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Stasia Walmsley
Welcome to the Providence College podcast. I'm Stasia Wamsley, your guest host for this episode. Today we are talking to Alison Speck, associate professor of English at Providence College. Her second novel, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, was published in May, NPR named it a best book of 2022. USA Today chose it as a must read novel, and it was an indie next pick for June of 2022.

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Stasia Walmsley
Alison, welcome to the PC podcast.

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Allison Espach
Thank you so much for having me and looking forward to our conversation.

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Stasia Walmsley
First, I have to say that I was really taken with this novel Notes on your sudden disappearance and its characters. Specifically, the media reviews and accolades for the story really reflect, I think, how affecting it is on its readers. Can you tell us a little bit about how this novel and the story came to life?

00;00;54;29 - 00;01;28;29
Allison Espach
Yeah, well, thank you so much for your kind words about the book. An author always hopes that someone uses the word resonate in terms of their work, and so that's great. I I've had this idea I had this idea for the book for a long time. And sometimes when people ask me how long I've been working on or how long I had worked on the book before it was published, I, I often say a decade, which is really terrifying to a lot of aspiring writers.

00;01;29;21 - 00;01;59;15
Allison Espach
They don't want to hear a decade. But to be to be more accurate, you know, I would say I worked on an on and off for the course of ten years. And so I had the initial idea. And just to give readers a sense of the plot for anyone who isn't familiar with the book. And I had this idea about a young a young girl, 13 or so.

00;02;00;16 - 00;02;20;12
Allison Espach
I ended up naming her Sally Holt. She's the protagonist of the story. And she she's infatuated with her older sister in the way that a lot of younger siblings are. You sort of worship the ground that they walk on where your hair, the way that they wear their hair, you know, you dream of doing the things that they do.

00;02;20;21 - 00;02;25;16
Allison Espach
And this is very much the case for Sally with her older sister, Kathy, and.

00;02;27;16 - 00;03;02;19
Allison Espach
And so I had this concept of a relationship and became really interested in what would happen to Sally if Kathy was taken away. Right. What happens to her development? Who does she become without her older sister as her guide and a a, you know, B, the question that I was asking about Sally, like, what would happen to her without Kathy in her life?

00;03;02;19 - 00;03;28;19
Allison Espach
The question I was asking was a question that came very much from my own personal life. I experienced a very similar tragedy to the character of Sally Lost a brother when we were teenagers very suddenly in the night. And so, you know, I was a teenager who who woke up the next morning. And the first thing that I heard was, your brother is gone.

00;03;30;22 - 00;03;54;05
Allison Espach
And that was a very, you know, to put it mildly, a very startling experience for me and one that took me decades to process. Right. Not just the grief of it, but just the reality of it. Right. That the sudden death and for the book, I cast it, you know, as a as a disappearance, not in the mystery sense.

00;03;54;18 - 00;04;20;10
Allison Espach
The reader kind of always knows what happened to Kathy, but just in the sense of, you know, when if you're someone who's experienced the sudden death of a close loved one, it can very much feel like a disappearance. Right? All of a sudden, that person is just not at the table anymore. And all of a sudden that person no longer has a phone or no longer answers their messages.

00;04;20;16 - 00;04;51;01
Allison Espach
And so I think that the real desire that I had as a as a young person was to reach out to my older brother and somehow communicate to him what was going on. Right. Because it's a very odd experience to lose a sibling, especially one who's very close to you and age and and just sort of maturity that all of a sudden they're taken very seriously by everyone because they've died.

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Allison Espach
Right. That people use the terms angel and spirit and this kind of ethereal language that really never matched my actual perception of my very ally's sometimes gross, older teenage brother. And so and so I just had this longing to, like, bridge that gap, right? And to say, Hey, Mike. Like, you wouldn't believe what people are saying about you, you know?

