thriving music scene
when I was there. It was likewhen the Pacific Northwest and
grunge was ascendant, and that'swhere I met my husband. Life
delivers. Life delivered again.Yeah.
(18:37):
That'll be the title of yourmemoir. My memoir.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (18:40):
Gail's love of travel has a lot to do with
the intense personal connectionsshe's made on the road. And
maybe that's because without acommon cultural background,
travelers have to discoversomething kindred in each other
from scratch. She finds thoserelationships particularly
powerful.
Gayle Forman (18:56):
Those moments of connection, when you can have
them with people who seem sodifferent from you on the
outside, I really do think thatit breeds a level of
connectiveness and empathy, andit is much harder to harden your
heart, which is a, you know,maybe today was is not
necessarily the best thing, butI think it is. And when I think
(19:19):
about fiction writing, you areliterally inhabiting somebody
else's experience. It is it isan act of empathy when you write
fiction and it is active empathywhen you read fiction. So I
believe that all that travelingwas really as much of the
training for becoming a novelistas the actual sort of writing
that I did as a journalist.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (19:39):
I love that idea. And I like the idea of
expanding your comfort zone,which is a really true and good
way of thinking about that and,like, being open to that
feeling. Because you're right,especially if you were traveling
and you're younger, it's like noyou have a big phone to, like,
fall into and, like, you reallycouldn't be connected. Yeah. For
(20:01):
Gail, valuing those connectionsto strangers made journalism an
easy career choice.
Gayle Forman (20:07):
I love to travel, and I love to write, and I love
to ask people about things thatare maybe none of my business,
and it was just the perfectcollision of all three of those
things.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:16):
So, basically, you knew coming out
of college, like, this issomething that I know I wanna
do.
Gayle Forman (20:21):
I had my eyes, like, set on coming to New York
and working for Sassy magazine.Sassy. Blessed be her memory.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:27):
Yes. May her memory be a blessing.
Gayle Forman (20:32):
By the time I got here, Sassy had gone kaput.
Sassy's living in all women whoread that at that age. Yes.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:39):
Gil missed out on Sassy, but spent years
writing for 17, Elle, Cosmo, andThe Nation among others. She
seemed to love that work, so Iasked her if she misses being a
journalist or could see herselfeven being a journalist now.
Gayle Forman (20:54):
I would be such a good journalist now because I'm
older and I I don't feel awkwardat all, and I also learned how
to listen more to see whatpeople are open to talking about
and not talking about. But Iactually did have a discomfort
with journalism in the end. Andit wasn't just the asking of
questions. It was more theparachuting in to report on
(21:16):
something that you just couldnot possibly have proper context
for in such a short period oftime and then parachuting out.
And, you know, mostly it wasfine.
Like, I worked at 17. I I did,you know, great articles that I
think brought important storieswith some significant nuance to
young readers. But I remember Idid this one piece and it was
(21:39):
this guy who had been arrestedas sort of part of the earth
liberation front. And he hadlike just barely done anything,
but they had been so unable tocapture any of these guys that
they sort of threw the book athim. And so I did an article
about him and then it came outright after 09:11 and the sort
of feeling changed.
The article didn't change, butso much of the way that they
(22:01):
framed him both in the headlinesand the
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (22:03):
Yeah.
Gayle Forman (22:03):
In the captions, I just was like, this is
somebody's life. And, like, thiscould determine how long they
stay in prison. And I just Istarted to feel really just
uncomfortable with it because itwas like early clickbaity.
Right? It was this idea that youhave to just like hype things up
to grab people's attention.
And I've always preferred thenuance of it all. And that's why
novels are just such a happyplace to be because there really
(22:26):
is no clickbait in a novel, andyou can be as nuanced and, you
know, gray as the story needs tobe even in children's
literature, which I think isjust such a exciting world to be
in.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (22:39):
I am thinking about this structure.
I've thought a lot about youknow, not a lot of authors for
young people take the approachof this, like, complex weaving.
And that's for me, that's, like,my favorite fiction to read. You
know? It's just when I'm all ofa sudden, it's like you have
that moment of you're like, ah.
You know? And, yeah, I wonder ifthat's just what comes out of
(23:00):
you or if there's sort of, like,deeper feeling behind why you
want those structures to kind ofhave this build.
Gayle Forman (23:07):
With not nothing, I knew it was gonna be a story
within a story. And I knew thatthe reveal of the bad thing that
Alex has done to land him you'dget him arrested and land him
sort of in this mandatorycommunity service over the
summer at an assisted livingfacility. I knew that had to be
a slow reveal because if youfound out about it before you
(23:30):
knew Alex, you're gonna havemaybe form a different judgment
of him than when you find outabout it and you know the
totality of him. And I wanted itto be a much more complicated
calculus for readers. I thinksome young readers will read
about what he did and willdecide he's a terrible person.
But most so far seem to thinkthat he's a very sympathetic
person because they understandthe context in which he has done
(23:51):
this thing. So it required thatslow reveal, but with enough
points that it felt true to Alexwho himself is not able to kind
of even think about what he'sdone because he's so full of
shame
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:03):
Yeah.
Gayle Forman (24:03):
And also as a device to keep the readers
going. It's fun when I go intomiddle schools. I'm like, Alex
did this terrible thing. Do youwant me to tell you what what he
did? And they're like, yeah.
I'm like, you really wanna know?And they scream, yeah. I'm like,
tough. You have to read the bookto find out. They they they hate
me, and then they read the book.
And then with afterlife, I thinkthere were two issues that I
(24:26):
wanted to explore. One was,like, how we do and do not
grieve well in our culture. Ilike what you said about the
chasm between, like, who you areand who you want
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:36):
to be. And that really it has to do a lot
with both afterlife and notnothing. You know? And not
nothing, like, it's like thatrising to the occasion when you
can, when you can, like, havethese moments of, like, crossing
a chasm even if you maybe comeback. You know?
Here, you're taking these, like,little leaps.
Gayle Forman (24:53):
These paths are not linear.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:54):
Right? Are not linear. Yeah. Yeah. Have you
felt like that in your own life?
