Kobo was delighted to recently host Emily Schultz in a “Kobo in Conversation” chat in the Kobo Café a few weeks ago while she was coming through Toronto on a book tour for her latest novel, Men Walking on Water.
Kobo’s Nora Parker interviewed Emily and they talk about:
- The fact that Emily had started working on this novel before her previously released novel The Blondes
- The rum-runner history in Emily’s family and the different manner by which they traversed the water to conduct their rum running in the winter and summer
- How the story of a relative who was lost during one of these winter-time runs crashing through the ice helped to inspire Emily’s desire to explore this narrative
- The explosions of culture, literature, music and sexuality in the 1920s.
- The contrast and clash of society being both “open” and “closed” during the Prohibition Era
- Various methods of research, including old photographs, documentaries, silent films and novels written from that time period
- The concept of justice in the novel and the line “you never get caught for what you think you’re going to” that encapsulates that
- Elements of “the person who is not who they appear to be” in particular relation to religion
- The balance of mixing the “true” with the “fictional” in this historical novel
- The additional balance of being an author of fiction being a founder and senior editor of Joyland magazine
- Pairing oneself with other writers in particular locales to help ensure a slightly larger crowd at an author event
- The fun of onomatopoeic words that came from the jazz scene of the time
Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre then highlights a few things from the interview with Emily that he wanted to call attention to. In particular, the research that she conducted for the Prohibition era time period the novel was set in as well as the manner by which she collaborated with local writers when traveling on a book tour.
There is a reminder of the Kobo Plus Subscription service available through Kobo in the Netherlands and Belgium with Kobo’s retail partner, BOL which is open to Kobo Writing Life authors via the “Rights and Distribution” tab.
Links on Interest:
Emily Schultz is the co-founder of Joyland Magazine, host of the podcast Truth & Fiction, and creator of the blog Spending the Stephen King Money. Schultz’s novel, The Blondes, released in the U.S. with St. Martin’s Press and in Canadaada with Doubleday. It was named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Kirkus. Her writing has appeared in Elle, Bustle, Vice, The Walrus, Today’s Parent, Black Warrior Review, Hazlitt, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Brooklyn and is a producer with the indie media company Heroic Collective.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to automatically download episodes as they go live – even before the show notes are posted to the Kobo Writing Life website – subscribe to the RSS feed via your favourite pod-capturing platform (such as iTunes) using this link: RSS feed for Kobo Writing Life Podcast.
You make it really hard to figure out how to download episodes of this podcast. I was only able to find 2 through tools > page info. I’d like to download all the mp3s so I can listen to this podcast, since I’m an author, and a kobo reader, and obviously love kobo. But, could you please direct me to an easy way to download all 80 episodes in mp3?
Hi Craig. Not sure why the link to the RSS feed wasn’t working properly in the note at the end of this episode, but it has been fixed. The RSS feed for the podcast (where you can direct download all mp3 files, appear here: http://kobowritinglife.libsyn.com/ or here http://kobowritinglife.libsyn.com/rss
You can also find the podcast via your favourite pod-catching app, such as…
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