Zoe Whittall | Author | On motherhood and reproductive freedom

Zoe Whittall is a Canadian Poet, Novelist, TV Writer, and today's guest on the podcast. Her last novel “The Best Kind of People” was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Giller Prize, and is currently being adapted for a limited series by director Sarah Polley. Zoe Whittall was also awarded a Canadian Screen Award for her work on “The Baroness von Sketch Show” in addition to contributing to Schitt's Creek. She has has now just published her new novel “The Spectacular”, a story that captures three generations of very different women, who struggle to build an authentic life in the absence of traditional family and marital structures. In her book, Zoe explores sexuality, gender, and the weight of reproductive freedoms.

Listen to this episode to hear how Zoe got where she is today, the inspiration behind her books, and why stories about motherhood, womanhood and sexual & reproductive freedoms are so important and relevant today.

Thank you to our partners at HarperCollins for their support of today’s episode!

This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!

Full Episode Transcript

Eva Hartling: I'm Eva Hartling welcome to The Brand is Female. Where every week I speak with women change-makers who are redefining the rules of female leadership. This season of our podcast is brought to you by TD Bank Group Women Entrepreneurs. TD helps women in business achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship visit The Brand is Female dot com slash podcast and follow the link to find out how TD can help.

If you know me, you know of my love for literature by women authors, I love a good story that is completely transformative and captivating. And of course, I'll always favour women's voices, which is why I'm happy to share that this week's episode of The Brand is Female is brought to you by our partners at Harper Collins, Canada Harper Collins is always pushing the boundaries of publishing, supporting authors and stories outside of the mainstream that addresses notions of gender, sexuality, and race.

The spectacular by Zoe with all is a novel that challenges the societal notions of motherhood and the unspoken topics surrounding motherhood, such as miscarriages, postpartum, and more told from a queer mother's perspective the spectacular is an inclusive novel that speaks to mothers of all ages and orientations.

You can find this great read wherever books are sold and don't forget to support your local bookstore. I'm excited for you to hear my conversation with Canadian author Zoe, with all whose last novel, the best kind of people was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Gillar prize. It's currently being adapted for a limited series by director

Sarah Polley, Zoe was also awarded a Canadian screen award for her work on the Baroness Von sketch show. Zoe has just published her new novel the spectacular story that captures three generations of very different women. She explores sexuality. Gender and weight of reproductive freedoms. So of course we discussed all of these topics.

Here is our conversation. Zoe pleasure, welcoming you to The Brand is Female today. I'm so glad we get to have this conversation and I'm going to dive right in and ask you if it was always a dream of yours to become a writer.

Zoe Whittall: It was always a dream for me to become a writer, but I didn't always remember that.

I wrote, I read very early and I wrote fake novels when I was a kid. My mom says that even before I could write, I would dictate stories to her to write down But, when I got to high school, I was, so I was a voracious reader in elementary school and I come from a creative family. My father's a musician and a songwriter, and he wrote, used to write plays for the kids at school.

He was an elementary school teacher to perform and my mom was also a musician. And so I was always really encouraged creative creatively. But there was something about it. When I went to college or I went to Cegep, I, the idea of studying, writing, and becoming a writer seemed really lofty.

Like it seemed something that, an ordinary person couldn't do. And then when I was trying to decide what to study in university, my mom suggested thinking about what I used to love to do when I was three or four. And she told me the anecdote about writing stories and I thought, okay.

So I applied to creative writing at Concordia. I was already writing a lot of poetry and songs. And then it went from there and I was a poet for a number of years before I began writing fiction. And my first novel was actually a collection of stories and one of the stories kept getting bigger and bigger.

And my editor at the time was like, I think you want this story to be a novel, but it was like I had to trick myself into writing a novel because the idea of writing a novel seemed bananas, but I actually really loved the form of the novel, the expansiveness of the world compared to the short story is very comfortable me.

Eva Hartling: And so when did it, was there a moment when you felt like, and I've read in every interview you've given where you said basically anyone who's got a dream of writing a novel is just about hard work and growing through the steps and making it happen, but you've got to want it more than anything else.

So I'm assuming you did want it more than anything else who make it to publishing, to get your first novel published. Was there a moment where it felt like, yeah? Okay. I'm a writer now that, there's an official book, that's come out with my name printed on the cover.