Do you feel like writing fictionis, like, moving you across that
chasm?
Gayle Forman (25:04):
That's an interesting question. I hadn't
thought about that, like,whether the writing of fiction
does. I think it probably helps.I think it really is more how I
do my daily life, how I treatpeople in my daily life. And
that also comes back to how Itreat myself because the more
forgiving and the less shamefulI can be about the parts of
myself, which I've come torealize even the parts that seem
(25:27):
kind of troublesome are allthere for a purpose.
They're all trying to help me intheir way. The more I can do
that, the more I can be open andgenerous and be the person I
want to be out in the world andengaged out in the world. And
so, you know, it's something Ithink about. I love Judaism for
a lot of reasons, but one ofthem is that we have a whole
holiday every year, Yom Kippur,which is a day of atonement,
(25:49):
which is really a day of kind ofreckoning. And it's also like a
practice death, which is kind ofinteresting.
But it's for me, it's a timewhere I get to really think
about, like, how did I do lastyear in terms of closing that
chasm? In some years, I've donebetter than others. And on the
years that I've done reallywell, I know that, like, I'm
gonna atone and start over andscrew up all over again. And
that's just the work of life isjust inching closer to the
(26:11):
person that I wanna be. I thinkyou become better at things the
more you do them.
I have also changed the way thatI write. But then there there
was like a period where likewriting just felt very fraught,
possibly because I had had thisbig success with If I Stay and
it's like lightning in a bottle,you're trying to capture it
again, which is just notpossible. But recently I think
(26:35):
maybe this is age, maybe this isLexapro, I don't know. But like
I'm just much calmer about itand I write things and I know
they're not ready and instead ofjust like grinding and grinding
which felt so it made writingnot fun, I put them aside for
months, sometimes for years, andthen I come back to them. And
(26:55):
because they have such ainventory of things, it works.
And I think of my dog who liketakes his bones out the backyard
and buries them for a coupleweeks and then brings them back
in when they're all nice andseasoned. And I think I do that
with my novels now.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (27:09):
Books like If I Stay and Afterlife don't
shy away from heavy themes,grief, identity, mistakes that
cannot be undone, topics thatsometimes society deems too
heavy for kids.
Gayle Forman (27:21):
I think that it's almost like these books like
these can help kids identify ifsomething like that has happened
to them Mhmm. And help them getthrough something like that if
it has happened to them. But inthe best of scenarios where they
haven't been touched by any kindof tragedy or grief, it's almost
like a a dress rehearsal. Andthey get to kind of experience
(27:42):
some of the vicarious emotionsin a really safe space, which
I've been looking at research.We know that books, novels in
particular, have a a link toempathy, but there's now
research that suggestsresilience as well.
And I think that by being ableto kind of experience something
like this at a remove, it is itis helpful. And we should stop
(28:05):
trying to protect kids from thembecause we are seeing a mental
health crisis right now withyoung people. So clearly, all
this protecting from this kindof thing is is not really the
key. There's a different kind ofthing I think that we maybe need
to protect them from like theexposure to social media and
what have you. But there'ssomething to just being able to
experience this in a safe spacethat I think is helpful for for
(28:30):
kids and for adults.
And I recently came acrosssomething where somebody said
that afterlife should have acontent warning because of
grief. And I am very cognizantof like the parents who are
reading this who have lost akid. I think that they tend to
self select and not read bookslike this, but I can't tell you
the majority of letters I'vegotten so far about this book
(28:51):
have been from grieving parentsand how thankful just to have
their experience shown and theyfeel seen.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (29:01):
Oh, that's so powerful. I imagine you might
not have expected that would be.
Gayle Forman (29:05):
I sort of knew from If I Stay that when you
write honestly about grief andloss, people feel it. And I knew
when I lost my friends, when Iread other people writing about
grief and loss, I felt socomforted to know that I wasn't
alone.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (29:19):
Yeah. And what about, like, school visit?
Any moments from those that havereally stuck with you?
Gayle Forman (29:24):
When I go to sort of middle schools and elementary
schools with not nothing, it'sreally interesting because I
will I bring a poster with me,at the end of the presentation,
we talk about what does it meanto rise to the occasion. And
they get to kind of fill out theway they wanna rise to the
occasion. And in some schools,it's so much about
accomplishment and working hardand that whole ethos. And in
(29:48):
other schools, it's so muchabout being there for people in
need and and volunteering andhelping other people. So it's
it's really interesting to kindof see the different forces at
playing in people's lives interms of, like, what it means to
be your best self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (30:04):
What do you think is, like, you know, when
rising to the occasion meanswhat I think you want for rising
to the occasion to mean?
Gayle Forman (30:11):
You know, I I think there's less of an
emphasis on accomplishment andachievement and more of an
emphasis on sort of communityand this idea that each one of
us has this impact in our lifethat we cannot see. Like, when
you look at the the number ofpeople and the number of
billions of years in theuniverse, we are all so so
insignificant. And yet, withinthe context of our own lives, I
(30:35):
sort of think each of one of usis like a pebble dropped into a
pool. And we can see the rippleeffects that are nearest to us,
but we often can't see them thefurther out that they get. And
so for that to happen, we neededto really sort of zoom out to
kind of see these differentpeople and zoom back in and zoom
out and zoom back in until atthe end, the various people on
(30:57):
the various timelines, they allcollide and connect into what I
hope is a very satisfyingending.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (31:07):
In honor of the friends Gail lost, the ones
who inspired so much of herwork, I asked her to share one
last story to remember them by.
Gayle Forman (31:20):
Every story in If I Stay is like that story. Like,
the dad who was super super punkrock and then started wearing
nineteen fifties suits and gavethem all up. Like, that is that
is Robert. And we actually hegave this leather jacket, this
big heavy duty leather jacket toNick who was Robert's friend and
bandmate. And Nick wore it foryears.
(31:42):
And the character who playedDenny, was based on Robert in
the movie, he wore it in themovie. It's in the Cool. The
movie poster, him wearing thatjacket. And now my 21 year old
daughter has that. So
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (31:55):
Oh, that's great.
