So, last week’s flooding catastrophe was thankfully not as bad as it initially seemed. We stored a bunch of items in that corner of the basement—nothing priceless, just old movie posters and things we weren’t using but didn’t want to toss—and the bad news is, those items were soggy and moldy and needed to be trashed. The good news is, they sopped up most of the water and kept it from seeping into the walls. So…yay?

It sucks that it happened, but thankfully it turned out okay.

In the meantime, I had four interviews last week, three of which were with musicians I’ve been listening to since the ‘90s (hence the email heading): Luscious Jackson’s Jill Cunniff, Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips, and Tracy Bonham, whose interview was published last Friday.

Teenage/young adult me was having the MOST amazing time last week! I mean, I was singing along to Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “All I Want” when I was still in high school. And here I am, talking to the band’s lead singer about it! Life’s crazy sometimes.

After the round of interviews was over, I decided to put together a little playlist of some of my favorite ’90s songs. It’s by no means a complete list—that would go well into the thousands—but it’s a start. Sharing it with you here, in case you’d like to take a trip down memory lane…

Speaking of memories…on Friday night the boys were away on a camping trip, so I decided to watch Valley Girl, which I hadn’t seen in years. OMG that movie is so, like, totally good, fer sure! It may be the only time I’ve found Nicholas Cage attractive. And the music is perfect. Just pure ’80s joy.

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So I took to Threads and Notes and asked my fellow Gen Xers what their favorite nostalgia movie is, and I got quite a few great responses—everything from the expected (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club) to the very unexpected (The Deer Hunter??).

If you’d like to chime in, you can find the conversations on Threads or Substack’s Notes.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Tracy Bonham. I’m sharing a video clip from our chat over on Instagram later today, so follow me there if you want to check it out. Later this week I’ll share my interview with Kevin Lingenfelser, who has overseen the special effects on hundreds of high-profile films and TV shows. His latest is Netflix’s Man on Fire, and we talked quite a bit about the show and the bizarre research he has to do to make visual effects look realistic.

That’s it for now! Have a wonderfully creative week!

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In 1996, Tracy Bonham burst onto the music scene when “Mother Mother,” the first single off her debut album, The Burdens of Being Upright, took over the airwaves. Two Grammy Award nominations, an MTV Video Music Award nomination, and many comparisons to Liz Phair followed. But, as listeners would soon discover, Bonham wasn’t just another, as Howard Stern called her, “angry young woman.” Her work defies categorization. A classically trained musician, she seamlessly incorporates violin and piano into even her hardest rocking songs, and to date has released eight studio albums, each different from the last.

Now, Bonham is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Burdens with an upcoming album, due out in November, in which she will re-record every track. She says it was important for her to reconnect with the songs, which she views differently now that she’s in her 50s.

“When Burdens came out, I was 27 or 28,” she says. “Those songs were trying to figure out young Tracy, and now I’m 30 years older and still trying to figure out young Tracy. So the thread is still there, but I think now comes with it some wisdom. Part of my mission is to alchemize whatever that anger was, whatever that deep sadness was, whatever the loss was that I was dealing with into something beautiful for the world.”

It’s a busy time for Bonham. Last year, she released Sky Too Wide, an album of new tracks alongside fresh takes on a few of her older tunes. And earlier this year, she played a series of shows in Boston, where she lived when her career began, which she admits was daunting.

“I’m so happy I did that because I had so many conflicting feelings about it, having spent 11 years there,” she said. “But I was young and I went through that awful relationship and then I wrote the album about it and then I left. But I also felt as though, because I came out of the gate so quickly, at least in other people’s minds, other musicians were jealous and haters, and I just didn’t feel comfortable.” (Not surprisingly, the shows were a huge success.)

Over Zoom, Bonham chatted with me about crowdfunding albums, the ever-evolving music industry, and how a breast cancer diagnosis changed her approach to making music.

Creative Reverberations is a reader-supported publication. Each interview takes many hours of work. To receive new posts and support my work, please subscribe.

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SANDRA EBEJER: It’s crazy to think that Burdens is 30! That album is very much a rock album, but you’re a classically trained musician and you played violin on it, as well as guitar. As a result, your music really doesn’t sound like anything else out there. When you were first starting out as a young woman, was it difficult to convey to others how you wanted your music to sound?

TRACY BONHAM: I would say, “yes, and.” I’ve been discovering, as I look back, the stage and the studio and the rehearsals was really my only place where I could feel comfortable saying what I wanted. So, in a way, I felt like I could be understood. Not always did it turn out exactly the way I wanted it to, but I do feel like I had enough knowledge to be like, “No, this needs to be this way,” and most people could understand that.

That’s great. You’ve been playing music since you were very young. Were you one of those kids who was drawn naturally to playing, or did you kick and scream and fight the lessons like most kids?

No, totally born into it. Just out of the womb, this is what you’re doing. My grandfather was a musician, my mother was a musician and then music educator, so it was just in the water. It was a natural thing for me.

When “Mother Mother” came out, it was a huge hit. Suddenly you were all over MTV and in magazines and your song was on the radio. What was that period like for you?

It did feel rather sudden in that I had only just started writing songs. It felt like only a few years prior I had a handful of songs, and then all of a sudden, I’m a songwriter! And boom, now you’re expected to write more! I was thrust into the limelight, and there was a lot of pressure, and I was not prepared for it. Now, I had been a musician all my life and I was used to performing—I’d been on a stage since age five or seven—but the business was completely foreign to me. I’m still learning that business relationships should not be friends, and I got myself into partnerships that did not work, as far as management or whatever. There was a lot to juggle, and I wasn’t prepared for that in many ways. Also, my self-confidence... You know, fame is a weird thing, because if you’re a little bit insecure, then it really plays with your head. I felt like I had to please people. If people wanted things from me, I didn’t know how to say no. The boundaries were all blurry. So personally, I felt unprepared for it, but musically I felt ready, and I think that’s what connected with people.

“Mother Mother” has turned into an anthem of sorts. You’re doing the “Scream Like a Mother” event to raise money for the upcoming album. What does it mean to you to see all of these women screaming along to this track, decades after its release?

To hear these women’s accounts of what the song meant to them 30 years ago when they were growing up, or even younger people now, because they’ve connected with it, was amazing. I guess ’90s music is kind of back, and my song was in Yellowjackets, so I have some young people discovering my music now. I think this is why I’m doing this re-record. I just thought maybe this is something I wanted to do, but now I see it. I see these women. It’s becoming more and more evident to me. I want to be a voice or at least help women find their voice. It doesn’t even have to be women. I’ve just been feeling this urge to lead by example. I want to start doing this myself. I’ve been a holder-inner my whole life, especially in relationships. I think it’s time. There’s a movement happening. I think there’s this feminine fire that’s emerging, and I want to be a part of it, honestly. I want to help spread it. I want to be a part of it and also benefit from it myself.

Sky Too Wide, your latest album, came out of an incredibly challenging period in your life. What was behind the decision to include not just new songs but revisions of some of your earlier work? And why those songs in particular?

It started with a physical thing. I started having neck issues because I’d been playing the violin and the guitar for however many decades. It hurt to play. That’s why I don’t play as much. So I started playing piano more because it doesn’t hurt and my posture is fine. When I started to gig—and it was mostly solo gigs or duo gigs, because my career had kind of slowed down, I was a mom, I was doing smaller gigs, then Covid [hit]—the piano was my best friend. It was my place of solace. This is where I could work out my new songs.

[On] Sky Too Wide, I think all but one is a piano song, and then the rearrangements of songs were all on the piano, too. And it opened up this world of classical influence that I had from growing up and loving classical. My mom put me in piano lessons when I was seven, and I loved the repertoire, especially Debussy and Ravel and Satie, mostly the Romantic composers, and that started to emerge. It was really more for me and my own heart and soul, and then I started to perform it and then realized I wanted to record it.

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Sky Too Wide was partially funded through Kickstarter, you’ve done other crowdfunding campaigns in the past, and you also have a Patreon. How do you feel about these monetization platforms? On one hand, you have more direct contact with your fans, but on the other, it’s a ton of work.

It’s overwhelming. I mean, yeah, you’re right. The silver lining is that there’s direct to fans. It’s really nice to hear from fans and share and also be more real. Gone are the days where the major record label is protecting you from the fans. Now, you can get in there and have so much interaction, which is really wonderful. But it’s overwhelming. What I’m learning is you’ve got to have your people, and there’s so many different hats to wear. I’m trying to do my social media myself, but holy crap would it be nice to have someone else deal with that. And then I’ve got PR, I’ve got all of these different factions, which I guess was what the record label used to provide. It’s a real education. It makes me look back and be grateful and less of a hater of my old record label, because I want to hate the music business in general, but it’s a big job. There’s a lot of rules. So I’m fighting it right now, but I’m also embracing parts of it. Definitely putting a team together is important, and that’s currently what I’m doing so that I can enter into this 30th anniversary with all guns blazing.

After you recorded Sky Too Wide, you were diagnosed with breast cancer. I know from my own experience with it that it’s life altering. How did the diagnosis and the treatment you endured change your approach to making music?

Wow. It really opened my eyes to how much I’d been holding on and allowing stress and anxiety from other people, relationships, whatever it was. It had taken me so far down the wrong path in my life. I wasn’t the director of my life. I let everyone else decide for me. And I honestly think that getting sick was an indicator. It’s a wake-up call. Also, my mom had breast cancer. She’s a survivor. When I watched her, I concluded that she was a holder-inner too, and that’s probably what made her sick. I’m no doctor, but I think that there maybe is a level of truth. My body, before I even was diagnosed, was already giving me signs that I really needed to pay attention. I had some gastro thing that was terrible. I went down to 92 pounds. I was emaciated and I couldn’t figure that out. And then I had the breast cancer diagnosis, so something was telling me to wake up.

What I did with that information was I went more into the present moment. I started to be more present with my music and my performances, more mindful, less chatty. Less like, “Oh, that wasn’t in tune,” or “What are they thinking right now?” It was more like, “This is my love bubble. I’m going to stay right in here and connect to love, God, divinity, whatever.” And that has really helped me come to this place where I’ve found a new mission to help others do that as well. But it’s been a great learning path. And in some ways I look back, and I’m so fortunate. It sounds like you are, too, but I’m kind of like, “Thanks, cancer!” [Laughs] Thumbs up! Can’t say that for everyone, but...

For sure. You have to look for the bright side and the blessings in it, because otherwise you’ll just bring back the cancer with all the anger and the rage.

Exactly! What does that do for you?

I’m really glad you’re doing well, and it’s all behind both of us. I’m curious—I’ve been doing a lot of interviews with people whose albums came out around the same time as yours, and it’s been interesting to talk to them about songwriting. Some of them say songwriting is so much harder now that they’re older, while others are like, “Nope. It hasn’t changed at all!” How about you? Do you feel like your approach to songwriting has changed over time?

Yeah, I do. It’s a different platform; it’s a different set of pressures. Before, in the ’90s and early 2000s, there was so much pressure. All you wanted to do is get on the radio. And then after Burdens I felt like I needed to be something, especially for my second album. I needed to be edgy. I needed to have another hit. I needed to be pop or sexy or whatever. So right now songwriting is not, luckily, about that. It’s more about connecting with something higher. It sounds woo, but it’s really more of a spiritual process for me.

And it comes and it goes. I’m kind of a binge writer. I go for long periods without, maybe because it’s so like [breathes out]. It takes over. But, for instance, “Damn the Sky (For Being Too Wide)”, the song on Sky Too Wide, came in a flow, a stream of consciousness. It’s maybe the second or third time I’ve actually had a song where that has happened, and then I’ve released it almost as is. And those moments, they’re not all the time, but I do try to remain open for that. Even though the Burdens songs are already written, I try to do that, at least with the arrangements. I try to ask, “What would I want to hear now?” and not worry about pleasing others.

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I like to ask people about their influences or sources of inspiration, things that they’re listening to that are inspiring them. You mentioned a few classical musicians, but are there any other works of art that you’re influenced or inspired by?

For sure, but why does this question always go [mimics head exploding], and I draw a blank? Like, what is wrong with me? Gosh, you know, I listen to all types of music from all places of the world. Senegalese music really gets me going. I love Fela Kuti, I love Éthiopiques. My son is from Ethiopia, so I really got into that, where there’s like Ethio-jazz. It just makes me happy, and it’s such a different sounding scale, but also with Westernized influence. I love Courtney Barnett. She has humor [in her lyrics]. Every once in a while you’re just like, “Oh my God. She just said that in the song?!” It’s almost conversational and sometimes mundane. It’s like a grocery list, and you’re like, “Why didn’t I think of that? I love that!” I love that kind of songwriting. Lately I just love those guilty pleasures, like going back into my childhood, where it’s like ’70s and ’80s music. It’s fun to dance around to and not give a shit.

You’ve collaborated with a ballet, performed with Blue Man Group, contributed to music made by some of the biggest artists in the world, released incredible albums of your own. Is there anything you haven’t done yet that you’d still like to do?

Yeah! It’s on my 5, 10-year plan. It keeps getting pushed back because I can’t stop being Tracy Bonham. [Laughs] But what is it? It’s not a musical. It’s like a folk opera, but it’s not an opera and it’s not all folk. I have this production that I’d like to put on. It’s called As the Crow Flies. I’ve been working on it for eons and eons. It keeps popping up and then I keep pushing it, but it’s really good. I have all of these songs written and demoed, and some of them are orchestrated, and they’re so good, and I have a storyline, [which] needs work. And I still can’t decide—is it an illustrated book with music? That seems awesome. I remember those from my childhood, where you listen and you turn the page. But it’s about 30 minutes of music, so then is it a stage production?

So calling the universe: I want to know, how do I put that out into the world? Because there’s a message. The crow can’t find his voice. He was teased by all the other songbirds who could sing, but he sounded funny to them, so he’s ridiculed. And so he goes into his own little imaginary world, and he’s got all these songs. One’s called “One Note Joe,” and it’s all like one note, much like “One Note Samba.” But these little characters, they all have their plight, and they all have their self-imposed limitations that they are trying to get over, and I feel like it’s going to be so great when I can actually sit down and really focus on it and bring it out into the world.

It doesn’t have to be one thing. It could be both a stage play and a book.

Right? I know. I just need to start doing it. At one point, I was like, “Maybe I’ll just start by it being a one woman show,” and I’m just workshopping it, you know? I’ll sing all the songs, maybe I want other people to do the voices. I don’t know.

I mean, Hadestown started as a concept album and then blew up to be something bigger.

I just got chills. Exactly! I do think about that.

You’ve done a ton of work in the musical education space. What do you say to young artists who aspire to become professional musicians? Do you think it’s still possible for them to build a career in the field?