00;05;21;25 - 00;06;13;19
Allison Espach
And you can't really do that, right? There's really nowhere to go with that kind of desire. And so I think what I did with it was I wrote the book. You know, I mean, I never really found a way, a satisfying way to communicate with my older brother in whatever way that would be satisfying to me. And I think writing this novel and creating Sally as a character and watching her try to to do a similar thing and the idea of notes on your sudden disappearance is really what that gave rise to write this idea that the whole book would be cast as a direct address to Kathy.

00;06;13;25 - 00;06;33;12
Allison Espach
Right. Here's what happened after you left us. Right. Here's what happened to me. Here's what happened to mom. Here's what happened to dad. And I think some of the attention of the book really becomes just like, will there be a response? Right. And if there's no response, what becomes of Sally.

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Stasia Walmsley
With the safety concerns around the pandemic abating a bit? There has been opportunity, I'm sure, for you to be able to go out and do some readings and and meet readers. And I'm wondering if there are questions that are that are recurring during these sessions where you're meeting with readings, which the response to the book overall. But I also imagine that you're hearing from folks who have very similar experiences in terms of loss and grief, but also the way that you paint Sally and the experiences she has in a very realistic point, from a very realistic point of view, not necessarily one that is that is perfect all the time.

00;07;18;23 - 00;07;27;13
Stasia Walmsley
And I think I imagine readers who might have experienced similar losses in their life are appreciating that. But I'm curious what you're hearing.

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Allison Espach
Yeah, it's been really wonderful to be able to to go to readings and actually see the reader, sort of the audience and have a conversation about about the book and all the things that the book brings up and for both me and the readers. And so that's been really, really nice. And I don't think I anticipated how nice that was going to be.

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Allison Espach
Actually, I think when your book comes out, your, your, your, your, your dominant feeling is apprehension mixed with like a lot of excitement. Right. But but the the apprehension of, you know, how is the world going to receive this? Does this resonate? You know, one of the scary things of of being a writer in particular with fiction, you can almost never sell it on proposals.

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Allison Espach
So you really have to you have to you have to write the thing. You have to spend years with the document. You know, you have to believe in it in some way. And in order to spend that much time alone working on it. And and so I really was alone with that book for so many years. And I just never imagined, like, what it might feel like to no longer have that be the case.

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Allison Espach
And so really my very first reading did a book launch in Madison, Connecticut at RJ. Julia, one of my favorite bookstores. And yeah, I was overwhelmed, but that I that I was up there talking about both the book and and and the grief that felt quite personal to me for for so many years and that people were listening and, you know, and you know, it was sort of what my my teenage self who couldn't yet talk about it or who or who felt very alone with her grief and felt that every time she did try to talk about it, it didn't come out the right way.

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Allison Espach
Right. It's a very difficult thing to to talk through your grief, especially while you're having it. But it's a very lonely thing to not be able to do that. And so I think that that first reading was really everything my younger self would have wanted. You know that finally here I am with the words to reflect on what happened not just to me, but my, my whole family.

00;10;03;04 - 00;10;36;25
Allison Espach
And, and, and people are are looking at me and nodding and asking questions and responding and and not not shutting down or not walking out of the room or saying, not now, Alice. You know, like when when you're grieving with a family, one of the difficult parts of that is that everyone grieves differently and at different times. And that's something that I really wanted to get through in the book and and to to have a public reading for me.

00;10;37;14 - 00;11;04;06
Allison Espach
And I felt like everyone was in the right place at the right time and that it was a great vehicle for for people who really needed to to talk about it and to be able to talk about it. So. So I really I wasn't anticipating that being an emotional experience for me. I was certainly anticipating it being an exciting experience and one that I had been looking forward to for a long time with this book.

00;11;04;06 - 00;11;19;25
Allison Espach
But it was very cathartic, and I think it's something that I will will always look back on as one of the most important moments of my life. I think not just my career, but really just my actual personal life.

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Stasia Walmsley
So that's really wonderful. And like you said, the the catharsis there, you paint the character of Sally so well. But then the people around her who are also experience loss, experiencing loss and grief and in very different ways that I also have to say that the the time period of the novel happening during the nineties for the most part, I think I'm getting that right.