Gayle Forman (31:56):
I I just love how that one jacket is just this
artifact in time that is its ownimmortality. And I sometimes
think like, Rami, your jacket ison a movie poster. Like, it's on
it's on, like, millions ofbooks. People will never know.
But I know, and that that makesme happy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (32:16):
For her reading challenge, flawed
characters, Gail is going to batfor the prickly, the messy, the
not here to be likedprotagonist. She points out that
kids are used to reading aboutheroes, but it can be just as
powerful and maybe even more soto read about characters who
mess up, who fall short, and whogrow anyway. After all, real
(32:41):
kids aren't perfect, so whyshould their fictional
counterparts be?
Gayle Forman (32:45):
I'm gonna put Harriet the spy on my list. I
sometimes wonder if Harriet thespy would get published today
because she's just just, youknow, has some not great things
about her. And yet and yet shefeels very relatable as a very
specific kind of, like,unparented child in in New York
(33:06):
City. Kate Messner has a newbook called, I think, the
trouble with heroes or theproblem with heroes. I am going
to put the hunger games in therebecause Katniss Everdeen is real
prickly.
And, you know, I I think aboutthat character, and I think
about if she was not such abadass warrior, would we like
her at all? She shows herself tobe heroic, but she's not super
(33:27):
likable. And I love that thosebooks succeeded not in spite of
that, but because of that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (33:33):
I love that. And from your books, you
would include?
Gayle Forman (33:37):
Frankie and Bug. Bug is in particularly very I
mean, I think all of my books.There's a bunch of them where,
like, the reader's like, I hatedthis character at the beginning.
So Frankie a book, not nothing.And then I would say I have a, a
You novel called We AreInevitable.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (33:53):
You can find Gail's reading challenge
and all past reading challengesat the readingculturepod.com.
This week's Beanstack featuredlibrarian is Lori Shalio, the
media specialist at HeritageIntermediate School in
Middlebury, Indiana. She revealshow sharing spicy chicken
(34:15):
nuggets and a very braveprincipal helped bring her
school's community reading goalto life.
Lori Shallio (34:22):
I feel our most successful reading challenge was
actually our first communitychallenge, mainly because it
really showcased kind of how myadmin and other members of staff
kind of came together to reallysupport the kids in their
reading goals. So I went tomister Dave Gaskell, our
principal, and basically askedhim, how best can we torture you
(34:43):
if these kids reach theirreading goal? And he came back
with the idea of doing a reallyinteresting, like, Hot Ones
style interview. So our top 10readers were able to ask him
questions as he ate spicier andspicier chicken nuggets that
were made by our lovely kitchenmanager, Tracy. And it was
really cool because the minutewe announced what was going to
(35:06):
happen, it was like the next daythat the kids reached their
community goal.
And it was just really cool tosee them all come together and
also to really be wrong. And I Icompletely underestimated how
quickly they would get our firstcommunity goal done. So we
recorded our Hot Wind styleinterview, and all of the kids
watched it. It was very, verypopular. They loved it, and so
(35:27):
did we.
So it was a really, really goodtime.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (35:34):
This has been the reading culture, and
you've been listening to myconversation with Gail Foreman.
Again, I'm your host, JordanLloyd Bookie, and currently, I'm
reading The Scammer by Tiffany dJackson and Long Bright River by
Liz Moore. If you enjoyedtoday's episode, please take one
minute to give us five stars onApple or Spotify or wherever you
(35:55):
listen. Your reviews help us getthe show recommended to others,
so everyone is very important tous. Thank you for doing them.
This episode was produced by MelWebb and Lower Street Media and
script edited by Josiah LambertoEgan. To learn more about how
you can help grow yourcommunity's reading culture, you
can check out all of ourresources at beanstack.com. And
(36:17):
remember to sign up for ournewsletter at the
readingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers
and bonus content. Thanks forlistening, and keep reading.
Those moments of connection, when you can have
them with people who seem sodifferent from you on the
outside, I really do think thatit it breeds a level of
connectiveness and empathy, andit is much harder to harden your
heart.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (00:21):
Life and writing are all about
connection, true connectionbetween people, the kind that
bridges across differences,across borders, across years,
and even across our own flawsand worst mistakes. That kind of
relationship can inspire us tobecome our best self, though
progress in that direction ofteninvolves showing up, getting it
(00:45):
wrong, and trying over and over.
Gayle Forman (00:50):
In some years, I've done better than others.
And on the years that I've donereally well, I know that, like,
I'm gonna atone and start overand screw up all over again, and
that's just the work of life.It's just inching closer to the
person that I wanna be.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (01:03):
Gail Foreman is the best selling
author of If I Stay, Frankie andBug, Not Nothing, Afterlife, and
many more. Before becoming anovelist, she was a journalist
for 17 magazine. Her workexplores grief, memory,
identity, and this slowimperfect process of growing
into the person we hope tobecome. In this episode, Gail
(01:26):
talks about growing up as a selfdescribed odd duck, the Ramona
books that shaped both her lifeand her parenting, and the
formative years she spenttraveling solo. She opens up
about the loss that inspired IfI Stay, why she's drawn to
flawed characters, and howfiction became a way to survive
grief and stay connected to thepeople she's lost.
(01:50):
My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie,and this is the reading culture,
a show where we speak withdiverse authors about ways to
build a stronger culture ofreading in our community. We
dive deep into their personalexperiences and inspirations.
Our show is made possible byBeanstack, the leading solution
for motivating people to readmore. Learn more at
(02:11):
beanstack.com, and make sure tocheck us out on Instagram at the
readingculturepod and subscribeto our newsletter for bonus
content at thereadingculturepod.com forward
slash newsletter alright on tothe show Hey, listeners. Are you
(02:32):
looking for a fun, easy way totrack your reading and earn cool
rewards?
Well, meet Beanstack, theultimate reading app used by a
community of over 15,000schools, libraries, and
organizations nationwide. Areyou an avid reader? Check with
your local library to see ifthey offer Beanstack for free. A
(02:53):
parent? Ask your child's teacherif the school library already
uses Beanstack.