I think the word career needs to maybe be redefined or something, because I don’t even know what a music career is anymore. But if it’s self-expression and it’s your calling, then no one should ever discourage you from doing that. But you have to be like that Rilke [book] Letters to a Young Poet. He says something like, “If it’s not your passion, if it’s not something you eat and breathe, then maybe you shouldn’t do it.” Maybe you should find another job that pays, because you have to want to eat and breathe it and live it in order to really make any headway in the world.

I think the best music also comes from that place where it has integrity. It’s not just writing a pop song to get a buck. I don’t even know if anyone does that anymore. Now we have AI to do that. So, in a way, maybe the true artists, the young ones, will rise above. I’m hoping there’s going to be some kind of movement that is more about real artists, live music, things that we can see and feel and touch that are not based on artificial intelligence. I guess I would just talk to a young person and try to instill some kind of fire and passion, or have them ask themselves truthfully, “Is this something I really would want to hold my feet over the fire for?”

To learn more about Tracy Bonham, visit her website.

To see Tracy on tour, check out her upcoming dates.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Sometimes your furnace breaks down when you’re on vacation. And sometimes you have to spend a ton of money from 3,000 miles away to have it replaced. And sometimes, four months later, you discover that the new furnace has been slowly leaking, ruining all the items around it and causing a wet, moldy mess.

Annnnnd, sometimes you have to reschedule an interview because you need to spend the time sorting through moldy items to salvage whatever you can while waiting for the HVAC people to show up to tell you how much it will cost to fix everything.

Anyway, hi. It’s been a day. It’s the first of June, and already the month is a shitshow. I can only hope it gets better from here.

One good piece of news to share: over the weekend, Brian Andreas shared an incredibly sweet note to his socials about our interview.

I always put a ton of work into each interview, but since I work by myself I don’t really have anyone to give me feedback. So it’s nice to receive some kind words, especially in such a public manner.

Oh, and if you haven’t read the interview with Brian and his wife Fia, you should check it out. They’re pretty amazing.

This coming Friday’s interview is…a surprise! For both of us!

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I had an interview scheduled last week with a musician and was planning to run it this Friday. But she flaked and missed our call. (Totally fine. I get it. We’re all overwhelmed and running on fumes, so it’s understandable.) So now I’m going to chat with her later this week. Maybe I’ll have time to transcribe her chat, write it up, and get it published by Friday. Maybe I’ll end up running one of the other interviews I’m doing this week. Who knows.

Just know you’ll get something in your inbox on Friday. And hopefully by then I’ll have a dry basement.

In the meantime, wishing you a wonderfully creative week!

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For decades, writer/illustrator Brian Andreas (also known as Kai Skye) has created artwork and published short-form stories that celebrate life’s wonderful little moments. For many years his work was sold through StoryPeople, a company he founded in 1994. But today, he and his wife, Fia, run Flying Edna, a small, Cape Cod-based, eco-conscious studio where they produce their joyful, whimsical works of art.

Flying Edna’s collection of art prints, greeting cards, storyblocks, and books, as well as their “story of the day” newsletter, collectively conjure feelings of wellness, joy, and mindfulness. Still, the couple admits that it took some time for them to foster a productive working relationship.

“I will tell you,” Fia says, “it’s taken us years to be able to work together, because it was very clear that he’s like a one-man band.”

“I’m not sure our evolution is complete,” Brian adds. “But there is a greater sense of where we dovetail and where we need to step aside, and that’s a necessary part of our…It’s hard to call it a collaboration. It’s more like this environment and ecology that we live within. I tend to call it that other than a collaboration, because a collaboration brings all sorts of preconditions with it in this culture that I don’t think are even applicable for us.”

Over Zoom, I had a lively conversation with Brian and Fia about their backgrounds, their influences, and how they handle creative blocks.

Creative Reverberations is a reader-supported publication. Each interview takes many hours of work. To receive new posts and support my work, please subscribe.

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SANDRA EBEJER: Brian, you got a BA in Theater and English and an MFA in Fiber. When you were starting out in your career, what were your goals?

BRIAN ANDREAS: I started in pre-med, so I also have a minor in chemistry. In my college, you were required to take a liberal art out of your major. I took theater interpretation and went, “Wow! This is way more fun than the people in pre-med,” so I immediately switched over. English was always a background thing because I like to read. I didn’t even think in terms of writing until I started doing theater, and I went, “Wait, I should be writing my own monologues, because the monologues I see are not that interesting.” I like to talk about different things, so that’s the trajectory of it.

When did that morph into visual art as a profession?

BRIAN: You know, I haven’t really thought about this, but it just strikes me that what happened is that I was in theater, and the thing I liked most about theater was it was both time-based and physical. So there was movement in space, and then there were words that I could attach to that to explain it. I’ve always liked to explain things—not from a science standpoint but explaining it in the mythic way. Like in the ancient world there were these explanations for why there’s an eclipse, and they tended more towards the characters of gods and goddesses. I was always intrigued by explaining things in the way we experience things, explanations that get into the heart and soul of us.

So I came out of theater with that time and dimensionality, and the first thing I went into visually was stone sculpture, marble and limestone, because of the dimensionality of them, the weight, the presence. Why I come back to wood after I’ve given up on it and I never want to see it again is that there’s a quality of material that calls to me. I can wax conceptually really quickly, but it doesn’t have the same weight and grounding of a physical material, and I can’t wrangle a material in the same way I can talk myself into all sorts of stuff conceptually. I can say, “You are the essence of spring,” and the wood says, “Yeah, I’m a big chunk of pier. Work with me.”

And Fia, you have a background in theater and academia. How does that lend itself to the work you’re doing now with Flying Edna?

FIA SKYE: There are all sorts of reasons I [made] a career change, but ultimately, I was interested in a mindful life. You’ve got the week and then you’ve got weekends, and there was the academic calendar—you’ve got summer vacation, you’ve got all of these bits and pieces, and you’ve got the mind and the body. We’ve just broken everything apart. And I thought, “What would it be like if I lived every day like it was every day?” I was more interested in what that was, and there aren’t a lot of pathways in the United States that allow for that. The work I was doing at university was coinciding with what I wanted personally, but then what I was really interested in personally I couldn’t do at the university. It was very clear it was starting to do this [bumps fists], and I thought, “I can stay and isolate myself and do that tenured thing where you exist here on an island, or I could step into life in a different way.”

How does it influence [my work]? In the way my body wraps a package, or the language I use when I am responding to somebody in an email. I would say in every possible way, and in all sorts of invisible ways.

Where did the name Flying Edna come from?

FIA: My last trip to South Africa, I was directing a multilingual production for the Grahamstown Arts Festival. I was there with a colleague of mine, and we met this woman and she lived in a glass house. Everything in her house was intentional. It was as if there was a wholeness, like her entire life had become her art. There was something about that that struck me at that particular time. So I came back, and I said, “What if my life is my art?” Around the same time, a student had given me this book, Intrepid Women, and it was all of these historical women, most of whom we’ve never heard of because they weren’t written about by men. They didn’t make the history books, but they made history.

BRIAN: They were intrepid, and it bugged men that they were intrepid.

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FIA: Yes, exactly. And there was something about this that became consolidated and said, “What is that voice inside? That wild inner voice, whether you call it instinct or intuition, that you check in with, that is the only one with you your whole life and always has your best interests. Even when it runs counter to every logical thing in the room, it’s still tapping you on the shoulder and saying, ‘But what about this? But what if this?’” And I thought if that was a [woman], her name would be Edna. [Laughs] So Brian and I started talking about Edna, and then, of course, he waxed poetic about her background, which is as an aviator, and so all of a sudden we came to Flying Edna. [To Brian] For you she was a barnstormer.

BRIAN: Yeah. Not long after we met, we were living in a small Iowa town, and we would walk our dog at the time, and we would see people and make up stories about them. So when she talked about Edna, I said, “Oh, Edna. Yeah, she was the first female barnstormer in the U.S. And now she’s retired, she drives around the Upper Midwest on a Harley. And with her gray hair blowing back, she looks just like she’s flying, even though no longer being a barnstormer.” So Flying Edna for me is that image of this unrestrained wild woman, the wind running through her hair as she’s driving down the highway at 95 miles an hour.

I love that. How does the work balance between the two of you? Is one of you the visual artist and one more the storyteller?

BRIAN: I am the visual artist and the hands for the ideas of visual art that other people in this team can’t express.

FIA: And he’s the IT team and the social media guy, and he’s a fantastic cook.

BRIAN: It’s not split where this person handles such-and-such, and this person handles the other such-and-such. I have a long history of story making, both for performance and for written and visual art. That said, Fia has very clear vision of grounding in the word she uses, and she is a writer as well.

FIA: Yeah, we don’t have this split where he’s in front of the scenes and I’m behind the scenes, but I would say, to be very clear, I draw nothing at all whatsoever. You know, he wants to paint the wood, and I’m always more interested in the back side of the wood, where all the grain is, and I want to make sure that it is sanded in a particular way, and it feels a particular way.

BRIAN: I think there’s a tactility that you bring to materials, like a sensuousness around the material that I am often missing because I’m thinking in terms of structure, composition, and how it lands in dimensional space. So the work tends to expand its edges because of both of us participating, rather than, this is mine and this is what you do.

FIA: But for the Vert series that we’ve come up with—buerrevert, arborvert, aquapetravert, the things you turn to instead of introvert and extrovert—we will pass those back and forth. He’ll do a pass and then I’ll look and say, “Okay. What if we do this?” And he’ll disagree, then give it some time, and say, “Yeah. Give it back to me.” So some things we’ll go back and forth with, and other things I’ll say, “Yeah, but I think this,” and he’ll say, “That’s great, you get to think that. I’m doing this.” I’m like, “Okay. That’s fine, too.”

What is your creative process? Do you map out what you’re going to write or draw or is it all instinctual?

FIA: Nothing plans out with him. No calendar.

BRIAN: I think that’s fair. It’s hard to explain. I’m not really writing like, “I’m going to write about this.” It’s more I start listening to what’s showing up, and then I’ll catch the throughline of it and I’ll follow it. It’s more organic and feels alive in a way that writing to a specific theme doesn’t. I usually catch the themes I’m interested in after the fact.

FIA: Yeah, and I’m guided by the theater background, where I think of it as seasons. I think I was a herding dog in a former lifetime. I like boundaries, and I like freedom within the boundaries, but I like clear endings and beginnings.

Do you ever have creative blocks? If so, how do you break through them?

FIA: We just stop working. I would say we have stepped away from this need to produce and produce and produce and produce. Part of that thing about any sort of creative block is that a sense of the muse is always there. There’s no sense of it moving and disappearing. It’s a real sense of, this is a long-term idea or thought, and this particular chapter is just simply listening. And you’re not going to find it by pushing and pushing and pushing, because then it’s really no longer about the thing you’re doing, it’s about trying to produce something.

BRIAN: A creative block, in my experience, tends to happen in people when they’ve decided “this is the thing I do,” and not recognizing that there’s an ebb and flow in our biology, in the rhythms of our mind. If you’re running into a stopping point, it’s less that there’s a block than right now there’s something else that’s opening up. I don’t think I’ve ever had a creative block, because I go do something else. I’ll cook, I’ll go outside and make up songs with [our dog] Koko, I’ll go down to the basement workshop and start fitting things together until I see something that’s interesting to me, not because I’m going to sell it or make it into a product, but just [to make it]. What’s more interesting to me than having an identity as an artist is having a rich and full experience of my life. It’s hard to get blocked when you’re constantly looking at ways that you can sneak past your own ideas of yourself.

FIA: Because then when you’re sneaking around all the ideas you have of yourself, you’re constantly encountering new and interesting things. They don’t always turn into stuff, but they’re always new and interesting.

I like to ask people about their influences or other artists they’re into. Are there any artists or works of art that you turn to for inspiration or that have influenced what you do?

BRIAN: We’ve got influences all over the place. Steven Heller as a graphic curator I like. I like outsider art. I remember a book I ran across in Berkeley when I lived there that paired untrained African artists with trained African artists, and just flipping through it, I was amazed at how the untrained artists brought a specificity of experience to it, and the trained artists felt like, yeah, I can see you’ve trained in Illustrator and learned about composition and oils and color theory, and who fucking cares? It had nothing to say. So I will often dig through outsider art.

Es Devlin, an artist who is all over the map at the same time she’s not all over the map at all. She’s very specific in the threads that she’s reaching for. I like some of the South American fantastic realists like Gabriel García Márquez, and I like the French semiotician Roland Barthes. There’s something about how they see the world. Where I draw inspiration from is people who see the world so clearly their own way and have no problem saying, “Hey, it’s what I’m seeing. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I’m seeing.” That’s where I get inspiration. And I rarely go to them for inspiration; I’ll just run across them and go, “That is so cool!” And that’ll start me up again.

FIA: Mine tend to be more like Christopher Alexander, the architect. They look at the structure, the science of something. I love Robin Wall Kimmerer, in terms of interspecies conversations and communications, and what the natural world has already figured out and how we’re figuring that out. Right now, I’m doing a deep dive with Suzanne Clothier, with relationship-centered training. And the Alexander Technique in terms of Cathy Madden. It’s like, how the structure of something is built to work and then within this larger idea of something, it stretches out into a philosophy. What does that mean when we’re shipping a card across the miles? This idea of do no harm, and what does that mean as a species, and what if the evergreens and the cedars were our aunts and our uncle? I mean, these big ideas with nature and the cross-pollination of living within a place and a space are things that I’m really, really curious about.

BRIAN: When you [ask] who are our influences or inspirations, I tend to call it, “People who are curious about an idea.”

FIA: And they spend time with it! I mean, like decades and decades. And these are outliers, too. These are not always people within the mainstream. A lot of these people also are redefining language, where they’re coming up with ideas and you think, “Wow, the language that we have around something doesn’t really fit,” or does not speak to the integrity of this particular thing. It’s people that have done the work. And it’s not the—what is it, this many hours to create a genius?

BRIAN: 10,000 hours.

FIA: It’s not that. It’s that they failed so many times along the way that they’ve built up myelin. And they’re hardly ever the ones that everybody’s talking about. It’s really exciting and life affirming, especially with all the madness going on in this world, when you stumble upon that, and you think, “I can breathe more deeply because somebody is up to something magnificent. Isn’t that wonderful?” That’s the thing that we get really excited about. And then you don’t want your work to be any less than that. Not in a competitive way, but in a way that’s like, if we could contribute in that sort of magnificent way, why wouldn’t we? Why would we do anything less than that?

BRIAN: I think a question we both have, ongoingly, is what does it take to have mastery of the thing we’re interested in? Not mastering somebody else’s thing, but the thing that we’re interested in.