00;11;45;21 - 00;12;11;12
Stasia Walmsley
The, the, the, you know, I will say that a lot of the cultural references, again, I'll go back to the word resonate, certainly resonated with me as a reader. And also brought me kind of like joy and and there were some tongue in cheek and stuff in there about being a teen during, during that time period. And I, I'm appreciative of that myself as a reader.

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Stasia Walmsley
I wonder if you've heard some similar things and if you if that was just natural based on your own experiences, that they just kind of emerged as part of the writing of the novel?

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Allison Espach
Yeah. I mean, they definitely emerged as, as a natural part of writing the novel for me. They were they were touchstones in my own life, having taught it at Providence College for, for quite a while now, I've become more and more confident that I am losing touch with what it's like to be a teenager right now. Right. I think it would actually be quite, quite a challenge for me to write a teenager who exists in 2022.

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Allison Espach
I wouldn't really be familiar with the touchstones or with the references. I just learned yesterday in my class that apparently it's cool to tie shoelaces around your jeans as a belt. Oh, right. You know, I mean, and those are kind of the kind of details that in life I don't really need to know either of a kind of my current day teen.

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Allison Espach
Like, I would need to know those things and those things. Just those would be research for me right now. So I do find myself kind of always going back to the nineties, for better or worse, and then and try to conjure up a feeling of that decade what it is like to sort of form your consciousness in that decade first.

00;13;46;25 - 00;14;27;15
Allison Espach
What are some of the technological changes going on? What are some of the technological changes going on that would really shape you or change the way you relate to the people in your life or the people in your in your grade? And that was fun for me. I liked I liked going back to think about the development of AOL and Instant Messenger and how that created a whole different kind of conversation between teenagers and how that shifted into email and created a new kind of conversation.

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Allison Espach
And then finally, gradually moving to the telephone when you were ready. Yep. Yeah. So so that kind of stuff was was fun to think about and fun to play around with as a writer. And, and yeah, I have heard, you know, from everyone, every now and then, you know, a reader says, Oh, the Oregon Trail, you know? Yeah, right.

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Allison Espach
I too was obsessed with the Oregon Trail because that's what we did in computer class. Right. So. So that's that's fun to know that, that some of those experiences or some of those songs or some of those games that I played right, that they were really kind of universal experience for anyone who was growing up in the nineties.

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Stasia Walmsley
And your book, your first book, The Adults, that was a New York Times Editors Choice selection, it was pretty significant achievement for your debut novel. I know it got a lot of other accolades and great reviews. How did some of that early success that you had with your debut novel influence the process of writing, writing this novel?

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Allison Espach
How did how did writing the adults influence writing this novel?

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Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. And some of the and just the experience of writing a novel that was so well received as your first novel. And then, you know, thinking, okay, what's next?

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Allison Espach
Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. I, I have a I have a really kind agent who did her best to prepare me as a debut novelist for silence. Right. You know, she was like, I was 25 when I published the adult first when I sold it, at least. And she was you know, she kept saying, I love this book.

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Allison Espach
You know, it's going to go out into the world just now. It's so hard to be a debut novelist right now, you know, so, so, so she was really trying to manage my expectations to keep me from from getting disappointed. And I totally bought that. You know, I said, yes, this is the right way to go into this.

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Allison Espach
Just be happy that it's published. And so pretty much anything that happened after it being published was just like it felt like this thrilling bonus and just really almost like a dream that at certain points, particularly The New York Times editor, Editors Choice, a pick was huge for me. I mean, that that that was so meaningful. So so I was a little overwhelmed that not that anyone beyond my mother read it and then all of a sudden felt extremely exposed.

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Allison Espach
Right, because I really wasn't prepared for that. So, you know, no, definitely not a complaint, just more of an observation of of what I can see going on now. When I look back at that time where I just feeling suddenly very exposed. And I think that state made it very hard to write. I wrote them for I wrote the adults in some ways, truly believing no one would ever read it.