And if you are an educatorsearching for a fresh
alternative to acceleratedreader, Beanstack is the perfect
tool to cultivate a thrivingreading culture. Ready to turn
the page? Visit beanstack.com tolearn more. Before she became a
(03:17):
best selling author, before If IStay was turned into a film that
topped the charts, Gailexperienced a real life brutal
tragedy.
Gayle Forman (03:28):
The big loss that I think informs a lot of my work
and definitely is the DNA ofthis book and was the reason I
wrote If I Stay in the FirstPlace was in 02/2001, my husband
and I are two best friends andtheir two kids died in a car
crash. And it was just sort of alife altering event because it
(03:49):
was this huge loss, but alsojust that an entire family
ceased to exist in an instantwas sort of horrible and mind
blowing. And, you know, Iassumed that I would either
never see my friends again or ifthere was some afterlife, which
I kind of doubted there was atthat point, I would see them
when I died. Neither of whichsort of felt very comforting in
the moment. But then thesereally strange things started to
(04:10):
happen, which is I had a dreamthat felt so distinctly like a
visitation.
I've never had a dream like thatsince where my friend was
bringing me the little boy who'svery much like the Teddy in If I
Stay to say goodbye to. And itjust shook me to the core. And
then a couple months later, myhusband and I were traveling in
New Zealand, we were in thiscamper van on a remote road. We
(04:32):
just turned to each other. Andat the same time, we said,
Robert's with us right now,isn't he?
And we both felt this presence.And I started doing some more
reading and understanding of howother traditions do not have
this big giant wall between lifeand death. And I started to see
that they were still with me ina way that I couldn't really
(04:53):
comprehend. And then seven yearslater, I sat down one morning to
write a book that was very muchinformed by the loss of those
friends. And I had no idea itwas coming.
Just one day I woke up and itwas there. And when I wrote that
book, this is If I Stay, thefamily in If I Stay, the mom and
the dad and Teddy are basicallyreplicas of the friends that I
(05:16):
lost. And Mia is the fictionalcharacter that I created and
everybody else. But when I wrotethat book and particularly the
family scenes, they were in theroom with me. It was an ecstatic
experience.
I could not believe how presentthey were. And I understood how
profoundly writing about themhad brought them back. And it
(05:37):
was a real lesson in how memoryand love, and when you keep it
alive like that, it makes youimmortal.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (05:51):
Those words reminded me of something from
the afterword of Gale's mostrecent novel called Afterlife
and it goes like this. Quote,recollection is how we hold
close the people we love but whoare no longer with us. It is
how, in my experience, wesurvive loss, end quote. I read
(06:11):
those words back to Gail, andhere is how she responded.
Gayle Forman (06:19):
Now whenever anybody tells me about having
lost somebody, whether it was aparent when they were younger or
somebody recently, the firstthing I do is I ask for a
specific story. I ask, like, oh,tell me, like, what were they
like? Tell me, like, a funnything that happened. And it's
amazing because withoutexception, people are so
comforted by that. And I'veheard from people how grateful
(06:39):
they are because there's areluctance in our culture to
engage with death and the dyingand and the dead like that.
People wanna steer clear. Theythey don't wanna pry they wanna
give you space and privacy. Andit doesn't invite opportunity to
sort of reignite the memory ofthat person and reignite the
love. So it was a real learningexperience for me. It sort of
(07:00):
changed how I go about dealingwith other people's loss.
And then when it came toafterlife, it was a very
specific that was really thecore of the book, which is how
some people estrange themselvesfrom the dead because it's too
painful and what that does tothem and how other people weave
them into their lives just in adifferent way. Like, they still
(07:22):
exist, and they still have arelationship. It's a different
kind of relationship, but it'sstill a relationship.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (07:27):
We really started off very deep, but let's
go back to the beginning alittle bit. And if you could
paint some broad strokes of whatyour early childhood was like.
Gayle Forman (07:35):
I feel like it was a pretty typical Jenex childhood
of that benign neglect Yeah. Anda lot of boredom. Whenever kids
ask me, when did you become awriter? I talk about these hikes
that my parents who were, like,not quite hippies. They're too
old to be hippies.
They're so they were hippieadjacent, and they they used to
drag us on these hikes everyweekend in, like, the Santa
(07:56):
Monica Mountains. Now I lovethose areas, but back then, they
were just the most atrociouslyboring things. Because I was the
baby, my older sibling kind ofaged out. So it would just be me
and my parents and my momstopping to look at every single
flower, which of course is nowsomething that I do. And I have
my little picture of this app soI could be like, what is that?
And take a picture and it tellsme. Yeah. But it was born out of
(08:17):
my skull, so I just startedmaking up these stories. I would
walk behind them and I would besome mixture of Nancy Drew and
Wonder Woman, and they wereNazis or Jewish, but it's my
imagination. I could do what Iwant.
And I think that's where Istarted, like, concocting this
story. So that was very much mychildhood, like, suburban
childhood, riding my bike aroundthe neighborhood, pretending it
was a horse. But I was also Iwas on a panel recently and
(08:41):
somebody was talking about howseventh grade is the year that
you get to test how awful aperson you can be and live with
yourself. And I guess my faceblanked out. She's like, Gail
thinks something different.
I'm like, yo. Because I wasbullied. I was so such a weird
girl. I look back and I'm like,was I really? I I liked thrift
shopping clothes and I lived inmy imagination and I like weird
music, which sort of feels justvery of a type.
(09:03):
But I guess for the San FernandoValley, the suburbs where I grew
up, it it felt weird. So Ididn't really have super close
friends. I would say until mythirties, started making, like,
really, really close friends. SoI think I spent a lot of time in
my imagination.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:19):
And did you feel like the odd duck of your
family, or were you, like, inline with your family? You know?
Gayle Forman (09:24):
I mean, my family is all odd ducks.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:26):
Okay. That's what I mean.
Gayle Forman (09:27):
So I mean, with the exception of my sister, my
sister growing up was, like, thepretty social one. But it turns
out in adulthood, in retrospect,you know, she felt alienated
because everybody I don't thinkanybody doesn't feel like an odd
duck.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (09:42):
I know. Ain't that the truth? Were you
into reading as a kid? Oh,totally. Yeah.