Zoe Whittall: Yes. I think because I was a poet first and I had two books of poetry before the novel, I think it was easy.

When you ease your way into the water, you put your toe first. And then so I, I knew the community of poets. I knew I, I worked at a small press publisher at the time. And so I knew the publishing world, but novelists still seemed writing a novel still seemed like another echelon above that.

I wasn't really sure I could do it. And so it really did. I think there were a number of steps. Or a number of firsts, like I think my first globe and mail review was a really big moment. And getting my first Canada Council arts to grant to write another novel, felt like a huge moment. Because I came from an activist.

Background. And in the 1990s, I used to write zines. I used to self-publish scenes and I used to perform as a folk singer and a poet in Montreal, in the nineties. And then it wasn't until I moved to Toronto that I began to feel like, oh, maybe I really wanting to study writing. Maybe I really would like to devote more time to fiction.

But I didn't end up doing an MFA until I was in my thirties. And that was after I put out my first novel. And that was that sort of, was another moment where I was like, no, I'm really going to try to do this seriously and devote all of my energy to trying to make this dream happen.

And, and it wasn't really able to support myself as a writer fully, just as a writer until, 2014, 2015, I've always had other work, but I've been lucky that I've been able to be a writer full-time since then. And that really was That really was my dream. Like I always did other jobs, but I was never fully committed or as committed as I was to write with any other work.

Eva Hartling: That's really interesting. I love hearing how it's never a linear journey from point a to point B obviously, and I'm sure you had a lot of works and authors who influenced you along the way. We're are. And I'm interested in specifically women authors or works by women who may be influenced you or marked you a little bit more maybe as you were studying or even as you started writing your first work, whether it was poetry or fiction.

Zoe Whittall: Yes. I was very influenced by So many, but what am I going to think? So the novel heroine by Gail Scott, the Montreal writer was very influential. I encountered a novel, her, not that novel in a class that Concordia, and that really blew my mind in terms of what a novel could be like looking at the form

of the novel and a hybrid form between poetry and prose and memoir. That was really informed, like really informed, like really opened my mind in terms of what I could do on the page. I think Heather O'Neill was a really big influence on me. Going from poet poetry to fiction, I love the way that she.

How many, like how many little tiny stories she can put into a sentence. And then in then she really packs these like beautiful little mini-stories and puzzles inside all of her paragraphs, which I admire. And I was really, I think I was really influenced by some of the early queers.

Novels that I read in as a young person Sarah Schulman's fiction Eileen Myles fiction I basically really was drawn to work that incorporated poetry into the.

Eva Hartling: And I want to talk about your, what was your third novel, the best kind of people who obviously received a lot of critical acclaims.

You were shortlisted for a Giller prize and Sarah Polley has decided to adapt it into a movie. And you've I read that you had received a lot of interest in turning that story into a movie, but it was Sarah's project that really finally won you over. But you've also you've been writing for TV as well.

So I'm curious to know about them, and we'll come back to the best kind of people. And after, after this question, but I'm curious to know. What the main difference is for you when you are writing for the screen and when you're writing fiction that's assigned for a book.

And in this case, seeing a work of fiction that is being transformed into a movie. If I'm not mistaken, that's going to be coming out in 2022. If what I've read is right, COVID hasn't changed the plans. But I'm curious to know the pros, how different the processes are basically, and how you approach those two types of writing.

Zoe Whittall: Okay. So I approach them very differently. But over the years I've noticed that they inform each other. So TV is a very collaborative, medium, and that took some getting used to coming from pros. Even if your name is on a script, What ends up showing up on screen is often in the voice of the showrunner.

And every story, every moment, every character is written as a group and with pros, everything is so private. Until you decide to show somebody your work And so there's just, there's so much more time and so much more room to write in prose and in TV it's very fast, I interviewed the novelist Lynn Cody, who also works in TV and she said something that I really related to in that the first time she was in a writing room for a television show.

Everybody thinks so quickly, you have to, and you have to, as quickly as you come up with an idea, you need to be able to let it go because that's just the pace of trying to figure out a TV show. And so you can't get attached to things the way you can get attached to things and in prose. And also there's a level of brevity in scriptwriting that doesn't make sense for fiction.