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“These Moments“ is a piece of yours that I saw on Instagram at some point, and I immediately connected with it. I kept thinking about it and thinking about it until I finally bought the print. Is there any artwork that you’ve done or something that you’ve written that has stuck with you and is one of your favorites?

BRIAN: It’s the one I’m working on. The closest analogy I have is my grandmother used to have a photo album of all these photos of family throughout her life, and my sister and I would sit on each side of her, and she’d flip through and she’d tell us the story of [the photo]. Like, “This is your great uncle, and this is right before he speared a shark off North Carolina. It almost bit off his little finger.” You can’t see it in the photo. The thing with the stories I’m writing is you can’t see the 90% of it that’s invisible. You see just the upper edge, like an iceberg. And I have so many experiences of my life when I reread them. I’m much more interested, though, in whatever I’m working on now, because that’s something I don’t know yet, and I’d like to find out.

FIA: One of my favorite things about Brian is he’s got thousands of stories that he’s written. You could ask him about any one of them and he can tell you about the person or the moment in his life that he wrote it. And this is from the early, early ones, and the ones he just wrote last week. It’s because for him, it’s distilling and distilling and distilling a life into these Polaroid moments.

BRIAN: Yeah, I think that’s true. It’s a really interesting question. There are things that I haven’t cracked yet, in the sense that it’s telling me something and I’m too focused in a different direction to hear it yet, but I know because it keeps whispering every time I walk by. Those aren’t usually written pieces; they’re usually objects I’m in the process of making. Like I’ve got one out in the woodshop right now that I keep walking by, going, “What the heck is that?” I’ve had it for three years now, and I keep trying things in my mind. So those are interesting things to me, but they’re rarely the words. Words are just an excuse to get to the feel of the experience of it. The analogy that I always have is an orange. You can describe the taste of an orange, the smell of an orange—it’s nothing like the actuality of unpeeling a ripe orange and having that tang hit you. No amount of words will ever do that. And so while I love words, I don’t trust them to talk about what’s real.

What do you hope people will get from your work?

BRIAN: I would love for people to remember their own life. That this is it. This is the life you have. You don’t owe anybody anything with this life. Experience it.

FIA: There’s an invitation to agency. It’s an invitation for you to explore, experience, or learn something you want to learn, and how do we create spaces for that for one another, so that we can all breathe a little bit deeper, a little bit more in line with the way that we’re designed to breathe, which is joyfully full.

To learn more about Brian and Fia, visit the Flying Edna website.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Just over a year ago, I published my interview with music journalist Adem Tepedelen, who started his career working at Seattle’s biweekly music magazine The Rocket and has also contributed to Mojo, Seattle Weekly, Revolver, and Decibel, among others.

A few years ago he transitioned to writing books with rock stars, which is how I first came to learn of his work. In recent years he’s co-authored two memoirs: Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion, co-written with Mudhoney’s Steve Turner, and A Fabulous Disaster: From the Garage to Madison Square Garden, the Hard Way, written with Steve Holt of Slayer and Exodus. And in two weeks, William Morrow will publish his biggest title yet—A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond, a memoir co-authored with Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil.

This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

In honor of the upcoming release, I’m sharing some video exclusives from our 2025 chat. You’ll hear about…

• the emotional roller coaster of writing a book and waiting for the publication date to arrive

• the time it takes to bring a book from inception to publication

• his reasons for continuing to pursue a career in music journalism

• why he feels aspiring authors shouldn’t give up on their dreams of publication

Enjoy!

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Happy Monday!

Although it’s actually Thursday. I’m writing this early because I’m heading to Boston this weekend and I won’t be back until Monday afternoon and I know that if I wait to write this it’ll get lost for all eternity in my ever-growing to-do list. So this is me being productive and checking things off the list in advance.

Of course, it means that I can’t tell you about my weekend because it hasn’t happened yet, but let’s just assume I had a wonderful time visiting with friends and family. We didn’t hit any traffic! The weather was perfect! Everyone was in a great mood! And could you believe that gas prices are only $1/gallon?? (This is me being optimistic. If not a little nuts.)

Anyway, hi. Hope you’re doing well.

Before I talk about recent and upcoming interviews, did you know that I’m having a second anniversary sale on annual subscriptions?

Instead of $50/year, it’s only $20/year. The subscription provides you with things like bonus content and access to all interviews and posts in the archive but more importantly, it supports me in my efforts to maintain an independent journalism career in the face of slashed budgets, layoffs, and publication closures. If you value the work in Creative Reverberations, please consider a paid subscription.

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In other news, I was really excited to see that my recent interview with Rae Haas of Mx Lonely was shared in the Fire Red Sky weekly digest. It’s one of my favorite newsletters, so it was an honor to be included. You can check it out here:

Fire Red Sky

Weekly digest #69

Welcome to Fire Red Sky’s latest weekly digest of punk rock, alt rock and indie music news and writing…

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22 days ago · 1 like · 1 comment

Mx Lonely’s ’90s-tinged grunge-meets-shoegaze sound made my Gen X heart sing. I’m really loving their songs. It’s one of the things I love most about my job—getting exposed to great new artists.

I also hope you had a chance to read my interview with indie-pop due Gracie & Rachel. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a while—their song “Trust” was a big one for me a few years back—so it was fun to chat with them about their new album and all of the challenges they went through to bring it to fruition.

Later this week I’ll be chatting with artists Fia & Kai Skye, who produce fantastic work under the Flying Edna banner. (Kai is better known to many as Brian Andreas.) Keep an eye out for the interview, and in the meantime, check out some of their work on Insta.

That’s it for now. Wishing you a wonderful week full of all the things you love!

Thanks so much for reading! If you’re enjoying this content, please share the publication with others!

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It’s been less than a decade since longtime friends and former roommates Grace Coates and Rachel Ruggles—better known to listeners as Gracie and Rachel—released their self-titled debut album. Yet in that short time they’ve become one of the most critically acclaimed indie musical acts working today, thanks in large part to their distinct blend of orchestral pop. But a few years ago, after the release of their 2023 EP Nowhere Now Here, they were struggling, going in different directions musically and personally, and unsure if their partnership would continue.

“I was really wanting to make a record,” Gracie says. “I had songs that were brewing. And Rachel was going into this world of sound design and Foley and learning this new skill set. It was me trying to pull her into this record cycle that she just wasn’t in the place for. I went off on my own and recorded a couple of songs with our producer, Benjamin Lazar Davis, and we made work that I would never have put into the Gracie and Rachel camp.”

Eventually, once Rachel was ready to put work into a new album, the duo decided to try a different approach. “We had this epiphany. What if Rachel does four Rachel songs, Gracie keeps her four Gracie songs, and then we do four collaborative Gracie and Rachel songs?” Gracie says. “That was a cool new way of doing things, but it came from a challenging time of, ‘Are we going to break up? Is it over? Does this mean we’re just going our own way?’”

The approach wasn’t always comfortable for Rachel, who admits that the album was the most challenging she’s worked on. “There were days where I was like, ‘I don’t think I can come up with four songs.’ It felt daunting and scary, and I was pretty emotional about that element. Also, I was separating from my partner, so I had lost that other support system. Gracie was going off doing her own solo music and I left this partner that I was living with. I think both of those happening had a lot of influence on the music and the difficulty of making the record.”

The resulting album, If We Could, Would We, is a gorgeous collection of songs covering deeply personal topics—regret, loss, and the pain of accepting that growth requires change. Over Zoom, Gracie and Rachel discussed the making of the album, their similarities, their differences, and how they shaped their unique sound.

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SANDRA EBEJER: The press release for the album describes you as a Venn diagram. What do you think that diagram looks like? In what ways would you say you overlap and in what ways do you differ?

GRACIE COATES: Rachel and I have, for the past few records, been in the middle one together, and I feel like this record is the first time we are going out of that and getting on our own page while still being together here. I think that’s where the Venn diagram does feel fitting, because we’re getting a bit of separation between church and state, between Gracie and Rachel itself. We’ve been one person, in a way, as a band, and on this record, we were allowing ourselves to be three people—Gracie and Rachel is one, Rachel’s one, and Gracie is another.

RACHEL RUGGLES: We have so much in common, but we’re also polar opposite people. One example from the music on the record is two of my pieces are slow and minimalist and instrumental. My background is as a violinist, and I have always been more of the arranger and instrumental composer, and Gracie is the songwriter and lyricist. I think it’s great that Gracie got to lean into more of her individual songwriting practices, and we got to also share slower, sparse, composition-style pieces. I think we kind of live in opposite ends in that respect.

You come from such different musical backgrounds. Was it difficult in the beginning to shape your sound?

RACHEL: I remember it being challenging. I come from sitting in front of a music stand with sheet music in front of me, and I recall when Gracie invited me to play with her, I was like, “What am I supposed to play?” I had never used my ear or my mind in that improvisatory, write-your-own-music kind of way. So that was a really big challenge for me to break out of this [mindset of], it’s all prescribed and do what you’re taught. And I remember Gracie being like, “Just play anything.” And I’m like, “What’s anything?” [Laughs] She would hum things and I’d be like, “Okay, I can play that.” It was like baby building blocks for me.

GRACIE: It probably was more challenging in Rachel’s mind for her, but the way I saw it, Rachel was so natural at it. I remember saying multiple times to my mom when Rachel would leave, “How does she know exactly how to express what I feel like through sound?” Because I didn’t have the language. Rachel came from this theoretical thing, and she’s like, “Tell me which notes to play.” I’m like, “I don’t really know what notes are. I’m still figuring it out.” But I felt like there was a symbiotic, unspoken thing between us, where I did feel like she knew what the song needed or what timbre to be in without us really being able to articulate that. Her sense of intuition was stronger than it probably felt for her, because she was like, “I need the notes on the paper.” But I think there was this natural thing that we didn’t really have to talk about it, and that was the coolest thing, because we both didn’t know how to speak the other person’s language; we could only do it through sound.

The songs on the new album are so personal. With the tracks you wrote individually, what was it like when you first shared them with the other person? Did it open up any wounds?

GRACIE: I think we were both terrified to show each other for the first time. I remember Rachel held on to hers for a while. [To Rachel] You didn’t show me for a bit, and I also was nervous to share them with you. I remember, actually, the first time sharing two of them with you, and my heart was beating out of my chest.

I had, not that long before, done for the first time a solo set upstate, and Rachel came, and I felt like my heart was outside of my body. Because I normally stand next to this person. I don’t ever perform for her; I perform with her, and she’s watching me now. It was like an out of body experience and you’re floating above yourself. So there was a little bit of that, at least for me, when I was sharing the songs.

She was so supportive and we were both so encouraging of each other, but terrified. “Undertow” I was scared to show her because it was explicit lyrics about our relationship. And Rachel’s really funny, because she listens deeply to these things, but then months later, I was like, “Did you ever listen to the lyrics?” She’s like, “Yeah. I know what it’s about, Gracie.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” I didn’t know because we weren’t talking about it! It’s a part of what I think got the title, when Rachel had this concept of, if we could, would we. Like, if we could, would we do this differently? Would we go back in time and be a band again? Would we do it the same way? Would we not do it at all? There’s a lot of questions and I don’t think a lot of answers on the record.

RACHEL: It’s interesting—I only came up with this thought just now—that Gracie probably would like me to respond more or ask more deeply about the lyrics, and I respond more to the musicality and the instrumentation and the production. And she responds more to my music asking about the lyric, and I don’t really want to talk about the lyric. [Laughs] I remember I shared the one iteration of “Caroline,” which is my only lyrical song, and our manager was like, “I can’t understand what you’re saying. It sounds like you’re hiding.” And I’m like, “That’s intentional!” [Laughs] Then I cleaned up my vocals so you can hear the lyrics. But I do think we both enter into music from those very different places. I’m sure I could ask more about the lyrics, and Gracie could ask more about the instrumentation and the arrangements.

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How are things for you now that you’ve put these thoughts and feelings out there?

GRACIE: I think we are in a better place from it. I think we’ve been gentler on each other. Like, the other day, Rachel’s like, “I gotta make a whole record of this piano music” or something, because she has these songs on the record that I love so much, and she had a really great time exploring. And that would have threatened me years ago. I’d be like, “Well, can I be a part of that? I can play piano!” I would have an ego flare up of some kind. I think we’ve allowed each other to say we can make all different kinds of things, and we do a lot of great things together and when that makes sense, let’s do it. It makes it more intentional. That is why I’m really grateful that Rachel said no about it at first, because I think we would have felt the pressure to make something else, and it might not have pushed us into new territory as much as this album did. So in that sense, we’re a lot better.

RACHEL: I think it helped remind ourselves what we are good at doing together, and what we’re good at doing alone. And that’s any partnership. You can’t be good at everything together. In some ways, it was able to spotlight where we thrive as collaborators.

Did the way this album was made change anything about how you’ll make music going forward?

GRACIE: Yeah, for sure. I think it’ll make our collaborative work much more exciting and intentional and celebratory and not needing to fit into something that we’ve known in the past we’re good at. I think of Andrea Gibson, the poet. The thing they said when they were diagnosed with cancer was, “We’re taught that our greatest human desire is to be known. Like, ‘He got me the thing for my birthday because he knows me so well.’” There’s this thing that means love and connection and seeing. “I feel seen because somebody knows me so well.” And they were like, “When I got diagnosed with cancer, I realized the power of loving my partner was to unknow them.”

When you’re in partnership with somebody so long—you know, Rachel and I have been doing this since we were 17—I still think of her as the 17-year-old in some ways. I’m sure she thinks of me that way. And it doesn’t allow the other person to grow. I’ve joked that Rachel will get a new sweater, and I’m like, “Why don’t I know about this sweater? I’m supposed to know everything about you!” You tighten your grip and it doesn’t allow the other person to surprise you or surprise themselves, because they think they’re still that person, too. So I love the concept of unknowing each other, and I think through this process we’ve hopefully given each other that and surprised each other.

“Leaving Home is Going Home” is a gorgeous track. In the liner notes, it lists the most incredible roster of backing vocalists: Ani DiFranco, Gail Ann Dorsey, Holly Miranda, Melissa Ferrick, and Jocelyn Mackenzie, to name a few. What was the experience like of having such an incredible group of artists support you on this ballad?

GRACIE: Surreal and beautiful. It was really special, because we conceived the majority of that song when we were in residency in Estonia. We were really isolated out there writing these songs, and that’s where a lot of that idea of leaving home is going home came into our world. So to have this warmth of people you know back home, who we feel so grateful to be in their lives, it felt like a really big hug that the song needed.

RACHEL: But I will say, editing everybody’s vocals... That took some time. People were singing the wrong lyrics. You know, you think we’re professionals out here. Some people did it in their iPhone, which we told them they could do. And I love them all just the same. But oh boy, was that a feat. I did it literally right in this room. I was just nudging, nudging. “Let me line up the yeses.” I pulled people’s words apart.