Gayle Forman (09:48):
I was a little bit of a late reader, I think. And
for whatever reason, didn'tthink I was a strong reader. And
then I remember one day I stayedafter school because I was going
to my friend Alison Rod's houseafter school and she was in the
advanced reading group and Istayed with her and then they
saw me read like, Oh, wait, youshould be in this group too. So
I loved reading. I started outreading, I think, like the
Ramona books, which I think wewill get back to and the Beverly
(10:10):
Cleary and all the early You,like the Cat Ate My Gymsuit, the
Pauls and Dell, all those greatbooks.
And then I my dad would take meonce a week to the Crown
Bookstore, and I would buy SweetDreams Romance. And from there,
I graduated to, like, JackieCollins, Harold Robbins, like
It's a quick joke. Total smutwhen I was, like, 12 and 13. The
(10:32):
things I knew about things backthen were wild. And I always
tell parents this when they'reworried about what their kids
are reading.
It's like, as long as they'regetting lost in a book, who
cares?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (10:43):
Yeah. So was school then like an unhappy
place for you if you're beingbullied? Were you,
Gayle Forman (10:48):
like, aware of it? Shockingly, no. Even though I
went to for part of my I went toa really good school, but I was
a terrible student.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (10:55):
Oh, how so?
Gayle Forman (10:55):
I was really bad about doing my homework. And I
was lucky because I was, like, asmart enough kid that I could
get by just with the tests andin class, but I was so bad about
ever making a deadline. I don'tknow what it was. It was like
this real block. And then when Iwas a junior in high school, I
went to England for the year tobe an exchange student.
(11:16):
And I found out that I wouldjust be turning in a dossier of
work at the end of the year ortaking an exam at the end of the
year and that would account formy entire grade. And I flipped
out like, are you talking about?And strangely, once the sort of
daily deadline was taken away, II learned to budget my time
actually did fine. And then Icame back and never turned in an
assignment sort of late in mylife and that counts like all
(11:39):
twelve years of a journalist.But because I was constantly
missing homework and likeforging notes and hiding from
teachers and hijacking thereport cards that would come in
the mail from my parents.
Like, school was more fraughtthan it needed to be. And so I
loved the learning part of it. Iloved just the making of
(12:01):
connections and connectingideas. I just was really bad
about writing the paper aboutthat.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (12:07):
Aren't we all? But you said you weren't
unhappy socially. But was there,like, an age when you really
came into your own truly?
Gayle Forman (12:15):
This summer program at Cal State Northridge
called teenage drama workshop.And I went from being a kind of
quiet kid at my one schoolbecause I had sort of learned
just to sort of keep my headdown over the course of the
summer, like, my inner dramagirl just came out. And I was
(12:36):
just like this total Geminitransformation. So I think that
was really, really formative,and that was just like my happy,
happy place. So that was really,I think, instrumental.
Ramona wished she had a milliondollars so her father would be
fun again. There have been manychanges in the Quimby household
(12:57):
since mister Quimby had lost hisjob, but the biggest change was
in mister Quimby himself. Firstof all, missus Quimby found a
full time job working foranother doctor, which was good
news. However, even a secondgrader could understand that one
paycheck would not stretch asfar as two paychecks, especially
when there was so much talk oftaxes, whatever they were.
Missus Quimby's new job meantthat mister Quimby had to be
(13:19):
home when Ramona returned fromschool.
Ramona and her father saw a lotof one another. At first, she
thought having her father toherself for an hour or two every
day would be fun. But when shecame home, she found him running
the vacuum cleaner, filling outjob applications, or sitting on
the couch smoking and staringinto space. He could not take
her to the park because he hadto stay near the telephone.
Someone might call to offer hima job.
(13:40):
Ramona grew uneasy. Maybe he wastoo worried to love her anymore.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (13:46):
Gail read from Beezus and Ramona by
Beverly Cleary, and we couldprobably record an entire
episode on the influence ofRamona. I'm looking at you,
Renee Watson, Victoria Jamieson,many others. But Ramona is a
beloved, relatable character andhas been a constant through the
lives of so many readers. TheRamona book's humor and honesty
(14:06):
feel just as relevant adulthoodas they do in childhood. As a
kid, Gail saw herself as Ramona.
And as a parent, rereading themwas eye opening.
Gayle Forman (14:18):
I remember feeling the anxiety and the discomfort
of Ramona going through this. Iwas always aware neither of my
parents I mean, my mother hadher family had come for money,
then they lost it all. And myfather was one of seven and grew
up poor, depression baby. Sothat that sort of sense of
scarcity was always in in mychildhood. So I related to that.
(14:42):
But also just to sort of thefeeling like that she was part
of the family and she was notshielded from what was going on
in the family. And and I grapplewith that a lot because, you
know, intellectually, I thinkthat that's probably a good
thing for children. It buildsresilience, and it makes them
understand that they are not thecenter of the universe. And then
(15:03):
once you're a parent, you kindof do wanna protect your kids
from everything and make themthink that they're the center of
the universe. Even though I knowintellectually, that's not the
way to build the kind of personthat I hope my kids will be.
So those books really inform mefor lots of reasons. I think I
saw myself in just how flawedRamona was, that she was there
(15:24):
was this chasm between theperson she wanted to be and the
person that she was. And everytime, like, she stumbled, she
was aware of it. And she wantedto be better. But still she was
seven or eight or nine or 10.
Like, she was developing as ahuman in a way that her parents
both recognized that hermistakes were those of kids and
(15:46):
she's allowed to be flawed, butalso had this moral expectation
that, like, you know, you needto try and be your best self
here, your better self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (15:54):
In the hunt to discover her true and better
self, teenage Gail made awhimsical decision that would
wind up becoming a major turningpoint.
Gayle Forman (16:04):
I was an exchange student for my junior year of
high school, which was also justsuch a randomly weird thing. I
had not gone away. I wouldn'tcall myself particularly
adventurous. I've been to summersleepaway camp for, like, two
weeks, and I was miserablyhomesick for one of them. But
I'm like, no.