All of my first scripts, when when I would get feedback from producers, they would. You need to take out the words, you just need very simple action lines. Like you have to get into a scene really quickly and leave it just as quickly. And so all these things that are counterintuitive to what you think of as good writing on, in a book project.

So there was fascinating and I really love watching TV. I love the art of it. I love the collaborative process. It has, it's beginning as a way To try to make money in a different way. It's I got into TV because I love comedy writing and I was writing the best kind of people, which is a very serious book and I needed something to do.

That was a little more lighthearted. And so I began taking comedy classes and it began doing standup comedy. And then I took a class on how to turn your stand-up comedy into a sit-com script. And so I wrote a sitcom script and then I sold that to CTV. And it never got made, but it was my way into the industry.

So that was how I began so that's how I got an agent, a TV agent, and that's how I got my first job, which was writing on the show Degrassi which was so much fun. And I learned an incredible amount. And so that's how. You know how that world opened up for me. And I do think that trying to be both a novelist and a TV writer at the same time, is a reality sometimes difficult or challenging juggling act in terms of when you only have so many hours in a day to devote to your projects, but it's also what it means is that it means that I don't have to teach writing.

It means that I don't have to, I can take my time with prose projects because I'm not worrying about money all the time. And it's also really fun. So it's a way of having a social work world because writing all those is such a private and solitary. I

Eva Hartling: can see that. And what does it feel like now, knowing that what you wrote for pros in the first place is being adapted into a movie script?

So I'm curious to know what that experience has been like and what are your thoughts on the prospect of starting to see that story come alive on film, as opposed to the pages of a book?

Zoe Whittall: I am so excited to see what Sarah Polley is going to do. She is, she did decide to turn it into a limited series as opposed to a feature film, which is really, I really can see it.

She did let me read some of the scripts and I think they're fantastic. I felt with my first novel BottleRocket hearts and my second novel holding still for as long as possible, both of those projects have been optioned and I have been hired to write the adaptations for both of them, but with the best kind of people, it was such an intense book that I was really ready to let it go.

And, but I didn't want to let it go to just anybody and. When Sarah came on, I was really shocked and excited. I'm such a big fan of her work. And we had a couple of conversations about what her vision was and it really lined up with what I thought my vision was for the adaptation. And I just was happy to let it go.

Like I was happy to move on to other projects and to have it the screen version Be in such good hands, so i'm just really excited to see what she does. And I'm hoping, COVID did throw the schedule up in the air a little bit. So I don't think it will come out next year, but hopefully the year after.

And I'm just really thrilled that it's going to have a life on screen because like most writers know. Our work gets optioned all the time. That it's really difficult to get made, especially in Canada. So many projects are developed and only so few actually go-to cameras.

 But I think this one has a really good chance and I'm super psyched about it.

Eva Hartling: I'm excited to see it too, and ever interested to hear it's going to be a series that allows for a longer time on screen. So I'm excited to see that as well. And so going back to or looking at domain story and the best kind of people.

Topics around rape around sexual assault are not always easy to treat really in, in any format, but especially in a book in prose where each character gets we can dig deeper into what their experiences are and every aspect of what is feeling and thinking and going through.

And the book actually came out and I know, this was mostly a coincidence, but it did come out during, me too. And at a time when we had a few instances of major sexual assault cases in Canada that were making headlines, but I'm curious to know what was the intent with wanting to bring that kind of story to a book and share it with your public.

I've also read in an interview you've given on that topic, I've heard you say that it's for any young woman, unfortunately, that's typically part if not of her own personal experiences, it's something that, we've come across. Unfortunately, part of being a woman in today's society.

But going back to bringing this, that storyline at the heart of your book, curious to know what was the intent and what drove you to make that decision and wants to write that. Okay.

Zoe Whittall: So what drove me to write the book was actually it began as a procrastination book because I was writing the spectacular and I was blocked.

And then I became inspired to try to write the character of Joan. This is the mother character because I was listening to CBC radio and it was right around the time of the Russell Williams case in Ontario, I don't know if you heard about it, but he was national news. He was in the military and he was accused of murder.

And it was a big case in tweet Ontario and the focus of the interview on CBC was about his wife and. People not believing that she didn't know. And I was really struck by the idea of a wife who would, could be married to somebody and not know that they were a criminal and. So that was my exploration of Joan and the interview on CBC was with, they had a psychologist who was who ran a support group for partners of people who had committed sexual crimes and wanted to stay with them.