00;17;58;08 - 00;18;26;01
Allison Espach
And I think that's what allowed me to write it in a way. And I and when you go into your second book, you're like, okay, it might not sell, you know, it might not get out there. But you have a you have more of a actual belief that it will. And I didn't quite know how to navigate that at first to write always with an audience in mind, always thinking about how it was going to be received.

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Allison Espach
And, you know, and there was a lot of praise for the adults. There was also a lot of criticism. Right. And I think both things swirling in your brain. Right. For me, I just needed some time to stop listening to those voices and and even positive feedback can be damaging to a writer, but just something to learn how to deal with it in the way that if if your first book is praised for being whatever.

00;19;03;08 - 00;19;22;10
Allison Espach
One of the things that I kept seeing in reviews was reviewers being surprised by how funny it was, right? And so I go to write the next book and all I can think is make it funny. Yeah, it's got to be as funny as the adults write. So. And you just no one's ever funny under those conditions.

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Stasia Walmsley
So random and and yeah.

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Allison Espach
Right. Yeah. So I was just assuring myself like a non funny book by, by thinking that way and obsessing in that way. So, you know, so I think when I, when I talk about the book taking ten years, I would say the first few years for that was part of the process of just writing something and then giving it up because it wasn't right or because I was writing for some other reason other than I just really want to write this thing, right?

00;19;59;21 - 00;20;24;18
Allison Espach
Yeah. So it wasn't probably until about five years after the adults that I got so sick of thinking that way and I got really tired of it too. And I started to feel like I fell back into obscurity for a bit. So that actually helped a lot. I just felt like I was writing to myself again. And it turns out that that's that's really the only way I know how to write.

00;20;25;24 - 00;20;30;20
Allison Espach
Just wanting to write the thing that that I think I would like to read.

00;20;31;14 - 00;21;04;02
Stasia Walmsley
So in teaching students now, creative writing, you're a faculty member here at at P.S. You were an English major at Providence College undergrad. Right. And then went on to an MFA program at Washington University in Saint Louis in teaching students now, has the craft of writing changed, or should I say, is what you advise in terms of the approach to the craft of writing?

00;21;04;16 - 00;21;13;15
Stasia Walmsley
Has that changed at all from what you might have learned as an undergrad to what you're you're helping students to navigate right now?

00;21;13;15 - 00;21;43;25
Allison Espach
Yes. So, yeah, I was an English major here at Providence College. And we it has changed in the sense that we when I was a student at Providence College, we didn't have a full creative writing program the way that we do now. So our students can can major in creative writing. To be honest, I can't even I can't quite remember if we could minor in it when I was a student here, I don't think we could.

00;21;43;25 - 00;22;20;06
Allison Espach
So it was really you know, we had great professors. I had great professors, Professor Jameson and Perennial and Professor Peter Johnson and Cardinal. And they were extremely helpful to me, both as a writer and and as an aspiring writer, someone who wanted to make a career out of it. They pointed me always in the right direction, but each because I wasn't taking that many classes, I think I took about three creative writing classes while I was here.

00;22;20;29 - 00;22;48;28
Allison Espach
It didn't it always felt like an introduction to the into the world, you know. And I didn't really come from a family. I don't really come from a super artsy family. So it really was my first. I've always wrote on my own, but I had never been part of a workshop or I had never studied a short story, a contemporary short story in a class.

00;22;48;28 - 00;23;22;06
Allison Espach
So everything was just new to me and bewildering and awesome. So so I don't think I can speak to sort of whether the teaching of it has changed or if I do anything different. I think part of me can hardly even remember it. All I can remember is, is my total enthusiasm for it really. But I you know, I do think that having a wider variety of classes, right, having the major does change the student experience of it.

00;23;22;06 - 00;23;46;27
Allison Espach
Right. I'm sure by the time they become seniors or they're in one of the advanced workshops, I can see them notice things about their own work that it took me until I was, I don't know, 28 to notice about my own work, you know, so, you know, and I think part of the the process of becoming a writer is not just it's not just improving the writing.