I wanna go to England because Iliked English bands. So I was
like, that's why I'm gonna go toI'm gonna go to live in London.
Right? And so I wound up livingin this Like, go
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (16:25):
to Kings Road or whatever that was
called.
Gayle Forman (16:27):
Exactly. Exactly. Hang out with Vivian Westwood
and Malcolm McLaren and headover to Ireland to hang out with
you too. Obviously, Bono and Iwere gonna be tight.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (16:35):
She ended up in a tiny village college
outside Leicester, England.There were no mandatory classes,
no required attendance, and thestudents called teachers by
their first names. For Gail, itwas a revelation. It was the
first time school felt freeing,and she loved it.
Gayle Forman (16:54):
That's where I learned to be an okay student.
But also, there was this hugegroup of weirdos and wonderful
people and we glom together andthat was like the first time I
really experienced being part ofa community. So that was really
the year that I think I changedfrom the person I might have
become to the person that I didbecome because I came back from
(17:15):
that year with an English accentthat that was really real
because nobody would understandme if I use my own accent and
I'm very suggest ible to accentslike that. So I told my parents
my senior year of high school, Ishall not be going to college. I
am attending the University ofLife.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (17:31):
Uh-huh. Did you attend the University of
Life?
Gayle Forman (17:33):
I did attend the University of Life. Where did it
take you? Where was it? It tookme to a health food store where
I got a job and I worked all ofsenior year because you used be
able to do something called workexperience and leave school at
noon to work. And then I boughta one way ticket.
When I graduated, my parentsbought me a backpack and a
Eurail pass, and I traveled forthree months with one of my
friends from the year in Englandand wound up staying in
(17:55):
Amsterdam. And I I lived inAmsterdam on off for year and a
half. I worked as a maid in abackpacker hotel in the middle
of the Red Light District.Amazing. It sort of ignited my
love of travel, which has sortof continued.
And then when I was 21, I waslike, well, I should probably
maybe go to college. Andrandomly decided to go to
University of Oregon because ithad rolling admissions. It was
(18:16):
too late to apply to the UCschools. And I went there to be
a doctor, and that didn't panout. But I wound up studying
journalism, and they had thisincredible journalism program.
And there was also thiswonderful thriving music scene
when I was there. It was likewhen the Pacific Northwest and
grunge was ascendant, and that'swhere I met my husband. Life
delivers. Life delivered again.Yeah.
(18:37):
That'll be the title of yourmemoir. My memoir.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (18:40):
Gail's love of travel has a lot to do with
the intense personal connectionsshe's made on the road. And
maybe that's because without acommon cultural background,
travelers have to discoversomething kindred in each other
from scratch. She finds thoserelationships particularly
powerful.
Gayle Forman (18:56):
Those moments of connection, when you can have
them with people who seem sodifferent from you on the
outside, I really do think thatit breeds a level of
connectiveness and empathy, andit is much harder to harden your
heart, which is a, you know,maybe today was is not
necessarily the best thing, butI think it is. And when I think
(19:19):
about fiction writing, you areliterally inhabiting somebody
else's experience. It is it isan act of empathy when you write
fiction and it is active empathywhen you read fiction. So I
believe that all that travelingwas really as much of the
training for becoming a novelistas the actual sort of writing
that I did as a journalist.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (19:39):
I love that idea. And I like the idea of
expanding your comfort zone,which is a really true and good
way of thinking about that and,like, being open to that
feeling. Because you're right,especially if you were traveling
and you're younger, it's like noyou have a big phone to, like,
fall into and, like, you reallycouldn't be connected. Yeah. For
(20:01):
Gail, valuing those connectionsto strangers made journalism an
easy career choice.
Gayle Forman (20:07):
I love to travel, and I love to write, and I love
to ask people about things thatare maybe none of my business,
and it was just the perfectcollision of all three of those
things.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:16):
So, basically, you knew coming out
of college, like, this issomething that I know I wanna
do.
Gayle Forman (20:21):
I had my eyes, like, set on coming to New York
and working for Sassy magazine.Sassy. Blessed be her memory.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:27):
Yes. May her memory be a blessing.
Gayle Forman (20:32):
By the time I got here, Sassy had gone kaput.
Sassy's living in all women whoread that at that age. Yes.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (20:39):
Gil missed out on Sassy, but spent years
writing for 17, Elle, Cosmo, andThe Nation among others. She
seemed to love that work, so Iasked her if she misses being a
journalist or could see herselfeven being a journalist now.
Gayle Forman (20:54):
I would be such a good journalist now because I'm
older and I I don't feel awkwardat all, and I also learned how
to listen more to see whatpeople are open to talking about
and not talking about. But Iactually did have a discomfort
with journalism in the end. Andit wasn't just the asking of
questions. It was more theparachuting in to report on
(21:16):
something that you just couldnot possibly have proper context
for in such a short period oftime and then parachuting out.
And, you know, mostly it wasfine.
Like, I worked at 17. I I did,you know, great articles that I
think brought important storieswith some significant nuance to
young readers. But I remember Idid this one piece and it was
(21:39):
this guy who had been arrestedas sort of part of the earth
liberation front. And he hadlike just barely done anything,
but they had been so unable tocapture any of these guys that
they sort of threw the book athim. And so I did an article
about him and then it came outright after 09:11 and the sort
of feeling changed.
The article didn't change, butso much of the way that they
(22:01):
framed him both in the headlinesand the
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (22:03):
Yeah.
Gayle Forman (22:03):
In the captions, I just was like, this is
somebody's life. And, like, thiscould determine how long they
stay in prison. And I just Istarted to feel really just
uncomfortable with it because itwas like early clickbaity.
Right? It was this idea that youhave to just like hype things up
to grab people's attention.
And I've always preferred thenuance of it all. And that's why
novels are just such a happyplace to be because there really
(22:26):
is no clickbait in a novel, andyou can be as nuanced and, you
know, gray as the story needs tobe even in children's
literature, which I think isjust such a exciting world to be
in.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (22:39):
I am thinking about this structure.