GRACIE: Yeah, we didn’t do this all in one room. It was everybody individually sending us their stuff. But it was sweet.

Your music is released through Righteous Babe Records, and it’s striking how different that label seems from others out there. A few years ago, I saw the two of you and some of your labelmates perform under the name The Righteous Babes. How was that for you, as young women, to be signed to a label that isn’t really so much a label as it is a community?

GRACIE: I remember thinking, “We’re gonna have to get everything approved. Will they like this if we go this direction?” And we learned early on that there’s a lot of trust in us that they and Ani had to say, “We believe you’re going to make something that we’re going to be intrigued by.” And that was a really big gift, because we have many friends in the industry who have not had that experience and don’t get to put out the things that they want to. So there’s a real trust and freedom in that.

We got to tour with Ani for a long time before even signing with her. She was a sweetheart and a real friend and very complimentary. Just to give an example of how I think the label feels—we would tour with her, and she was in the wings every single song of our set. She didn’t have to do that. We were playing pretty much the same set every night. But she has such care and attention to detail, and she’d comment on how we played something differently that night, or how she liked this story we told or whatever. There’s a real care about the people behind the music, not just the music.

RACHEL: I feel like the general tone is the artist leads, rather than the manager or owner or Spotify. It’s truly “we’re in service to the artist,” and we’ve always felt very supported. We own all of our music. They care about our being able to represent ourselves and have that type of ownership. So, yeah, good people. It’s becoming rarer and rarer.

For a long time, I had your song “Trust” on repeat. It was just one of those songs that I felt like I needed at the time. Are there any songs from any of your albums that you particularly love?

RACHEL: I love “Go.” It was one of our first songs we ever wrote together.

GRACIE: Every tour I’m like, “We could cut ‘Go.’ We played that enough.” She’s just like, “We’re not cutting ‘Go’! That’s not happening! That’s my happy place.” So, there’s songs like that that I think we each feel connected to. “Possible” is a song on our last EP that I really am grateful for and feel close to. It was a little half-song/poem and that was an example of the label being great, because it’s a one-minute-long thing, and they didn’t push us to do more. They let us put it on a record and it’s just a mantra. But that’s something I think is cool about different kinds of songs on the different records that get to come out.

If We Could, Would We finds the two of you working through some challenges. Usually when I’m going through something, I turn to music. Are there any artists or works of art you turned to for inspiration as you were working on this?

RACHEL: My greatest inspiration to make a record is music, hands down. Gracie likes to listen to people’s conversations on the subway—not in a creepy way, but she enjoys being out in the world. For me, it’s always music, music, music. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but for this record, as I’ve been getting more into doing sound for film, [I’m inspired by] everyday sounds, the sounds of the street, the sounds in your room, the sounds of silence. That diegetic underbelly was very inspiring to me. I’ve been listening to a lot more ambient music. I don’t listen to as much pop. On the last few records, I was listening to a lot of Christine and the Queens, more energetic music. And I went into a slower pattern, listening to more folk music and modular synthesis music and music that is just sound design and sound manipulation. That was a different sonic environment that I was living in than previous records.

GRACIE: Yeah. That’s totally spot-on that my inspirations come more from the people that I’m interfacing with or the relationships I’m navigating. I was going through a lot of ups and downs in my romantic relationship, our partnership collaboratively, and having a big identity crisis, as far as who is Gracie in and outside of both of those relationships and in the world? I was journaling a lot about that, and a lot of the lyrics for my songs and things I contributed to Gracie and Rachel were me going back to old notes and collecting things that I’ve been storing for a while from an emotional perspective, not so much a sonic one. Rachel’s the one that often inspires me to try to listen to more music, because I can get into my hole and not do that and put on the same old jazz every morning.

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Your debut album was released less than a decade ago, and you’ve already done so much. As you look ahead to the future, are there any big goals you hope to achieve?

GRACIE: Score a whole film. That would be really cool. That’s been a longtime goal of ours. We are doing a headline tour coming up, and I think it’s time for us to do more of that and take a chance on realizing that we have built a beautiful group of people that follow our work. To find them out in the wild on tours of our own is something I think is really important. But, yeah, I think just world domination.

RACHEL: [Laughs] With these headline shows coming up, we’re both really excited about playing with a full band. We’re gonna be bringing out a drummer and a guitar, keys, sound sculptor person. I’m very excited about that. And you know, one thought I’ve had for a long time for Gracie and I is to make some sort of live record. We’ve never done that before. I think getting some people in a room and seeing what happens, that’s a small goal that could be different and potentially enlightening for us.

GRACIE: Totally. That’s a good idea. I hadn’t heard about that one, but I really like it. I also think [touring] Europe is something that we want. We just did a tour with Ani last June in Europe, and there’s a real support for the arts over there. People go to see music and come back and stick with you. I mean, we played London probably a decade ago, and people were following along forever and will come to the show if we return. There’s just a feeling of really wanting to get European connections.

RACHEL: I think there’s a feeling of we just want to be European.

GRACIE: There’s that too, yeah. [Laughs]

To learn more about Gracie and Rachel, visit their website.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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This is a benefit for paid subscribers. If you’re interested in reading this post or hundreds of others in the archive, please upgrade to a paid subscription. It gives you access to posts like these, and helps me keep the lights on. Win-win!

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Back in January 2025, I interviewed Edward Underhill about The In-Between Bookstore, which happened to be the YA author’s first book for adults. It’s a truly delightful read about a trans man, Darby, who moves from New York City back to his small Midwestern hometown and, thanks to the magic of time travel, literally bumps into his 16-year-old, pre-transition self. It’s a story that essentially asks, if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say?

Our chat took place as the Los Angeles fires raged outside of Underhill’s home and just weeks before the presidential inauguration. Needless to say, it was a tricky time for a trans author who writes about trans characters to be publishing a book. But Underhill was incredibly optimistic that hope would prevail and readers would find their way to his book.

Just yesterday, he published his latest novel, The House of Now and Then, which has already received a starred review from Booklist and comparisons to Matt Haig’s bestselling Midnight Library.

In honor of his new book, I’m sharing some exclusive clips from our 2025 interview. In the following videos, you’ll hear why he chose to write for adult audiences, what it was like to release the book just before the inauguration, and his thoughts on the publishing industry.

Please give the videos a watch and then check out his books!

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On Writing for Adult Readers

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Sorry it’s been so long since I wrote a personal hello. I don’t know why I stopped sending these weekly greetings. I was reading some of my old posts the other day and remembered that I really enjoyed writing these. They’re like little time capsules, or peeks into a moment in my life. Maybe not a very exciting moment, but a moment nonetheless.

I think maybe I just got overwhelmed with all the things on my to-do list and the weekly greetings were pushed aside for who knows what. I’m going to try to get back into sending them, though. I miss talking to you. We need to meet up more often.

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty great. My husband and I went to see Godfrey at the local comedy club on Friday night. He was funny, though he spent the first 15-20 minutes or so just making fun of Albany and how horribly boring it is here. Which, yeah, okay, it’s not the most lively place, but punching low is a lazy form of comedy and even when it’s funny, the humor only goes so far. The second half of his set was much better, and I left with that “my cheeks hurt from smiling too much” feeling.

I do find stand-up to be an incredible art form when it’s done well. The ability to take life’s little mundanities and spin them into tales that make audiences not only laugh but feel seen is such an impressive skill. I don’t have that skill when I’m talking about boring stuff. I just ramble.

On Saturday it was FINALLY nice enough outside to sit on the back deck and read. I shared a photo to Instagram of my happy place.

As a result, George Pelecanos—writer, producer, talent behind some of my all-time favorite TV shows like The Wire and The Deuce—started following me on Insta. Might not be a big deal to anyone else, but it was a pretty exciting moment for me.

That evening my husband, son, and I went to “The Nightmare Expo,” which was basically like a farmer’s market for weirdos. Lots of booths selling odd art, goth clothes, and funky food, with the occasional tarot card reader and wandering raven-holder thrown in for good measure.

Speaking of odd art, I officially launched an Etsy shop a few weeks ago. It was a fairly quiet launch. I’m still intimidated when it comes to sharing my paintings. But I also know (from experience) that the only way to get past the fear is to do the thing, so I started a shop and put my paintings up there. Some of them, anyway. Turns out launching an Etsy shop is actually a ton of work. I’ve only put 9 or so paintings up so far and will add more when I have the the time.

Anyway, if you’re looking for some abstract funky artwork, check out my little shop.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed last week’s chat with Rae Haas, the lead singer for Mx Lonely.

I’d never heard of the band before a press release for their album showed up in my email, but when I listened to them I was immediately reminded of the grunge era of my youth and fell in love with their songs. “Shape of an Angel” is my favorite.

Later this week I’ll share my chat with indie duo Gracie and Rachel, who have been receiving major acclaim for their latest album, If We Could, Would We. Unlike Mx Lonely, I was actually very familiar with Gracie and Rachel’s music and was thrilled to Zoom with them for an hour or so.

Well, that’s it for the time being. Wishing you a wonderfully creative week!

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Though Brooklyn-based Mx Lonely is still a relatively young band (their first show was in 2022), their unique sound—heavy and noisy yet melodic, with a tinge of ’90s-era grunge and shoegaze—has earned them significant acclaim. The band’s EP Spit was one of FLOOD Magazine’s “15 Albums From 2024 You Should Know” and their recently released debut full-length album, All Monsters, was Stereogum’s Album of the Week. Describing their sound as “loud as f*ck,” the band has toured extensively, with their live performances frequently described as “intense” and “powerful.” It’s all incredibly impressive, particularly given that the band’s members—synthesist/vocalist Rae Haas, guitarist Jake Harms, bassist Gabriel Garman, and drummer Andy Rapp—didn’t initially intend to tour at all.

“When we all started playing together, which was in 2020, we had no intention of necessarily being a big touring band in the way we are now,” Haas says. “It was like, ‘Let’s get together just for fun, kind of bounce some ideas off each other.’ And [the debut EP] Cadonia was written that way. It was written in this way that was more us learning things. A lot of those songs were structures that Jake brought in, and then ‘Something About You...’ and ‘Mr. Lonely’ were both written in the room. When we wrote those two songs it was like a turning point of realizing this was more of a band.”

I recently chatted with Haas about the band’s somewhat surprising influences, the use of AI in music, and why aspiring musicians shouldn’t quit their day jobs.

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SANDRA EBEJER: What is your musical background? Did you begin playing music at a young age?

RAE HAAS: I had a couple of guitar lessons and piano lessons when I was a kid but also had raging ADHD. So I’ve always been interested in music, always wanted to play music, but never quite was able to wrap my head around composing music until I was 18, 19. I did a lot of theater and dance and more physical performance, and when I started to go see DIY music, it was all of the things I had been trying to combine. I started singing karaoke at this bar, met a bunch of musicians, and got out of my own head about needing to be a ripper to make music. I think that took a while for me to fully accept. I have a lot of imposter syndrome and those sorts of things. But, yeah, I didn’t start making music properly until I met Jake in 2019.

Mx Lonely has been getting a lot of comparisons to ’90s grunge and shoegaze. Who are your influences?

There’s something about Pixies, the relationship between Kim Deal and Black Francis—those early records, Doolittle and Surfer Rosa especially, were two things that really inspired me and Jake writing music. Cranberries, also, vocally and melodically. I’m a big Nirvana and Hole fan. It’s just things that I grew up listening to, that I felt really seen and accepted by. There’s a lot of more, embarrassingly so, ’90s alternative radio hits that were big for me as a kid. Like, I liked Matchbox Twenty, I liked Creed, I liked a lot of nu metal. There’s a lot of different things from the ’90s that definitely inform us. I don’t think we intentionally tried to rip the ‘90s. It’s just what we like.

Matchbox Twenty was not what I was expecting you to say!

Totally. Elliott Smith is also [an influence]. That’s not necessarily ’90s grunge or things that we get compared to a lot, but Jake’s guitar tuning is all in Elliott Smith tunings, so it inspires a lot of those chord structures. And also poetically and spiritually, they’re one of my favorite musicians.

All Monsters is your debut album. Did you learn anything about recording music or the music industry as a result of making it?

If it was up to me, [when it comes to] putting out music, I might just drop albums. It’s how I like to process and hear music. And I say with the most gratitude that people come to shows having heard just the album and are like, “I was really moved by the whole piece.” I feel like I have that relationship with artists and albums where I like listening all the way through. Also, just being on a timeline for the record—a lot of those videos that we shot were really in the moment, filmed a couple months before, which was an interesting process. A lot of times, people prep for a bigger release, and you’re putting out videos and online content that’s not necessarily in the moment, which feels a little unnatural to me, honestly. I’m trying to find where my truth and balance is in that, where I can present things that I’m really proud of and feel like they’re connected, while still maintaining a timeline structure of releasing things. Again, I have ADHD, so a lot of times structures and timelines don’t come naturally to me.

I love the way that you and Jake trade vocals. Was that something that was intentional when you began working together, or did it happen organically?

It’s how Jake and I write. Actually, I think almost all of the songs on this record, all the vocal structures are built around just playing acoustically in our living room. So we just trade off vocals.

Do you ever disagree on how a song should sound?

Sometimes, but I feel like once we get to the recording part, you’re just capturing what’s happening. I think that’s what’s made the band work so well. We have arguments about other things sometimes, but generally, when it comes to the music, the sound is captured in the room. I think we leave enough space for one another to have our input.

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You’re building an audience at a time when tech companies want to push AI on us. How do you feel about the use of AI and technology in music?

I personally get existentially creeped out by the whole concept of AI. I am curious, though, about what kind of ways it can benefit music. I feel like it’s something that unfortunately is an inevitability. I’d love to be like, “Fight the power! Fuck it!” Which I was maybe a year or two ago. But at this point, I think it’s an inevitable part of our lives. And I think we have to figure out what is the best way to utilize it in a way that benefits us as artists and benefits our artistic integrity. I think it can be really useful as a tool for artists. And I think music that’s completely made by AI is never gonna compare to the soul of a person. There’s a very spiritual nature to music, where you’re letting a force larger than yourself speak through you. I think those are my biggest issues with AI and music is the surface level understanding of the underlying spirituality of music, the humanness of it. I prefer it didn’t exist. But I hope to God that we figure out a way to use it that doesn’t destroy us.

If somebody is reading this and they’re not familiar with your work, what song would you say is the best to start with? Do you have any favorites?