And so that was fascinating to me, like why anybody would want to stay. And so I decided to use that as a creative experiment to see if I could write from the point of view of somebody who would attend that group. And so the first. Seeing that I wrote in that novel was the one where she attends the support group.

And then I built it from there. And I was just really curious who that person might be and what would inform her wish to stay. And also like the capacity for people to be in denial is interesting to me. And I also felt the story of somebody in a small town committing sexual assault or not being accused was interesting in that we've seen that story told many times it's often a crime thriller or it's about.

The crimes it's about the person committing the crimes or it's about the police and them investigating, or it's a bit of a mix. And we often don't hear that story from the point of view of the loved one and what it would feel like to be completely blindsided by that experience. And also the stigma that family members and partners face when.

When someone's arrested or implicated in a crime it's like a really unique experience. And I think that the timing of the book was interesting because I was editing it during the Gian Ghomeshi trial because the Toronto media and arts community is so small. Like many people I knew were directly involved in that situation.

And it's And also, it was a time when people were starting where women were starting to speak out about their experiences. And so a lot of us, just because of that, we're faced with the experiences of figuring out that someone you're friends with has been accused of, it's, it's and those are very uncomfortable feelings to let, to like somebody and do not want to believe that they could be capable of something like that.

I think it's a very human, very natural reaction. Defensive or to not believe and or to believe politically in something that then emotionally feels more complicated. And that was interesting to me. I also had the experience of I grew up in a small town or I grew up on a farm in the Eastern townships and the school, the town where I went to school.

Was also a small town and there was a teacher who was a very popular teacher who was later accused of molestation of a student. And I had already moved away at that point, but my parents, my dad who taught at the school was still living there. And so I was able to witness secondhand, like how the community reacted.

And some of some people. It was really split. Some people supported him and did not believe the people accusing him and some people. Really did believe it. And I think there was a real culture, a culture of silence and he eventually was arrested and didn't go to, did go to jail. But because he was so beloved and like such a good teacher and people had all these memories of him and, in a very small town, everybody knows each other for generations.

I was really curious about how that might play out in that community. And so I decided. That. So that town was more of lots of middle-class working-class people. And I didn't want it to be too similar to the town I'm from. So I changed it to be a very wealthy American town.

And I was really interested in how power and wealth could shift the community response, especially if he was a powerful, wealthy figure. But, so those were the two inspirations I think, was that radio interview and then the memories of what it was like, or that teacher to have become to have been found out.

And he was someone who I really thought was cool when I was a kid and knew and Yeah. So I was really interested in the emotional lives of the people left behind when someone goes to jail for those kinds of crimes. And that was the way into the.

Eva Hartling: And it's a beautiful book, which I've really enjoyed reading.

And again, that depth and complexity of the characters. And as you said, it's a completely different take on how these stories are usually treated in a book or even a film. So I'm really excited to see how it comes through on-screen. This season of The Brand is Female is made possible with the support of TD bank group, women, entrepreneurs, confidently building your business, takes sound advice, plus guidance to the right connections, tools, and resources.

As a woman, entrepreneur myself. I know I need all the support I can get. What's great about TV services for women is their collaboration-based approach. They work with both internal and external partners who can provide education, financing, mentorship, and community support. TD employees are able to be proactive in the advice and guidance they give to women in business.

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And so are the publishers at Harper Collins, they invest in authors who are writing stories about women for women and by women. In the novel, black girls must die. Exhausted is a rare find in the world of women's fiction. The book story is centered around a successful young black woman who seems to have it all a great dating life, a beautiful home, and a great job.

However, an unexpected fertility crisis puts the protagonist in a tailspin. If you're looking for a Fall read that examines the experience of race, contemporary womanhood, and modern relationships, pre-order it today, or pick it up at your favorite bookstore. And now talking about. Spectacular your latest book, which in this case really focuses on motherhood.

But all the definitions of motherhood and all the ways that women may connect with their role. As a mother, as a daughter as well in the case of your main character. And I can see that your musical influences or your exposure to the music industry probably inspired part of the setting for the books.