I've thought a lot about youknow, not a lot of authors for
young people take the approachof this, like, complex weaving.
And that's for me, that's, like,my favorite fiction to read. You
know? It's just when I'm all ofa sudden, it's like you have
that moment of you're like, ah.
You know? And, yeah, I wonder ifthat's just what comes out of
(23:00):
you or if there's sort of, like,deeper feeling behind why you
want those structures to kind ofhave this build.
Gayle Forman (23:07):
With not nothing, I knew it was gonna be a story
within a story. And I knew thatthe reveal of the bad thing that
Alex has done to land him you'dget him arrested and land him
sort of in this mandatorycommunity service over the
summer at an assisted livingfacility. I knew that had to be
a slow reveal because if youfound out about it before you
(23:30):
knew Alex, you're gonna havemaybe form a different judgment
of him than when you find outabout it and you know the
totality of him. And I wanted itto be a much more complicated
calculus for readers. I thinksome young readers will read
about what he did and willdecide he's a terrible person.
But most so far seem to thinkthat he's a very sympathetic
person because they understandthe context in which he has done
(23:51):
this thing. So it required thatslow reveal, but with enough
points that it felt true to Alexwho himself is not able to kind
of even think about what he'sdone because he's so full of
shame
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:03):
Yeah.
Gayle Forman (24:03):
And also as a device to keep the readers
going. It's fun when I go intomiddle schools. I'm like, Alex
did this terrible thing. Do youwant me to tell you what what he
did? And they're like, yeah.
I'm like, you really wanna know?And they scream, yeah. I'm like,
tough. You have to read the bookto find out. They they they hate
me, and then they read the book.
And then with afterlife, I thinkthere were two issues that I
(24:26):
wanted to explore. One was,like, how we do and do not
grieve well in our culture. Ilike what you said about the
chasm between, like, who you areand who you want
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:36):
to be. And that really it has to do a lot
with both afterlife and notnothing. You know? And not
nothing, like, it's like thatrising to the occasion when you
can, when you can, like, havethese moments of, like, crossing
a chasm even if you maybe comeback. You know?
Here, you're taking these, like,little leaps.
Gayle Forman (24:53):
These paths are not linear.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (24:54):
Right? Are not linear. Yeah. Yeah. Have you
felt like that in your own life?
Do you feel like writing fictionis, like, moving you across that
chasm?
Gayle Forman (25:04):
That's an interesting question. I hadn't
thought about that, like,whether the writing of fiction
does. I think it probably helps.I think it really is more how I
do my daily life, how I treatpeople in my daily life. And
that also comes back to how Itreat myself because the more
forgiving and the less shamefulI can be about the parts of
myself, which I've come torealize even the parts that seem
(25:27):
kind of troublesome are allthere for a purpose.
They're all trying to help me intheir way. The more I can do
that, the more I can be open andgenerous and be the person I
want to be out in the world andengaged out in the world. And
so, you know, it's something Ithink about. I love Judaism for
a lot of reasons, but one ofthem is that we have a whole
holiday every year, Yom Kippur,which is a day of atonement,
(25:49):
which is really a day of kind ofreckoning. And it's also like a
practice death, which is kind ofinteresting.
But it's for me, it's a timewhere I get to really think
about, like, how did I do lastyear in terms of closing that
chasm? In some years, I've donebetter than others. And on the
years that I've done reallywell, I know that, like, I'm
gonna atone and start over andscrew up all over again. And
that's just the work of life isjust inching closer to the
(26:11):
person that I wanna be. I thinkyou become better at things the
more you do them.
I have also changed the way thatI write. But then there there
was like a period where likewriting just felt very fraught,
possibly because I had had thisbig success with If I Stay and
it's like lightning in a bottle,you're trying to capture it
again, which is just notpossible. But recently I think
(26:35):
maybe this is age, maybe this isLexapro, I don't know. But like
I'm just much calmer about itand I write things and I know
they're not ready and instead ofjust like grinding and grinding
which felt so it made writingnot fun, I put them aside for
months, sometimes for years, andthen I come back to them. And
(26:55):
because they have such ainventory of things, it works.
And I think of my dog who liketakes his bones out the backyard
and buries them for a coupleweeks and then brings them back
in when they're all nice andseasoned. And I think I do that
with my novels now.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (27:09):
Books like If I Stay and Afterlife don't
shy away from heavy themes,grief, identity, mistakes that
cannot be undone, topics thatsometimes society deems too
heavy for kids.
Gayle Forman (27:21):
I think that it's almost like these books like
these can help kids identify ifsomething like that has happened
to them Mhmm. And help them getthrough something like that if
it has happened to them. But inthe best of scenarios where they
haven't been touched by any kindof tragedy or grief, it's almost
like a a dress rehearsal. Andthey get to kind of experience
(27:42):
some of the vicarious emotionsin a really safe space, which
I've been looking at research.We know that books, novels in
particular, have a a link toempathy, but there's now
research that suggestsresilience as well.
And I think that by being ableto kind of experience something
like this at a remove, it is itis helpful. And we should stop
(28:05):
trying to protect kids from thembecause we are seeing a mental
health crisis right now withyoung people. So clearly, all
this protecting from this kindof thing is is not really the
key. There's a different kind ofthing I think that we maybe need
to protect them from like theexposure to social media and
what have you. But there'ssomething to just being able to
experience this in a safe spacethat I think is helpful for for
(28:30):
kids and for adults.
And I recently came acrosssomething where somebody said
that afterlife should have acontent warning because of
grief. And I am very cognizantof like the parents who are
reading this who have lost akid. I think that they tend to
self select and not read bookslike this, but I can't tell you
the majority of letters I'vegotten so far about this book
(28:51):
have been from grieving parentsand how thankful just to have
their experience shown and theyfeel seen.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (29:01):
Oh, that's so powerful. I imagine you might
not have expected that would be.
Gayle Forman (29:05):
I sort of knew from If I Stay that when you
write honestly about grief andloss, people feel it. And I knew
when I lost my friends, when Iread other people writing about
grief and loss, I felt socomforted to know that I wasn't
alone.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (29:19):
Yeah. And what about, like, school visit?