It’s an interesting listen chronologically. Jake and I have a project called V0id B0ys. I would say it’s the genesis of what is Mx Lonely now. I think listening to Dog by V0id B0ys-slash-Mx Lonely first and going through chronologically is a very cool journey. It’s an album I’m incredibly proud and excited by. Sometimes people ask, “Do you feel like this is your best piece of work?” And I’m always seeking and striving to be better and do better as a person. What’s cool about music is it’s such a depiction of who you are and where you were in time. It’s like a photograph. How can I not like that? How could I quantitatively look at it differently than where I’m at now?

I want to ask about a couple of songs on All Monsters that are favorites of mine. The first is “Shape of an Angel.” Can you share a bit about how that one came about?

It’s funny, that one had different lyrics when I first started writing it. We wrote that in a day with our friend Colton Walker, who’s in a band called Ringing. He had this riff, which is the [sings riff] opening, the riff that goes throughout the song, and he’s like, “I’ve had this since college, but I haven’t known what to do with it.” I heard it and it was one of those songs where words flowed out. I don’t have that often. Usually, I’m singing phrases and writing them in later, but that I had so many different versions of choruses and verses. Maybe that’s why it’s one of my favorites, lyrical wise, because I think it was a little bit more crafted. There was something larger I was trying to communicate in the lyrics than maybe other processes that I’ve come to writing lyrically. I love that you love that song. That’s one of my favorite songs. And I think it’s a sleeper on the record. It’s interesting to me which songs different people like, because I think it’s sort of like a horoscope or a sorting house or something. It tells me a lot about a person.

And you guys did a video for it. I grew up at a time when MTV was the way that artists got their music out to people. Do you find that videos are still helpful in that way?

It’s just something that I love. I was on the tail end of it, but before school, I would watch VH-1 and MTV. It was the tail end of when music videos were on, and it’s how you’d find new music. And I love a visual. I love deeply looking at music videos and thinking a lot about them. I think it’s cool to see the band performing, too. I know Jake has definitely gone back and watched Elliott Smith videos. There’s ways that he plays chords that are very specific, and you can kind of only learn it by [watching his videos]. You wouldn’t know by just listening.

The other song I want to ask about is “Whispers in the Fog,” which is an epic, 7-minute-long track. What can you share about that song?

It was definitely a conversation of being cut for its length. But we all just loved that song and felt like it belonged. It was a song that Jake demoed out and didn’t necessarily expect to turn into an Mx Lonely song, but when we added synth and heard it outside of an acoustic setting, it had this huge epicness. It’s one of the songs I think calls back to Cadonia, and some of those really big epic structures. We all really fought for that to be on despite knowing that putting out a seven-minute song is [something] people wouldn’t advise. There was something a little punky and divergent of us to want it on there.

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It’s a challenging time, as I’m sure you know, to enter any creative field. What advice would you have for aspiring musicians?

Have really clear boundaries with yourself about monetization of your art and your artistic practice. I don’t think I can separate art from spirituality. A lot of people can and do and that’s their experience, but I think that’s where people get burnt out. They don’t give themselves space to explore and have silence, too. Having time where you can let inspiration come to you [is important]. And don’t think of your worth in the way of your product. The larger venues you get, the further away from DIY you get, the further away from DIY ethos you get.

But yeah, having separation, having boundaries, and maybe also not quitting your day job. That’s kind of a controversial thing. But I work in film and TV, and so does Jake and Gabe, and Andy has a day job. We do carpentry and painting for sets. I can use myself as an artist, my body, my labor, and I’m okay with monetizing it. It’s never gonna be something that I’m super hung up on. Have other ways to monetize so that you don’t have to solely focus on monetization of music in this era, because bands that you would assume are paying their rent touring are not. You have to be selling out stadiums to be at a level where you’re making enough to live.

Also, just know what you want in life. Like, I’ve never had a lot of money. I’m okay with maintaining where I’m at. I’m aware of that, and that’s where touring and being in a band and committing so much of my time and energy to it is okay, because it’s valuable to me in that way. But if you’re somebody that knows you’re gonna want to have certain things to be comfortable in life, be real about that. I don’t think there’s any shade in not touring all the time and putting out music however you want to do it. The grass is not always greener. I prefer smaller shows; I prefer smaller rooms. And it’s not how success is always gauged. But it feels better to be a part of a smaller music community, always. Just know that in your heart before you try to make it in the industry.

To learn more about Mx Lonely, visit their website.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Mac Barnett never planned to write a book for adults. The author of dozens of books for kids, including the Caldecott Honor-winning Extra Yarn and the Mac B., Kid Spy series, Barnett has long been an advocate for picture books. He and picture book author-illustrator Jon Klassen run the Looking at Picture Books Substack, in which they aim to give readers “a deeper understanding of the medium,” and in 2011, he wrote the “Picture Book Proclamation,” signed by 21 fellow authors, which pushed for more awareness of the genre. In short, kids’ books are his jam; adult books, not so much.

But when Barnett was appointed the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, he realized he had an opportunity to make his longstanding argument—that children deserve good books—to a wider audience. So he wrote the newly published Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, a short but powerful read which he refers to as “an argument.”

“The thing I want adults to know,” Barnett says, “is that children, contrary to a lot of our expectations, are actually an ideal audience for art and literature. It is incumbent upon us as adults to get them books that are deserving of their attention, because we are so entwined with children’s books. Children’s books are written by adults. They are edited by adults, published by adults, reviewed by adults. Those reviews are read by adults. Adults buy the books, and for very young kids, adults decide whether to actually read those books out loud to kids. So it is our moral responsibility to take this stuff seriously and to spend time thinking about these books as literature. Because if we are not working on making the best books and getting them in kids’ hands, then they’re not going to get these books. So, at the most basic level, I want to point out how intertwined adults are with getting kids good books and ask us to think about it more.”

Over Zoom, Barnett spoke with me about the book that made him want to become a writer, his influences, and why he loathes didacticism in children’s literature.

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SANDRA EBEJER: You never planned to write a book for adults, but then you wrote this book for adults. Why?

MAC BARNETT: A year-and-a-half ago, I got appointed the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature. A big part of that has been talking to adults about children’s books. I think that adults misunderstand children’s books. I spend a lot of time writing for kids, reading to kids, and I think adults underestimate children’s literature because they underestimate children. So it felt like there needed to be a book that advocated for the literary merit of children’s books, and also for the intelligence of the children who read books.

You describe your earliest days as a storyteller, back when you were working as a camp counselor. Do you remember writing your first children’s book and what that experience was like?

Very much so. I started it my senior year of college. I think back on that a lot because a lot of time I hate writing. I hate the act of sitting down and composing, and it’s my job. Sometimes I fantasize, like, what if I didn’t have to do this? And then I think back [to when] I was an intern at a little publishing company in San Francisco, and that whole time I was working on a picture book. Nobody I knew was writing picture books; nobody I knew even cared about picture books. I was 21 years old. Why was I doing that? Why was I sitting there on BART working on these drafts? And it’s comforting to be like, “On some level, I am compelled to do this. I am made to do this. This is how my brain works. This is my cruising altitude.” Nobody was asking for that; nobody was demanding it. Truly, nobody cared. And I did it anyway. I wanted to do it. And so it’s nice, like there is some sort of internal engine, because some days it doesn’t feel like it, I tell you that. [Laughs]

Creative Reverberations is a reader-supported publication. Each interview takes many hours of work. To receive new posts and support my work, please subscribe.

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In Make Believe you write an extensive overview of Goodnight Moon, to the point where it made me want to go back and read it again because I’d clearly missed a lot. What about that book makes it so unique and special?

Well, one reason I do that is it’s a book that’s familiar to so many of us. It’s a book that if you have a baby shower, there’s going to be five copies given as a gift. It is a book that is a part of so many of our childhoods, and I think its ubiquity makes it hard to see its brilliance, that it is this experimental poem. It’s this really ambitious, kind of dark and strange book that’s ultimately comforting, and I don’t think this is accidental to its success. I think it’s the reason that kids who had it read to them in the ’50s then went and bought that book in the ’70s to give to another generation of kids, and on and on. That is the source of its power.

And although you might not have thought all those things I thought in that close reading—one, I just wanted to show that it can withstand a close reading, just as an Emily Dickinson poem can withstand a close reading. Margaret Wise Brown was one of our great American poets, and her work deserves to be looked at as such. And two, to answer “Why that book?,” you don’t have to write a piece of literary analysis to feel the strangeness of the book, to feel the difference of the book, to feel the rhythms of the book. That hopefully, on some level, I’m describing how that book works and what it feels like to have that book read to you as a kid. Kids are very sensitive to the rhythms of language, to incongruities in the images, and the mechanics of the book. The very complicated mechanics of the book create an effect on the reader, the kid, that is profound and long lasting.

So one, it was like a literary exercise to show what kind of interpretive work was possible. But two, and this is really important, I do not think that the literary work I was doing there is like the readout of academics or critics who are having fun being like, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we treated this poem like real literature?” The reason that book works for kids is because it is real literature, because it embraces the strangeness and even the scariness of falling asleep.

Margaret Wise Brown obviously had an impact on your work. Who are some of your other influences?

There was a book at the summer camp that I worked at. They called it the library, but it was just a bookshelf of the saddest children’s books. But they had one that had come out when I was a kid that I had missed. I hadn’t read it. It’s called The Stinky Cheese Man [by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith]. I’d never seen anything like it. The cover was so beautiful, but the design was just wild. I thought it was really funny and brilliant and interesting. And I was like, “This is the kind of thing that an English major who is interested in experimental literature [would like]. I can understand this book, but maybe my four-year-olds will like the pictures or that it’s about fairy tales.” We do that a lot as adults. There’s this self-flattering mode where we say, “There are some jokes in there for the adults. They go right over the kids’ heads, but there’s some stuff for them, too.” And what we mean is, “There’s a bunch of stupid stuff in there for them, and then there’s some smart stuff in there for adults.”

I read that book to my four-year-olds, and I was shocked. The metafictional jokes, the boundary-pushing jokes—they were laughing at all of the same stuff that I was laughing at. Kids can get sophisticated jokes and think complex thoughts. They sometimes don’t have the references that we have as adults. They don’t have all the experience or even know the names of things, and that book, very subtly, teaches you what you need to know before making a very complicated joke about it. So seeing the sophistication of these four-year-olds and their willingness to take a chance on a strange book was inspiring to me. I think if that book came out for adults, it would have a cult following. It would come out from a university press, and people would talk about it at dinner parties. It’s this great, strange book, but because it came out for elementary school kids, it is one of the best-selling, most loved picture books ever published. And again, like Goodnight Moon, like Where the Wild Things Are, this is actually a hugely ambitious piece of experimental literature that is widely read and embraced by elementary school students.

And that book for me... I was like, “If this is what a picture book is like, this is what I want to do.” That is the book that made me decide to write picture books. In college I studied difficult poetry that was intentionally hard to understand, and I think what I was interested in was, is there a reason beyond elitism and social capital that you might be interested in reading difficult poems? Something other than just bragging rights, that “I’m somebody who can understand this stuff.” Is there fun to be had? Is there a sense of play? Is there a pleasure from wrestling with a difficult text and decoding it? That’s what I see in kids. I think they are much more willing to sit with a story and do the hard work of interpreting it, of figuring out what it means than we adults are. They’re better at it. Our default is if something is hard for us, we think it’s going to be even harder for a child. But there are so many things that they are better at than us, and interpreting art turns out to be one of them.

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I also want to add that, as you wrote about in the book, Margaret Wise Brown had an absolutely horrible death.

Terrible! It’s so bad. She died at the age of 42. She had an ovarian cyst, had it removed, and then was bedridden in France. She lived in New York City. So she’s bedridden for a couple weeks, is about to be released. At this time in her life, too, she is in love with a Rockefeller and about to be married. She gets out of bed, and to prove that she’s feeling well, she does a can-can kick, which dislodges a blood clot in her leg, which goes to her brain, and she dies on the spot.

Unreal. I did not know that story until I read Make Believe.

It’s so wild. And her books—there are these sudden veerings into the unexpected across her work. They end in abrupt, deliberately unsatisfying ways. You turn the page and things shift in this really vertiginous way. Part of what her work does is it gets to the truth, which you know as a kid, too, that life is not neat and stories are not neat and the unexpected is always there. The violent is always there. The tragic is always there. This is all stuff that is in the picture books of Margaret Wise Brown. And so her death is eerily consonant with her poetry.

In the book you write, “Kids have made me a better writer, but they’ve also made me a better reader.” In what way?

As a reader of fiction, what do we need as adults? What do we pride ourselves on? If we’re like, “I’m a good reader,” I think the things we’re talking about are qualities that kids possess naturally. So, being good at noticing things, a keen observer of text and a keen observer of the world; an openness to new kinds of stories, not having orthodoxy about how a narrative should work; and that comfort with ambiguity, which is literature’s greatest power, to get to paradox or incongruity and to make us sit there with it, which is a threat to our ordered and formed adult lives. Kids are much better at being in that place because they live in it so much. And I think these qualities, which we cultivate through a lifetime of reading and maybe even a study of literature—and there’s something really comforting about this—they’re human skills. They’re things that we don’t have at birth necessarily, but they’re in us. As soon as we start talking and telling stories, we have them. In fact, those keen senses, the appreciation of the rhythms of language, the absurdities of language, the strangeness of the world, that openness, these are things that we shed in childhood. So a good reader, I think, is often reawakening skills that they had as kids, but that have dulled.

One of the things you talk about in Make Believe is that adults have plenty of books that are simply entertaining, whereas books for kids are supposed to have some sort of lesson. In your career, have you felt pressured to include a teaching moment or write to trends?

I have not felt it, because from the beginning, the didactic mode, to me, feels anti-literary and on some level anti-kid, so it’s never been interesting to me. But have I felt that the pressure exists? Yeah, of course, from editors, from parents, teachers, librarians who read the book and say, “There’s no lesson here!” That is the default mode for a lot of adults when they think about kids’ books: does it teach a good lesson? Does it tell you to share or say thank you or make a kid better in some way? Which really is just another way that adults are trying to control kids. And then we wonder why kids aren’t loving reading, right? We adults are treating children’s books as tools. We are looking for an outcome, rather than treating children’s books as something to be enjoyed, as something that is entertaining, as art, as literature, as powerful experiences. And we insist on this didactic mode that kids can sniff out in a second—“Okay, they’re telling me to share again.” And when they stop listening, when they don’t want to read these books, we wonder, “Why does this generation not care about reading?”

And, you know, we have this mode of books that improve us, right? This genre is alive and well in adult literature. It’s self-help. But self-help is over-represented in kids’ books. And self-help is a totally valid genre, but with kids’ books, it’s actually not self-help because kids aren’t getting to choose the ways in which they are improved. It’s very risky to give somebody else a self-help book as a gift, right? You might hand it over, and be like, “I think you could really use this.” And they’re looking at it like, “What the hell? You think I have this problem?” That’s a risky gift. The chances of it offending the person you give it to are very high. But that is what we do to children every single day when we read a book to them that teaches a lesson. We say, “We think you need to know this.” It is the most arrogant and really dangerous, socially, thing that we can do.