Missy's a musician herself. And I know as well that some of your own. Family roots and family connections to Istanbul have made it into the plot as well. But I'm curious to ask you, because actually on the back of the book, there's this sentence, there's this statement that goes, some people are meant to be mothers and some people are meant to be free.

So I'd like to start from that point and ask you how did you, or maybe what inspired you to explore the concepts around motherhood in that way, and knowing also that there's so much societal pressure around, women that should. It's almost like society wants all women to become mothers.

And then for women who choose or who become mothers, then there's immense pressure to play that part and become that character of the perfect mom. And we all know in reality, that is not so obvious. So we'd love to know, what drove you to want to tell a story like this one? And I'm also curious to know what motherhood means, right?

Zoe Whittall: Sure. So basically what inspired the book? A lot of things inspired the book, but two major things were that, from the age of 30, until I'm 45 now from the age of 30 to 40, I think I woke up every single day asking myself if I should have a kid, should I not, should I do it now?

Should I wait until I have more security? Should I wait until? A book it's big. Should I, I never really knew. They never really felt like there was the right. It was the right time. But I always really wanted to have a kid. And I was in two relationships back to back one with a woman who didn't want kids at all.

And it was part of the reason why we broke up when I was 37. And then I fell in love with someone who. Had kids already when I was 38. And so then I became like a step-mom for about five years to his kids. And I felt good about that. And I put the idea of having my own kid off the table and then but I was always really intellectually interested in the idea.

Should I, or shouldn't I, and how do people make that decision. And I think that as a queer person, it's a lot more, it's a bigger decision. Like it's more of a decision, I think, there can be no accidents. And that adds a layer to it. And so I wanted with the character of Missy I wanted to Missy, Carolyn Ruth, for those who haven't read the book are.

I enter into their lives at certain key moments. And they are moments where they feel differently about whether or not they want to be a parent. And so when we meet Missy, she's trying to actually, she's 21 and she's trying to get her tubes tied before she goes on tour. And she is a reality at this time in her life, like a really impulsive.

Like her voice. I, I dressed her personality in the using first-person fast monologue, like she's a very energetic, very opinionated, very sometimes obnoxious character and really fun to write. But the book opens with her trying to get her tubes tied in Quebec, in the nineties.

And I was inspired to write that section because my ex-sister-in-law who lives, who lived in Montreal when she was 38, turning 39, tried to get that procedure done in Quebec. And she went to so many doctors and they all refused her. Whereas, if you want to vasectomy and you're a man, you can get it anytime you like.

But I don't think it's just Quebec I think that there was, a certain kind of paternalism that played into why she couldn't exercise that. So I was fascinated by that. And I was fascinated by the pressures to become a mom and to really focus on that being a goal.

And especially for Missy, like her backstory is that Carola regretted having her. And I think she knew that. So another way into the novel was that I was interested because during this time when I was preoccupied with whether or not I should have a kid, I. You have so many fears that come up and one of the fears is what if I do?

And I regret it. And that was something I felt like I couldn't even think about because it's contemplated that is so horrific, but then there are people who sincerely feel that way. And there's a huge taboo about talking about it. And there's also a huge taboo about just talking about just being blunt and honest about the realities of parenthood.

And I think that in the seventies, Parents used to be able to just talk about things being hard. And now there's a culture of there's like preciousness motherhood and the way we talk about it culturally that to suggest it's anything other than amazing and beautiful all the time is horrible.

So, I began to read scholarly, work around the idea. People who regret parenthood, specifically mothers and that's how I created Carola. I also think there's an interesting, there's interesting second-wave feminist time where my mom's generation was the first generation who were told that they could do both.

I think women and marginalized women working-class women have always worked. I think that second-wave feminism was. In certain ways, just like a middle-class thing. But I think, specifically for my mom and her peer group, there was a lot of pressure to try to have as many, to achieve as many things as possible while also being a mom.

And so I think a lot of a lot of us who were born in the seventies had parents who were trying, who were trying to be a lot of things and who were more vocal about. Being at the domestic life and parenting as not being the be all end all. And specifically, Kerala is an, is like a specific kind of back to the Lander.

Like she was part of it really interested in collective decision-making and communal living and her and Bryce Missy's dad had a commune and that's where she's raised until she's 12. And that puts a whole other, that's a whole other aspect of what parenting was like, the challenges she faced as a parent.