Any moments from those that havereally stuck with you?
Gayle Forman (29:24):
When I go to sort of middle schools and elementary
schools with not nothing, it'sreally interesting because I
will I bring a poster with me,at the end of the presentation,
we talk about what does it meanto rise to the occasion. And
they get to kind of fill out theway they wanna rise to the
occasion. And in some schools,it's so much about
accomplishment and working hardand that whole ethos. And in
(29:48):
other schools, it's so muchabout being there for people in
need and and volunteering andhelping other people. So it's
it's really interesting to kindof see the different forces at
playing in people's lives interms of, like, what it means to
be your best self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (30:04):
What do you think is, like, you know, when
rising to the occasion meanswhat I think you want for rising
to the occasion to mean?
Gayle Forman (30:11):
You know, I I think there's less of an
emphasis on accomplishment andachievement and more of an
emphasis on sort of communityand this idea that each one of
us has this impact in our lifethat we cannot see. Like, when
you look at the the number ofpeople and the number of
billions of years in theuniverse, we are all so so
insignificant. And yet, withinthe context of our own lives, I
(30:35):
sort of think each of one of usis like a pebble dropped into a
pool. And we can see the rippleeffects that are nearest to us,
but we often can't see them thefurther out that they get. And
so for that to happen, we neededto really sort of zoom out to
kind of see these differentpeople and zoom back in and zoom
out and zoom back in until atthe end, the various people on
(30:57):
the various timelines, they allcollide and connect into what I
hope is a very satisfyingending.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (31:07):
In honor of the friends Gail lost, the ones
who inspired so much of herwork, I asked her to share one
last story to remember them by.
Gayle Forman (31:20):
Every story in If I Stay is like that story. Like,
the dad who was super super punkrock and then started wearing
nineteen fifties suits and gavethem all up. Like, that is that
is Robert. And we actually hegave this leather jacket, this
big heavy duty leather jacket toNick who was Robert's friend and
bandmate. And Nick wore it foryears.
(31:42):
And the character who playedDenny, was based on Robert in
the movie, he wore it in themovie. It's in the Cool. The
movie poster, him wearing thatjacket. And now my 21 year old
daughter has that. So
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (31:55):
Oh, that's great.
Gayle Forman (31:56):
I I just love how that one jacket is just this
artifact in time that is its ownimmortality. And I sometimes
think like, Rami, your jacket ison a movie poster. Like, it's on
it's on, like, millions ofbooks. People will never know.
But I know, and that that makesme happy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (32:16):
For her reading challenge, flawed
characters, Gail is going to batfor the prickly, the messy, the
not here to be likedprotagonist. She points out that
kids are used to reading aboutheroes, but it can be just as
powerful and maybe even more soto read about characters who
mess up, who fall short, and whogrow anyway. After all, real
(32:41):
kids aren't perfect, so whyshould their fictional
counterparts be?
Gayle Forman (32:45):
I'm gonna put Harriet the spy on my list. I
sometimes wonder if Harriet thespy would get published today
because she's just just, youknow, has some not great things
about her. And yet and yet shefeels very relatable as a very
specific kind of, like,unparented child in in New York
(33:06):
City. Kate Messner has a newbook called, I think, the
trouble with heroes or theproblem with heroes. I am going
to put the hunger games in therebecause Katniss Everdeen is real
prickly.
And, you know, I I think aboutthat character, and I think
about if she was not such abadass warrior, would we like
her at all? She shows herself tobe heroic, but she's not super
(33:27):
likable. And I love that thosebooks succeeded not in spite of
that, but because of that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (33:33):
I love that. And from your books, you
would include?
Gayle Forman (33:37):
Frankie and Bug. Bug is in particularly very I
mean, I think all of my books.There's a bunch of them where,
like, the reader's like, I hatedthis character at the beginning.
So Frankie a book, not nothing.And then I would say I have a, a
You novel called We AreInevitable.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (33:53):
You can find Gail's reading challenge
and all past reading challengesat the readingculturepod.com.
This week's Beanstack featuredlibrarian is Lori Shalio, the
media specialist at HeritageIntermediate School in
Middlebury, Indiana. She revealshow sharing spicy chicken
(34:15):
nuggets and a very braveprincipal helped bring her
school's community reading goalto life.
Lori Shallio (34:22):
I feel our most successful reading challenge was
actually our first communitychallenge, mainly because it
really showcased kind of how myadmin and other members of staff
kind of came together to reallysupport the kids in their
reading goals. So I went tomister Dave Gaskell, our
principal, and basically askedhim, how best can we torture you
(34:43):
if these kids reach theirreading goal? And he came back
with the idea of doing a reallyinteresting, like, Hot Ones
style interview. So our top 10readers were able to ask him
questions as he ate spicier andspicier chicken nuggets that
were made by our lovely kitchenmanager, Tracy. And it was
really cool because the minutewe announced what was going to
(35:06):
happen, it was like the next daythat the kids reached their
community goal.
And it was just really cool tosee them all come together and
also to really be wrong. And I Icompletely underestimated how
quickly they would get our firstcommunity goal done. So we
recorded our Hot Wind styleinterview, and all of the kids
watched it. It was very, verypopular. They loved it, and so
(35:27):
did we.
So it was a really, really goodtime.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey (35:34):
This has been the reading culture, and
you've been listening to myconversation with Gail Foreman.
Again, I'm your host, JordanLloyd Bookie, and currently, I'm
reading The Scammer by Tiffany dJackson and Long Bright River by
Liz Moore. If you enjoyedtoday's episode, please take one
minute to give us five stars onApple or Spotify or wherever you
(35:55):
listen. Your reviews help us getthe show recommended to others,
so everyone is very important tous. Thank you for doing them.
This episode was produced by MelWebb and Lower Street Media and
script edited by Josiah LambertoEgan. To learn more about how
you can help grow yourcommunity's reading culture, you
can check out all of ourresources at beanstack.com. And
(36:17):
remember to sign up for ournewsletter at the
readingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers
and bonus content. Thanks forlistening, and keep reading.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!