Well, in addition to adults deciding what books kids should have, adults are deciding what books they can’t have. In doing research for this interview, I learned that a couple of your books have been removed from school libraries in Florida. What is your response to those who choose to challenge books or deny children the ability to read certain titles?

I grew up in the library. That was my place and it was a place of freedom for me. It was really important to me as a kid. Kids are constantly having adults tell them what to do, and here’s a place where you can chase down your interests, the things that excite you. And my mom, when we would go to the library, would let me run around the whole place and choose whatever books I wanted from the shelves. I would bring her that stack, and we would check them out. And I can’t remember her ever saying, “No, you can’t check this book out.” That would have been her right. She could have said, “Why don’t we wait five years?” I don’t remember her doing that. I can’t imagine her actually doing it to me. But that was her call, her choice.

What I know she would never have done is take a book out of another kid’s hands at the library. That’s a misunderstanding of what the library is as a community resource. And again, it’s another instance of adults telling kids what to do, which I think we all remember was one of the biggest bummers of childhood existence. And look, if we want kids to read more, which I do, one of the most counterproductive things you can do is take a book a kid is interested in out of their hands.

You’ve worked with many illustrators on different titles. What is that relationship like? Are you hands-on when it comes to illustrations? Or do you stay out of that aspect of the work?

When I’m writing a picture book manuscript, I’m trying to build something that an illustrator can come in and add to. A lot of creating a picture book manuscript is actually about leaving gaps, because the illustrations in picture books have a storytelling role. The Illustrator is really an author who writes with pictures. So I’m trying to create something that is interesting for an illustrator, that gives them opportunities. I’m often part of the process with Jon. Jon Klassen is one of my best friends. We talk all the time, and when we’re working on a book, we talk about that book together. But [with other illustrators], when I’m done, the illustrator is in charge. And if the illustrator wants to talk to me, I’m there. I’m somebody who knows the book well. But making any piece of art, you let go of it at a certain point and other people decide what to do with it. When you make picture books, you let go very early. If you just write them, you hand them off to an illustrator who takes over the storytelling duty and then we hand them to adults.

We hand them to adults who are actually our equal collaborators in creating the artwork, because a picture book is really this individual performance. If you read picture books out loud to kids, you know that you were like an actor who has been cast in every part. Adults will decide how to read our books, like whether to do voices for the characters. So literally, what these characters sound like, how quickly to turn the pages, which creates the rhythm with which the story moves forward. Sometimes an adult will put a page turn at a place where the illustrator has not, like turn it earlier, later, or will cut a sentence that I spent two weeks getting right. But that’s the game. That’s how these work, and a good adult will know how to make that story really sing for that kid or group of kids that they’re reading to right then. So a picture book—and I think this is something beautiful—is this set of collaborations. And hopefully in a good picture book, when I’m done, when the illustrator is done, when the adult reading the book is done with their jobs, there is still a gap. There’s still a piece that’s unfinished, a space that the kid listening can bring their own intelligence and experience to to figure out what that means.

Is there anything you haven’t done yet, or any type of book you haven’t written, that you’d really like to do?

I am so reactive to the idea that’s in my head, so I’m bad at planning things this way. I have a new set of books out with Jon, and for Make Believe, when we’re going out to tour these books, rather than doing readings to kids, we’re just going to be talking to writers and artists that we admire about children’s books. And those kinds of conversations—talking with adults about children’s books, bringing children’s books to spaces where people care about literature, but aren’t often talking about children’s literature—that’s exciting to me. I’m looking forward to getting on the road and doing that. But then this fall, I’ll be back in elementary schools reading to kids, and that’s where I belong.

To learn more about Mac Barnett, visit his website.

To purchase Make Believe, click here.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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In 2024, I had a wide-ranging conversation with multi-hyphenate talent Jocelyn Mackenzie. If you’re not familiar with her work, Jocelyn was one-third of the folk-pop trio Pearl and the Beard and is now a successful solo artist, with multiple albums released on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. In addition, she directs music videos, designs clothing, creates improvisational music with Guy Capecelatro III under the band name Pumpkin Mouth, composed music for the pre-Broadway musical Rutka, and is a psychic medium.

Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about.

The interview ran for an hour, and there was a lot we discussed that didn’t make it into the original piece, so I’m sharing a few clips now with paid subscribers. In the following videos, you’ll hear about what she learned from her time with Pearl and the Beard, how she manages burnout, her future aspirations, her advice for tapping into psychic abilities, how she balances creative projects with a day job, and her work with The Push Collective, an initiative she launched with other female-identifying musicians.

Please give the videos a watch and then check out her new song, “Rumspringa.”

On What She Learned From Her Time with Pearl and the Beard

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Anyone who has lived with depression or anxiety knows they are no laughing matter. And yet, sometimes the best way to get through it is to find the humor in the situation. That’s precisely what Gemma Correll has done in her new graphic novel, Anxietyland. Featuring her signature black, white, and red illustrations and witty self-deprecation, the book brings readers along on a challenging, darkly funny journey as Correll delves into her lifelong struggle with mental illness. Comparing the experience to that of a theme park she’s dubbed Anxietyland, she depicts her ups and downs as attractions—among them, the Loop of Anxious Avoidance, Hangxiety Falls, and the Worry-Go-Round.

The book is, at times, heartbreaking, but ultimately, hope prevails. It is a story Correll’s many fans—she has nearly a million followers on Instagram alone—will undoubtedly be thrilled to read. But as she embarks on her book tour, she makes it clear that it’s absolutely fine if some of her readers don’t make it out to see her.

“A book tour is a big undertaking,” she says. “I am very careful to plan my time effectively and not take too much on. But at the same time, I totally understand that not everybody feels comfortable in those kinds of situations. So I would love to meet people, but I also get that not everybody is into it.”

Over a recent Zoom call, Correll spoke with me about her influences, the importance of taking breaks from social media, and how the U.K. and U.S. differ in their approach to mental health.

This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

SANDRA EBEJER: Congratulations on the book! It’s fantastic. I know you worked on this for a long time. How does it feel now that it’s finally being shared with the world?

GEMMA CORRELL: It’s pretty crazy. It’s very strange to see it as a real object that I can hold. I mean, it was in my head for a long time before I even started seriously working on it. And then it was four years of sketching and sticking stuff up on the walls to try and figure everything out, so it’s a little surreal that it’s actually a real thing now.

When did you develop a love for illustration and cartooning? Did you grow up in an arts-loving household?

Not particularly, no. We were just an average family. My dad is a good artist, but not professionally or anything, just kind of amateur. My parents had a lot of cartoon annuals, so I grew up reading those. There was a cartoonist who lived in the town that I grew up in, Ipswich. His name was Carl Giles, and he used to do cartoons for the newspaper. They would make annuals, and we would get those every year. I was obsessed with those. And also The Far Side by Gary Larson. I was surrounded by books. I grew up reading a lot, just loving books and children’s books and illustration, and I was encouraged by teachers at school a lot, as well, partly because I was always drawing in the margins of my books. They started giving me my own sketchbooks to draw in. Like, “Please stop drawing in your textbooks.” [Laughs]

Anxietyland is your first long-form book. How was it to jump from shorter works to something of this magnitude, especially given the personal nature of the book?

It was quite challenging. As you said, I’m used to doing short form, which doesn’t take a whole lot of planning. Everything I do starts in my sketchbook. I can figure out a single panel or six-panel comic just in my sketchbook, and then it’s straight onto the page. But with this, I needed to have some kind of structure. I needed to plan a lot more, and that is not my strong suit. This was completely new to me, so I went through a few different ways of approaching it.

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I tried to write everything out. I sat with my laptop and typed everything, which didn’t really work. Drawing and writing have always been so intertwined for me that I can’t separate them, which meant essentially having to write and draw every page out, including planning the whole composition of every single spread and literally drawing them all out on printer paper, sticking them up on the wall, and literally moving stuff around and cutting stuff out and redrawing pages until I had them how I wanted them.

How did you come up with the idea to portray these issues as a theme park?

I like putting more complicated subjects in a cartoony format. I love infographics, and I love trying to make things a little more interesting to read while putting them in a different framework. I just love theme parks, and I’ve always been looking for an excuse to use one as a framework for something. And I always have thought of anxiety as like a roller coaster. It’s a little cliché, the emotional roller coaster idea, but that is really what it’s like. There’s so many ups and downs and loops going round and round. I just thought it would be a fun way to use a bit of humor and levity to portray something that’s quite serious. And also, I wanted to business expense my trips to Disneyland.

Smart! There are parts of the book that are very funny, but there are also moments that are quite sad. Was it difficult to find a balance of keeping it lighthearted for readers, but serious enough to not poke fun of what you were going through?

Yeah, I was very conscious of getting that balance right. I wanted to be as honest as possible about things that happened to me. I didn’t want to leave anything out, as long as it was personal to me and not somebody else’s story. I think I naturally have always used a certain amount of humor, and I wanted to keep that same amount of balance between serious and humor that I always have, while also telling this longer narrative.

Were any topics off limits?

The things that were off limits were things that happened [to others]. I talk about my time in an outpatient program in hospital, and there were certain things that might have happened to me there that involved other people, so I was very careful about leaving that stuff out. And also, any kind of family-related stuff. I was conscious about [the fact that] my family are going to read this book. A lot of this stuff is new to them. It’s new to, in fact, almost everybody who knows me. So again, just making sure I’m telling my side of the story and not trying to tell someone else’s story.

One of the things you address in the book is that British and American cultures are very different when it comes to addressing mental health. You grew up in the U.K., but you now live in California. How did the move impact your approach to treating your anxiety and depression?

I think that while I was in the U.K., I really didn’t have any idea of what therapy was or what it entailed. It just wasn’t something that was talked about in my family or with anybody, really. I tried out a few different types of therapy blindly, kind of flailing around trying to find something that might help, but I didn’t really know what kind of help I needed, what I was looking for, who would even provide this kind of help. I grew up not going to the doctor very often. And in my mind, the doctor was someone you went to for a broken leg or whatever. It never even occurred to me that you would go about a psychological issue.

But I’d also grown up seeing America was like the land of therapy, just from consuming American media and TV shows. Everyone was always going to therapy. And it still wasn’t totally clear in my mind what that meant, because it’s always depicted as a shrink on a couch, and you’re lying on a couch, just talking and talking. I wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted or what I needed. So it really took me being forced into therapy, basically by ending up in hospital, to discover that there were different kinds of therapy and things that were specific to what I needed. And those things are available in the U.K.; I just didn’t know it at the time. They’re also free, so it would have been nice to know.

Social media can be challenging, especially for anyone who deals with mental health issues, but that is really where you began to build a following for your work. How do you ensure that that space remains a positive one and that you don’t get sucked into doomscrolling or negativity?

Yeah, I feel like it’s becoming more and more difficult. I don’t want to complain about the algorithms, but with the algorithms, it’s become a lot less fun of a place to be than it was starting out. So I’m pretty strict myself. Now if I’m going to post something, I will post and then I will put my phone in the other room and leave it there, because it is so easy to get sucked into the doomscrolling. Even if you have the best intentions and everyone you follow is a positive person and artists that you love, you still get all the adverts and things that you have no choice over. There’s no chronological feed anymore, so you’re just being fed whatever the algorithm wants you to see. It’s not healthy. But there has to be some sort of middle ground between being completely off social media and also needing social media to promote yourself. And it’s supposed to be fun! I still enjoy it when I actually get to see the things that I want to be looking at—dog pictures, mainly.

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Are you ever surprised by the things that resonate with your readers?

Less so now, because I’ve been lucky enough to be able to interact with so many people, either online or in person at events. But when I started out, I really was surprised by the things that resonated. Mental illness can make you feel very alone, like you’re the only person in the world who feels that way. There were things that I would share, and I’d think, “Nobody is going to get this. People are going to think I’m weird.” And then those are the things that actually resonated the most with people. And yeah, it’s very gratifying. Obviously, it’s not nice to see other people suffer, and you don’t want anyone else to feel this awful way, but at the same time, having that sense of community is nice. I think that’s also been lost now with the way that social media is going.

You recently shared your sketchbooks in an Instagram reel. Do you draw all the time, even when not on deadline?

Yes. Yeah, I have to. I’ve heard people say that drawing is like a muscle, and I agree with that. It’s something that you have to exercise constantly. I have sketchbooks all over the house. I say sketchbooks—sometimes it’s just pieces of loose paper that I’ll eventually try and bind together or something to make a book. But, yeah, it’s completely essential to my practice. If I’m trying to think of an idea on the spot, my mind will just go blank. I need to be able to go and look back through old sketchbooks and find something that will spark an idea.

Who are your influences?

I think my biggest influence is Linda Barry, the cartoonist. I love her work, and I love the way that she is so her own. She is so popular, and yet she’s doing her own thing and just not kowtowing to any trends. Everything she does is just really original. She also works at a university as a professor, and she’s always trying new things. The students she works with are not necessarily traditional art students. They come from all different areas. So it’s really inspiring to see how she excites people about art and about making comics and cartoons. Because you can easily get sucked into—again, sorry to keep talking about social media and the algorithm—these trends that come up a lot. It’s very easy to get sucked into how you think you should be working, and then you see someone like Linda Barry or other people that I love—Roz Chast I’m a massive fan of, Tom Gauld—who are really doing their own thing. They have their unique voice. I just love their work.

Is there anything that you haven’t done yet in your career that you’re really hoping to do someday?

I’ve worked a little bit in animation—I did character designs for a PBS Kids show called City Island a couple of years ago—but I would like to explore that more. I would like to use my own characters in animation somehow. I, personally, do not have the skills to make that happen. I can draw, but I can’t make things move. That’s a whole different clever brain process that I don’t have access to. But that’s something that I definitely want to explore more in the future.

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Anxietyland starts with you in the midst of a weeklong anxiety attack, and the advice you receive from pretty much everyone is, frankly, useless. Do you have any advice for people on how to respond when someone reaches out and shares that they’re going through a difficult time? Because clearly the advice shouldn’t be to “drink some tea.”

I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, all I need to know is that somebody is there for me. I don’t really want advice because I already know what I need to do. And if I want to drink a cup of tea, I will drink a cup of tea. I just need to know that person is there. I don’t necessarily need them to call someone for me, but if they have any resources they can share with me, that’s always good, particularly if they’re someone who’s experienced a mental health crisis themselves. But yeah, just being there is really enough for me.