And so I was interested in that. I was also interested in the grandmother character, Ruth. Now I was never close to my own grandmother, but she did leave. Behind some diaries about what it was like to live in Turkey in the, when she was a child and specifically two, two times that she had to escape during the war.

And that was really fascinating to me to read those things. And to imagine that I imagined the character in the book is this very maternal figure. My own grandmother was not very maternal. In fact, she was quite a cold British. Lady who was really like a talented musician and had lots of friends, but just she would say things like children should be seen and not heard.

 She would just, very ridiculously old-fashioned things like that. And so I imagined like, what would it have been like to have a grandparent to be close to a grandparent, especially if your own mother was a bit narcissistic. And so I imagined what that would have been like for Missy and then went from there.

And it was important to me in terms of, writing a book about motherhood. It's less about motherhood, it's more about reproductive and sexual freedoms. I don't want to spoil too much, but like every character of the three main characters, they choose motherhood and they choose abortion.

All three of them at different points in their life. And I think that the decisions under which they choose to have abortions and when they choose to have kids are really representative of when that actually happens in life. Ruth decides to have an illegal abortion because she's already had, she already has children she's fulfilled by that role, but she doesn't want to prolong this negative marriage that she's in.

And that's. A lot of people who, a lot of women who have abortions do so because they are already parents and that's something that's not talked about a lot. And because she, because Ruth it's the 1950s and because she has money and she's a white woman she's able to access that even though it's illegal.

And so the story of how she is able to get an abortion, it's actually taken from some real life. Some of the research I did about how it was possible to get abortions in Montreal in the fifties. Like they were nurses that would perform them in the middle of the night under, and they would put them in the books as hysterectomy or other, allowable operations and that sort of thing.

For a fee like they were underground. Which I thought was fascinating.

Eva Hartling: And thank you for writing about that because I, I think that women need to hear more and more of those real-life or real-life inspired stories and take away all the shame and the guilt around, the different reasons why we do get abortions.

And I'm curious to ask you so on the topic of reproductive rights and abortion rights and, the novel actually opens with Missy walking into an abortion clinic, actually not to get an abortion, but she has that interaction with pro-life that protesters outside, which we know is still a thing.

And the novel is set in the late nineties. Do you think we've made progress and if we look at Canada specifically while, and looking at specifically knowing that in the states, there are still very recently there's ongoing. Judicial battles to protect reproductive rights.

And it feels like our rights are still we're still at risk of losing them. But do you think much has changed if we compare even from the fifties to the late nineties when the book is set and today in 2021, where are we at with reproductive rights?

Zoe Whittall: I think that we're very lucky in Canada in some ways, because of our social safety net. And I think that I have very vivid memories of watching Shantelle DayGlo on TV in the late eighties, which was a famous abortion case where she was fighting to be able to have an abortion. And her husband was trying to prevent her boyfriend.

And, I write in the book, a passage in that set in 1970 on parliament hill when the abortion caravan arrives and there's a big protest. And a young Carola is able to witness that event. And it's pretty amazing that happened in 1970 and then the laws didn't change until 1988.

So I think now I think it's similar to the US I think that it's still difficult for women who live in rural areas. And specifically, indigenous women and women who live in the north, like there was a lot of, there are a lot of situations where you have to travel far to get reproductive healthcare.

And I think that, for example, there was only one clinic in New Brunswick that would perform abortions and that clinic was shut down recently. And I don't think that we have equal access in Canada to this, to the resources that we need. And I think that there's still a lot of undue influence of the Catholic church on hospitals.

And even in terms of like where teenagers, how teenagers are able to get sex education and information on birth control. I think that in some ways legislatively, we are better than the states. And in some ways, because we have a social because we have healthcare, we, there are some issues, but there's still like a lot of medical racism and a lot of situations that are unfair towards women who aren't resourced and, Martin, marginalized women, I think still struggle to have the same kind of care.

And not just women, anyone who can give birth. So yeah. When I look at what happens in the states in terms of, people having miscarriages and then being criminalized for it. We don't have that level of insanity here, but there are still issues, I think.

Eva Hartling: And again, thank you for writing the book and making that such an important part of the plot.