To learn more about Gemma Correll, find her on Instagram.

To purchase Anxietyland, click here.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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A few months ago, I got an Amazon alert that Aaron Reynolds had written a new children’s book. The alert was an old one from when my son was little enough to have picture books read to him, but it prompted me to check out Reynolds’ website to see what he was working on. I knew of his trilogy of Creepy picture books—Creepy Carrots!, Creepy Crayon!, and our family favorite, Creepy Pair of Underwear!—but I wasn’t familiar with his other works.

Or so I thought.

When I visited his website I realized he’d written many, many other titles my son had read and loved, including Superhero School, Caveboy Dave, The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter, and Fart Quest, which my son raved about for years.

On a whim, I reached out to Reynolds to see if he might want to do an interview, and he agreed.

We had a fantastic chat, during which I learned quite a bit about his writing process.

As so often happens, there were a few things that didn’t make it into the written piece, so I’m sharing the video outtakes with paid subscribers.

In these videos, you’ll learn why he tends to “reach up rather than limit down” when it comes to vocabulary, and the typical (amusing) questions he frequently gets from kids when he does book tours.

Please give them a watch! And if you’re not a paid subscriber, consider upgrading. Through May 30th, new annual subscriptions are just $20 (down from $50—a 60% discount).

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This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

On Vocab Choices for Specific Audiences

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Two years ago today—on April 26th, to be exact—I launched this little engine that could with an interview with singer-songwriter Zoe Boekbinder.

At the time, I figured I’d be lucky to get a few people to talk to me and maybe a couple of friends would subscribe and after a month or two I’d call it a day and shut the whole thing down. (My imposter syndrome prefers it when I assume the worst.)

But then, something crazy happened.

I reached out to a few artists I was a fan of and they said yes to an interview. Then I got a press release about an upcoming Rising Appalachia album and asked the publicist if I could speak to one of the members of the band, and she said okay. And I asked for more interviews and got more okays and asked for more and got okays…and next thing you know, two years have passed and 92 interviews have been published, with many more scheduled.

And those 92 (and counting!) interviews are, if I do say so myself, pretty damn impressive. The folks I’ve chatted with have taught me so much about art and creativity and breaking through creative blocks and overcoming obstacles and making art for art’s sake.

Ani DiFranco talked about pursuing entirely new artistic projects in her 50s. Sonya Walger shared how she’s learning to balance her acting career with her newfound fame as an author. Brian Stepanek expressed how important it is to branch out and try new things. Andre Royo talked about how beneficial the arts have been for his mental health. Leah Song talked through what it was like to rebuild after Hurricane Helene destroyed her hometown. Mike Norice explained why he’s painting murals all over some of L.A.’s toughest neighborhoods.

And this is all thanks to you, Gorgeous Reader. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your support of my efforts to delve into creativity with these incredible artists and share their wisdom.

As a thank you, I’ve put together a playlist of music featuring artists I’ve interviewed over the past year. You can find it here.

It includes some of my favorite tracks from Ani DiFranco, Whitehall, Descendents, Donita Sparks/L7, Joy Ngiaw, Joy Clark, Leah Song/Rising Appalachia, Tiff Randol, Dar Williams, Alexander Parsons, Anderson Rocio, Maia Sharp, and Courtney Hartman.

And if you missed it last year, here’s the playlist from year 1.

But Wait! There’s More!

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In Aaron Reynolds’ Caldecott Honor-winning picture book Creepy Carrots!, Jasper the Rabbit is terrified to learn that the carrots he loves may be stalking him. Published in 2012, the wonderfully weird story with vivid illustrations by Peter Brown spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was such a huge hit with kids that it spawned two additional Creepy books—Creepy Pair of Underwear! and Creepy Crayon!

Over the years, Reynolds—who is the author of more than 50 other highly acclaimed children’s books—noticed that when he visited schools, kids of all ages, even those in fifth or sixth grade, wanted to talk about the Creepy books. It dawned on him that perhaps Jasper’s tales could be expanded to even creepier stories for chapter book readers.

“I’ve always wrestled with, ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen to Jasper when he grows up?’” Reynolds says. “He’s either gonna need some serious therapy, or he’s going to own this and become the next Steven Spielberg or something.”

The thought gave Reynolds the idea of making Jasper the host of standalone stories. “I thought that could be really fun for kids who have grown up with the picture books to then graduate into stories with a familiar character that they trust as a storyteller but take the stories to a weirder place. So that was where the spark of the idea came, and once I got down the road on it, I got really excited. The idea of having a series of standalone stories where they’re all tied together by Jasper as the kind of Rod Serling host of them, but each one gets to be a standalone episode of The Twilight Zone—man, the possibilities of that. I have a lot of weird ideas for stories, but I don’t always know where to put them. Not everything I come up with is a good fit for another Creepy picture book, but this new series opens the lid on that. Any weird, out-there story that I think of now, I feel in a lot of ways could work with this series.”

The first two books in the series, Troubling Tonsils! and Unsettling Salad!, were instant New York Times bestsellers. The next release, Yarn is Everything!, is due out this July and happens to be Reynolds’ favorite of the three. “I am very excited about Yarn is Everything!,” he says. “It’s about a mole who is extremely addicted to crochet. It’s the supernatural crocheting book you never even knew you needed. It’s probably the weirdest of the three and I think it’s the one I like the most.”

Reynolds chatted with me over Zoom about his writing process, the challenges of writing for kids, and his unusual career path.

This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

SANDRA EBEJER: I read on your website that your dad was in the Air Force, so you moved around a lot as a kid. Was writing something you were doing in those days, during all of those moves?

AARON REYNOLDS: No, furthest thing from it. I was not a kid who liked books. I was a rowdy kid, very active, very loud and obnoxious. We didn’t have a lot of books around the house growing up. My parents weren’t big readers. I knew reading for fun was a thing. I saw kids doing it. But to me, that just looked like such a quiet thing to do for fun when I could run around screaming. I don’t remember anybody ever reading a book out loud to me. I mean, maybe it happened, but I have no memory of it.

And then in fifth grade, I had an amazing teacher named Mr. Hunter. He read a chapter of a book out loud to us every day, and I had never really heard a book read out loud. I have very distinct memories of that being a light bulb moment, like, “What? This is what books are? Why didn’t somebody tell me?” I didn’t know that books were so full of possibilities and imagination. I remember him reading James and the Giant Peach and me just being like, “Those aunts just got murdered by a peach! What? You can find this in kids’ books??” You know, you don’t know your life’s being changed when it’s happening, but looking back, I can see that was a pretty life changing year, having him for a teacher.

How did you end up deciding to pursue writing as a career? And why children’s books?

I didn’t know being a writer was even a thing. I didn’t know you could grow up and become a writer. The first time it happened was in fifth grade. Mr. Hunter put on a play of Rumpelstiltskin, and he cast me in it. And again, it was another light bulb moment. I was like, “This is fun. I get to be rowdy, but in front of an audience!” From that point on, I was really into choir and drama and plays. And when it came time to be serious about what I might want to do for a living, all I knew is I wanted to do something using my imagination, and the only thing I could think of [was] you could go to college and major in theater. So, I went to theater school and graduated and moved to Chicago to do professional theater, and I was doing that for years and having some success. It was during that time that I got a chance to work with this production company, and they were creating some new theater to bring some inner-city kids in to see. And they were like, “We’re gonna write some original stuff.” They asked some of us that were part of the group to participate. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll try my hand at that.” I’d never written anything before and loved it. Again, another light bulb moment. I was just like, “This is really cool. I get to take all my sense of humor and all my imagination and all that rowdiness that I put on stage, but I get to put it into this whole story.” It was like being an actor and a director and a producer, all in one shot.

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So, I started to think maybe acting is not where I should be, maybe writing is where I should be—and writing for kids, especially, because you could do anything with kids. They’ll go with you. I mean, I could never get away with writing a story about a bunny who’s scared of his own underpants for adults. But kids will go with you on that story. I found writing for kids to be so much more exciting and full of possibility than writing for adults, so I started trying to see if I could get published.

We were huge fans of the Creepy picture books when my son was little. We actually read Creepy Pair of Underwear! first and he thought it was hysterical. How did the idea for that book first come about?

So, Creepy Carrots! had come out. It had done, surprisingly, really well, because Creepy Carrots! was widely rejected by publishers when I first wrote it. They were like, “This is not a kids’ book. This is weird. Who hurt you?” They didn’t know what to make of it, until it finally landed with my publisher, who wound up publishing it, and it did really well out of the gate. It won the Caldecott Honor, hit the New York Times bestseller list. My publisher asked me for another one and I was very resistant. I didn’t conceive of this as, first of all, a series. Second, I feel sometimes when a picture book does well, then they’re like, “Let’s strike while the iron is hot, and do as many of these as we can.” And they sometimes go on far too long. I was really resistant. I didn’t want to make another book unless I had a good story to tell.

So I told my publisher, “I’m open to doing it, but I’ve got to have a good story, and right now I don’t.” Years passed, and I didn’t think I was going to do it. I was at a school, and we were talking about Creepy Carrots!, and this kid came up to me afterwards. I’ll never forget this kid. He said [using deep booming voice], “Aaron Reynolds, that Creepy Carrots! book? Hilarious.” He was so funny. He was the weirdest little kid. He said, “You need to write a book about scary underpants.” And I was like, “That’s good.” Immediately that was very funny to me. I went home and that idea kept bouncing around in my head, and I’m like, “Huh. Creepy underwear. Creepy underwear. Okay...” And the story came in this idea of glow-in-the-dark underwear. I don’t know where it came from, but it just popped into my head, and it took shape. And if I’ve got a story that I can be happy with, then yeah, I’m excited to do another book about it. But the idea came from a kid who said I should do a book about scary underwear.

What’s your writing process? Do you plot out your books in advance?

I don’t write anything out in advance. I don’t outline a plot. I might have a sense of where it’s going, I might have some bullet points of some ideas of things I want to see happen in the story, but I really weave it together. To me, the magic happens sitting at the keyboard. My best writing happens right in front of the characters, right in front of the keyboard where I paint them into a corner and then they have to figure it out. I find my worst stories happen when I’ve done all the thinking in advance. But when I’m having to think on my feet and put myself in the mind of my characters, they tend to come up with much better ideas than I could.

I think it was Picasso who was like, “Inspiration must find you at work.” You don’t sit around and wait for inspiration; you sit down and you start making your fingers move on the keyboard, and you do the best you can. And somewhere along the way, if you’re lucky, you get swept up. To me, that’s where the best stuff happens.

I’ve interviewed a lot of children’s book authors, and the one consistent thing they say is that it’s surprisingly difficult to write picture books. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in writing your books?

I agree with that completely. A lot of aspiring children’s authors think, “I’ll write a picture book. Anybody can write a picture book.” And it’s incredibly difficult, from a craft standpoint, to write a picture book for the picture book audience, which is a very specific audience, and you only have a certain amount of words to work with. I try to challenge myself that every picture book manuscript I write is less than 300 words, which is nothing. You sneeze and you’re done. That means every word counts. Every word has to do double and triple duty. I rarely wind up using many adverbs. When it comes to description—I always tell kids this in my writing workshops—one great verb is worth 10 descriptive words around it. So I could say, “He went to the store, and he didn’t want to go to the store, but his mom was timing him, so he ran as fast as he could.” That’s a lot of words. Or I could say, “He zipped to the store.” That one verb does the work of 12 of the words in the other sentence, and that’s how you have to think as a picture book writer. You have to think that every word counts, and every word has to do double and triple duty and heavy lifting. And the best words for that are verbs. The verbs are where the power is.

I’m very particular when I go back and comb through in my editing. I’m ruthless on trimming. I hack with a machete. I make myself cut that thing down to 300 words or less. If I can’t do it in 300 words or less, then I’ve got no business trying to write the story. So, that means getting out that machete and hacking whole sentences or halves of sentences and going, “Find one word to say the same thing.” And verbs are the only ones that can do it. Fifty descriptive adverbs and all the adjectives in the world don’t add up to one amazing verb. So, yeah, it’s a hard thing. It’s a very uniquely weird, specific thing all unto itself. Where else can you tell a whole story with a beginning and middle and end to the harshest critics of all, five-year-olds, and do it with almost no words? It’s crazy.

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And also try to teach some sort of lesson in there as well.

If you can. I try not to worry about that. People crack me up when they come up to me and go, “I love your lesson in that story.” And I’m like, “I didn’t write a lesson in that story.” I don’t worry about the lesson. To me, a good story will always have some kind of a theme built in, and it will be different to every person. People read Creepy Carrots! and they think it’s about don’t be greedy. And if that’s what you see then I’m glad you enjoyed that, because I didn’t write a story about don’t be greedy. I wrote a story about a bunny who’s being stalked by weird carrots. [Laughs]

One of the things I love so much about Creepy Pair of Underwear! is the illustrations and that weird, smiling face the underwear has. What is the relationship like with your illustrators? Do you contribute feedback in any way?

While there are certainly exceptions to the rule, by and large, the way it is done in the picture book industry is that the author writes the story, works with their editor at the publishing house to turn it into the best possible version of the story that they can, and then the publishing house, whether it’s the art director or the editor and the design team, will pick an illustrator. They will work with the illustrator to get the best possible illustrations. The artist will then go and work on the illustrations separately and completely in isolation from the author, and they will come up with the best version of what they think it should look like. And there’s a reason it works that way, and I really respect that reason: an author can be too close to their story. An author can fixate on the wrong things. The author can get back sketches and be like, “But I saw the dog as being black with brown spots.” Who cares what you saw in your head? That doesn’t matter. Nobody cares! That doesn’t mean that what you conceived of when you were writing the story is the most universal way to tell the story, the way that’s going to be the most interesting and exciting to tell a story, the way that’s going to open up the story to the maximum number of kids from the maximum number of different experiences and backgrounds. Not to mention, hopefully you’ve got this amazing artist—I’ve been very lucky—that has their own perspective and their own way of looking at the world, that will come up with things you never conceived of. You should be so lucky.

That, to me, is the secret sauce of picture books. The magical alchemy of picture books is an author writing their best story, an illustrator taking that story and interpreting it their way through their lens, and what you wind up getting is something that never would have been the same if the author had been given the leeway to go and boss the illustrator around and say, “Draw it like this. Here’s what it looks like.”

I’ll give you a story that’s a perfect example. If you read Creepy Pair of Underwear! and you don’t look at the pictures, you only read my words, you will see that I never describe the underpants in my story. I wrote the words, the manuscript, and I did not describe the underpants. The closest I get to it is that they “had a ghoulish greenish glow.” That’s all I say. Now, I think we forget that because we’re so used to seeing those classic underwear, but I never describe them with my words, and that’s very purposeful. When we were first looking at the manuscript before it got sent over to Peter, my editor was like, “This is amazing! Do you have any thoughts on what the creepy underwear should look like?” And I said, “I have no idea, but I’m sure Peter is going to come up with something brilliant.” And look what he came up with! Never in a million years would I have thought of that. Frankenstein underpants? Are you joking me right now? That is genius! What better way to make an anthropomorphic pair of underpants that have to have expressiveness?

You’ll see that in a lot of them—like in Creepy Crayon!, the crayons seemed happy to see him. Seemed happy. I didn’t say he smiled. I didn’t say he looked at him with his big, smiling face and his big, shining eyes. I keep it as vague as possible on purpose, because it gives Peter something to work with and lets him unleash the possibilities without it being locked down into something specific, because I know he’s going to come up with things that I could never imagine.

Who are your influences as a writer?

I like writers that break the rules. Roald Dahl was so ahead of his time. I really don’t think he would get published today. He let bad things happen to the grown-ups. He had bad grown-ups learn their lesson. He didn’t always have characters that modeled good behavior. It’s so fascinating to be the lens that adults look at children’s books through, because I got a lot of comments and reviews. If you look on Amazon, I’m sure you’ll find more than your share of, “This character is not modeling very good behavior.” Well, no, he isn’t. He’s not there to be a model citizen. He’s there to be an interesting, dynamic character that hopefully develops and grows and goes somewhere along the way. The model citizen rarely makes an interesting character, and that’s how Roald Dahl wrote. His characters were flawed, and bad things happen to them sometimes, and adult characters got what they deserved. I mean, look at Matilda. Trunchbull grabs kids by their ponytails and flings them around the air and then launches them across the sky. That’s just great stuff! That’s good storytelling, but it would break a lot of rules today, and I like that.

There’s a reason why kids, all these years later, still read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I mean, when those kids are in that factory, you’re never 100% sure if Willy Wonka’s gonna just let those five kids die. He lets the kid get shrunk and then sends him to the gum stretching machine. What? That’s insane! Augustus Gloop gets sucked up the tube and who knows what happened to him. That’s just good stuff. I like when stories break the rules and have a weird side to them. I would say definitely writers like Roald Dahl are huge influences on me, for sure.

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Yarn is Everything! comes out in July. What else are you working on? What’s after that?

I am working on a fourth Creepy picture book, to be determined when it comes out. It’ll be ready when it’s ready. You probably could hear the excitement for the chapter book series when I was talking about it earlier. I’ve got so many ideas cooking for books four, five, and six in that series, so I’m kind of all Creepy all the time right now. After I get the picture book finished, whenever that is, then I’ll turn my attention to chapter book four, five, and six and jump on those and see what happens. I never imagined so much of my time would go towards the Creepy. But, it’s worked out that way. As long as I’m still enjoying it and as long as there’s still stories to be told, and kids want them, then I’ll pursue it.

To learn more about Aaron Reynolds, visit his website.

To purchase Yarn is Everything, click here.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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In the inspiring new documentary Artfully United, director Dave Benner and producer Chris Walters share the story of Mike Norice, a visual artist who is beautifying some of the most crime-ridden sections of Los Angeles one wall at a time. Norice, who built a following designing custom sneakers for star clients, including Elton John, Madonna, and Tom Cruise, began painting murals in 2017, with the hopes that inspirational messages and vibrant imagery would bring much-needed positivity to L.A.’s toughest neighborhoods.

Through a tour he calls Artfully United (which shares a name with his nonprofit), Norice set out to paint 20 murals featuring messages such as Forgiveness, Harmony, and Dream Big. Fifteen of the 20 have been completed so far, often thanks to community volunteers who assist with painting. The journey to complete the first 15 murals is portrayed in the film, which also profiles Norice’s childhood in Watts, where he was raised by a single mother while his father served time in prison. Now available on multiple streaming platforms, Artfully United is a stunning reminder of the power the arts have to transform communities.

I recently chatted with Norice about his background, the challenges of seeing his life portrayed onscreen, and the advice he gives to young budding artists.

Creative Reverberations is a reader-supported publication. Each interview takes many hours of work. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider a paid subscription.

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SANDRA EBEJER: Inner-city neighborhoods are not typically a place where kids are exposed to public art. When did your love of the arts first take hold?

MIKE NORICE: I’ve been an artist pretty much all my life. I’ve been drawing since I was two. I didn’t understand what an artist was until I was in kindergarten, around five years old, when my teacher explained to me that I was an artist. Because I thought that the skill itself came naturally, like walking. I thought everyone can do it. It wasn’t until I was in that school setting that I knew I had an advantage over the other kids, and I asked my teacher, “Why don’t these kids know how to draw?” And she explained to me what an artist is. From then on, I started to understand what artists do and who they are and started building up who I am today.

You got a degree in fashion design and have had a really successful run in creating custom artwork on clothing and sneakers. How did that transition to the work you’re doing with Artfully United?

I’ve always been into fashion. I wanted to create a company that highlighted my art. And after doing custom clothing, custom shoes, whatnot, for 14 years, I discovered that fashion and art are very close to each other, but they don’t necessarily intertwine. I was not satisfied with the way my art career was being displayed within the fashion community, so I started to see what other options [exist where] I can highlight my own personal art career. So I started Artfully United in 2015 just to highlight my own art and do a mural.

With the Artfully United tour, you’re painting 20 murals in neighborhoods around Los Angeles. How do you go about finding locations? Are you invited to paint on specific walls?

In the beginning, I had to ask. Now it has basically taken over the city to where I turned down more walls than I accept. I’m down to the last five, and I try to better each wall each time. So if it’s not on a prominent street or it doesn’t get much exposure or it isn’t effective, in a sense, I won’t do it at this point. Some of the walls, people are inviting me. [They] say, “Hey, we want a mural on this wall.” But a lot of the good walls, I have to put a proposal together and talk to the owner or the manager of the building.

Was it difficult in the beginning to get that permission when you were first starting out?

Most definitely, yeah. Even the Forgiveness wall, the most popular wall, the owner didn’t want it up permanently. They only wanted it there temporarily. And then once we came back to paint it over after three months, because that was an agreement that he wanted us to do, his business increased so much that he said, “Let’s just leave it up.”

That’s amazing. What impact have the murals had on these communities?

It has definitely made a huge impact. It has created a sense of caring for the community and self-awareness because of these messages. You know, it’s not just art. When you pass by a street that says Believe or Hope or Forgiveness or Keep Smiling, it makes you think about something within yourself. The art is there, but it’s more about the message. It definitely reflects in a positive way to the community.

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How long does each mural take? And when do you expect to be done with all 20?

Each mural, usually at this point, takes about three days. In the beginning, it was a lot longer because I was still learning how to do large-scale murals. But as far as the finishing up of 20, I’m not sure when, because who knows when that magical wall will hit? I’m not sure. I would like for it to be done soon, but I wouldn’t know. It took us almost nine years to do 15, so who knows how long it will take to do five because, like I said, I’m trying to get bigger and better each time.

One of the things you touch upon in the film is that there is a lot of gang activity in the neighborhoods where you’re doing these murals. How was it for you to navigate that, and to make sure you’re not only able to paint in these neighborhoods but do it safely?

I have my feet really deep in the streets. I attend a group called Ceasefire, where we meet every week, and we meet with a lot of gangs and do gang intervention. Plus, these are the areas that I lived in once upon a time. And gang culture and gang activity, it’s all about respect. That’s the first and foremost thing that you have to do, no matter what neighborhood you’re in. As long as you have that, they’ll give you respect, and then it’ll go good from there. They just want to be seen. You talk to one of them before you start the project, then most of the time, it’s all good.

At one point in the Artfully United film you paint a mural on a wall that is over 90 feet long and 23 feet high. When you’re painting something like that and you can only see a small amount of the painting directly in front of you, how do you ensure that the full painting is coming out the way you want it to?

Well, this is just to show how I’ve graduated throughout the years. In the beginning, I was just freehanding it. I would measure the wall, doing it the wrong way. But there are a lot of ways to scale your art. You could do a grid and scale it. Or you can do what is called a doodle grid, where you make a bunch of markers on a wall and you incorporate your artwork from an iPad. And then you have a projector; we can stand far away from the wall and project the image. And then there’s new technology that just started. I’ve done three murals with this technology. It’s Meta Quest virtual reality glasses, where you import the artwork into the glasses, and then you have the glasses show you where the markings are. That’s the easiest and most effective way to scale your art, and that’s what I currently use, but I’ve used every single technique.

That’s interesting. I’m curious what your thoughts are on AI. Obviously the technology is helping you in those ways, but there are a lot of kids who might think that the way to make art is to use AI. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on that?

I don’t use AI to generate my art. I use the technology to project my art and scale my art. You use it as a tool to assist, not necessarily to create. I know I can see the art that is created by AI. You can easily see there’s no soul and there’s no spirit within the art. So I use it for assistance, not dictation.

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Have there been any artistic challenges with any of the murals you’ve done? Anything that was particularly hard to pull off?

Forgiveness, the first one. That was really tough in the beginning, and a lot of discouragements. In the beginning, you want to give up. I know I did. But I knew that this was something that will be big, and the city needs it, so I just kept pushing. But it’s never really easy. Even at this point, it’s still tough, because you have a lot of management and different ways of going about things. And I’m my biggest critic because I always like to do things bigger and better and constantly evolve my art. So in that sense, it’s hard on me. From the outside looking in, you would think that it’s easy, but it’s always hard on me because I’m always trying to better myself.

For the record, none of it looks easy! Your work is literally changing neighborhoods. What has Artfully United, both your nonprofit and the mural tour, taught you about the power of art and creativity?

It’s a conversation with the community. It’s taught me that I can relay a message, what I’m thinking, to everyone that passes by. And I’m glad that I’m doing a positive message, not a negative message. Some of these walls get up to 20,000 eyes on it a day. That’s power within advertisement. And I choose the positivity because we need to move forward in these communities and at least just have a positive mindset to your day to day. That’s why it’s designed that way.

How did the documentary come about?

Chris Walters was a client of mine from my store, and we started doing private commissions, me going out to Maine to do stuff for him and his household. He was right there at that fork in the road when I started to do murals. And him being a filmmaker, he said, “Let’s film this. Let’s document the process.” That’s pretty much how it came about in late 2014, early 2015.

The film not only discusses your work but paints a beautiful portrait of your family, including your dad, who was imprisoned for most of your young life. How was it for you, emotionally, to see your life up on the screen?

Yeah, it’s a very vulnerable piece. I’m very reserved. A lot of people, like friends I’ve known for years, didn’t know a lot of what was told in the documentary, because I just don’t go around talking about my personal business. But after seeing it, I knew that there’s other people that could be touched and moved by this, because they could be going through the same thing, and hopefully they could be inspired by this story. That made me feel good. I get a lot of positive responses by how they were touched—you know, their father was in prison, this is very encouraging—so I feel that it was good in that regard.

I always like to ask people about their influences or sources of inspiration. Are there any artists or works of art that inspire or influence your work?

I love Michelangelo. I started being taught as a fine artist, believe it or not, when I was 12. I started getting into oils and portraits and stuff like that. I studied him. I love Banksy. I started really getting into him in my early 20s. He definitely influenced being original and the cleverness of how I do some of my walls. I like Kehinde Wiley. He’s an artist from out here, as well. But that’s really about it. I try not to get too much into the art world, because I want to stay as original as possible. The more artists I’m around, I absorb different styles and techniques, and I don’t want to be that way. I want to be 100% me, so I try to stay just in my own path, for the most part.

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You’ve done a lot of work with kids. Is there any advice that you find yourself frequently giving them in terms of the art that they make?

I encourage them to stay original and stay consistent. Nowadays, everything is so fast paced. These kids that are like eight, nine years old, already want to start a company and go into the entrepreneur world. [Laughs] And if they don’t get it within a month or two, they’re discouraged and they want to go onto something else. I try to teach them to stay consistent and stay on the path of your dreams and what your gifts are.

Now that this film is being screened widely, what do you hope people will get from watching the film?

I hope they will be inspired and be moved to do whatever they’re here to do. We all have gifts that God has provided for us, and I want them to look within themselves and see, “Well, what gift do I have, and how can I move forward with that gift so I can live this life that I’m in a lot easier?”

You have five murals left, but is there anything beyond that—anything you haven’t done yet—that you really hope to do?

Yeah. I’m going to start a building where kids can come and practice art and be taught art as a career path. Not just arts and crafts but really do some hardcore artwork. I’m looking for buildings out here in Los Angeles to take it to the next level, where kids can have a safe haven after school and to practice art. Adults, as well. I want to create kind of like a YMCA for art. That’s the next step for Artfully United.

To learn more about Mike Norice, find him on Instagram.

To learn more about Artfully United, click here.

To watch the Artfully United documentary, click here.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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It was such a treat to chat with Sonya Walger. I’ve loved her work for years, especially her portrayal of badass astronaut Molly Cobb in For All Mankind. So it was a huge, and pleasant, surprise to discover that she’s also an incredibly talented writer.

I devoured her latest book, Wifehouse, and am looking forward to reading last year’s Lion. We talked about both—and many other things—in our chat, but it didn’t all make it into the published piece. So, here are a couple of clips for paid subscribers.

In these videos, you’ll hear her talk about the response to Lion, as well as why she didn’t begin publishing until middle age.

Please give them a watch and then pick up her books.

This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

On the Response to ‘Lion’

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Film and TV fans know Sonya Walger primarily from her work on Lost, For All Mankind, and dozens of other films and television series. But the award-winning actress is also an extraordinarily talented writer with a degree in English Literature from Oxford. Her first book, Lion—published last year in the wake of the Los Angeles fires that destroyed her home—was called “a piercing autobiographical novel” by Publishers Weekly and was longlisted for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her latest, Wifehouse, is a brilliant work of fiction in which a middle-aged married mother of two, Annie, makes the complicated choice to put her own needs before those of her family.

But despite her recent success as an author, Walger isn’t planning to give up acting. In fact, in addition to promoting Wifehouse, she’s currently juggling the writing of her third novel with her portrayal of Freya in the highly anticipated live-action adaptation of God of War. And she says…

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I hope you enjoyed last week’s interview with the incredible, hilarious Jenny Lawson. We discussed so much—her latest book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, her tips and tricks for handle anxiety in an overly-anxious world, her love of books and reading, and so much more.

Of course, as it so often happens, not everything could fit into the written piece, so I’m sharing a few clips now with paid subscribers. In the following videos, you’ll hear her talk about why she now always listens to her editors, what her family learned from her new book, and why she loves her Substack, Let’s Art Together. (I love it, too.)

This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

On Why She Always Listens to Her Editors

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