Are there stories that you wish and stories, about women and by women, hopefully as well that you wish were told more stories that maybe you're not seeing in Canadian literature or on Canadian screens? Maybe that is something you're working on for the next book. So I don't want to spoil any surprises, but is there something you feel, is missing or you would just like to see told more?

Zoe Whittall: Five years ago? I would've said I wanted more, I think this is still true. I think that Stories about queer women. I think I could always use more. I'm always trying to help queer writers get ahead. But I do think that it's night and day, even now, because Missy, the character doesn't come out until later in the book.

And there's a whole story set in 2018 about her relationship with a trans man and then her subsequently identifying more as queer as she develops feelings for people of all genders. And now it's actually something that I feel like publishers are beginning to want to market and are interested in selling way more than ever.

And I think that's really encouraging, and I hope that I, my first novel was about a lesbian relationship in the set before the 1995 referendum. And it was very difficult to sell that book and. Some of the reviews on Amazon or one of them said it's so funny. One of them was like, I had no idea that this was a gay book and I wouldn't have picked it up if I knew but it turned out to be interesting, and I think that general readers are more able to open their minds and read about other people, other than themselves like that they don't relate to. I think that the market has changed in that way. But I do think we still have ways always to go. And I think I'm always interested in, in, in reading work about queer and trans people in contemporary.

Eva Hartling: And actually as a segue to that, what would be your advice to young women, nonbinary people, queer people who are hoping to write maybe what will be their first book, where is a good place to start.

Zoe Whittall: Oh, that's really interesting. I think, I always tell. Writers as iron writers, that if you want to write contemporary novels, you have to read contemporary novels.

You have to be a reader first and to try to get used to rejection and just accept it as part of the world, part of the job, and to be really careful about not sending your work out too quickly, like to really rewrite, rewrite, rewrite until. Until you have some perspective on it until the draft that you're going to submit, looks almost nothing like the first draft you wrote.

I think that's a reality that I think people don't always understand at first. Yeah. And to really think hard about what your natural voices what makes your work special on the page and how stylistically, like at the level of the sentence. What makes your sentences interesting and then try to figure it out.

All

Eva Hartling: good advice and my favorite question, to ask guests on the show, which is, what do you wish women would do less of? And I used to ask the question, what do you wish women would do more of until it was pointed out to me that we, as women we're already expected to do so much, and we put so much pressure on ourselves to keep doing more, that I should really be asking the opposite, but you can choose to answer that in whatever way.

Zoe Whittall: What do we what do I wish women were doing less of? Interesting. Okay. It's something that I do as well, but I think it would be great if we would have apologized less for wanting to participate in the cultural conversation and approaching, being part of the intellectual and artistic conversation and with more of a feeling.

You know that it's okay to be there. That we're a part of it. And we don't need to ask for permission to be there and. I know that's difficult because we're not all, it makes sense to not be super confident all the time when especially when you're starting out. But I think going in accepting that we're part of the conversation would be great.

Eva Hartling: I love that. That's a great one. And in closing, I want to say I just came across the sketch. You posted on Twitter that you wrote for the Von barrenness show about mercury retrograde. Mercury retrograde just ended this week. And we were joking on a team actually observing that, a lot of stuff just magically started working again.

And I just thought that was completely hilarious and so spot on. So that was a really good one. Thank you.

Zoe Whittall: Thank you. I had so much fun writing for the bareness von sketch show. I learned an incredible amount from those talented women and yeah, I think it's very, I think the idea of mercury in retrograde, so funny I'm dating a skeptic and astrology skeptic, and it's always a fun conversation.

I feel like when mercury is in retrograde, there's something undeniable undeniably in the air. That's screwing things up and it's funny. It's fun to me. Yeah.

Eva Hartling: So it was perfectly illustrated in that sketch actually. So thank you so much, very excited for the spectacular to come out. Very excited for the best kind of people to come out on screens.

We'll stay tuned and can't wait to see the next project.

Zoe Whittall: Thank you so much for having me. It was great to be here. Thank you.

Eva Hartling: I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. And if you did, as always, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and give us a review wherever that is possible. Thank you to TD bank group women entrepreneurs, further support of The Brand is Female.

You've got it in you to succeed. Let TD help guide you. Visit The Brand is Female dot com slash podcast and click on the TD logo. Thank you for listening. I'll be back in a week with a new guest.