00;23;46;27 - 00;24;20;14
Allison Espach
I mean, obviously that's a huge, huge part of it, but it's learning how to see things differently or maybe learning how to observe more acutely and learning how to have confidence in your own observations as something that matters or is something that is significant. And and I hope that's that's one of the things, if not the thing that that students take away from from my creative writing classes.

00;24;20;14 - 00;24;48;17
Allison Espach
Right. Not I mean, of course, I want them to know how to use a metaphor. Right. But I but I also want them to leave with the feeling that what I observe, what I see matters and with the confidence and the ability to actually put that on the page and send it out into the world. So so I don't know if that answers your question exactly, but I.

00;24;48;24 - 00;25;21;17
Stasia Walmsley
Know it helps it helps to understand really what the what the programs like here, but also what what your how you're able to guide students because I wonder certainly I'm curious what at what point in your life you decided, I think I want to make a career out of writing. And I imagine even those students who are in creative writing programs at at PC or taking creative writing classes, they may still be skeptical about moving in the direction of making writing a career.

00;25;21;17 - 00;25;35;06
Stasia Walmsley
So I'm wondering if you could tell a little bit about what led you down that path and if you are seeing some of that maybe struggles with that choice among our students today?

00;25;35;11 - 00;25;59;23
Allison Espach
Yeah. So I it's funny, looking back now, I didn't go into my college experience thinking I would come out of it as a writer, even though since the age of, I don't know, six or seven, I always had a novel in progress, right? They started off as like two page novels and became much larger. It was something I always did and loved to do.

00;26;00;13 - 00;26;20;28
Allison Espach
And it's it's really eye opening to me that I went into college, not even considering it, you know, like it wasn't even a possibility. The closest I came to thinking that way was, okay, maybe I'll be a journalist or, you know, get some kind of practical career, right?

00;26;23;09 - 00;27;01;14
Allison Espach
And it took taking my fiction workshop with Professor Peter Johnson to open my eyes to what some of the career possibilities actually could be. And I think that's a pretty typical experience that a student has with creative writing, unless the student comes from a family of writers. So sure, a family that is really pushing them in that direction and has already given them the vocabulary and the understanding of what that kind of career might look like.

00;27;01;20 - 00;27;29;16
Allison Espach
I think most students come into it having no idea that it's a possibility and not even really being able to imagine the steps. Right. If you if you interview 20 writers and ask them, well, how did you become a writer? Their stories are going to be wildly different. You know, it's not like becoming a doctor or a lawyer where you're like, okay, at least I know like what application I'm supposed to fill out and where to send.

00;27;29;21 - 00;27;55;15
Allison Espach
Write. You don't really like fill out an application to become a writer. You just have to write. They write, and that's easier said than done, especially if no one in your life is telling you to become a writer. Right, like no one? No, I don't think I've ever had a student who's come in and sat in my office and said, you know, my parents are really pressuring me to to become a novelist.

00;27;55;15 - 00;28;22;15
Allison Espach
You know? So I think I always assumed that to be my responsibility as professor, that if I saw a student who who really wanted it and a student I thought could could do it, it would be my job to to start introducing them to some of the steps that they can take, because there are practical steps to take in order to become a writer.

00;28;22;15 - 00;28;54;17
Allison Espach
Right. Going to graduate school is one of them, but not not the only one working in publishing or moving towards journalism in many ways. So so there are there are steps there are things that that professors, I think, do need to introduce their students to. And and I, I try to do that as much as possible. For me, it was it took Peter Johnson saying, hey, do you ever consider graduate school?

00;28;55;28 - 00;29;24;11
Allison Espach
And I thought, what, you can go to graduate school for writing? And then I thought, no, I haven't. I do not have the money to do that. And he said, they will pay you to go. And it was it sounded ridiculous. I couldn't believe that such a possibility could exist. But there are many graduate programs in creative writing that offer stipends and make it possible for you to just find some time.

00;29;24;11 - 00;29;45;27
Allison Espach
Right. And for me, that was really one of the most valuable things about a graduate program. Of course, I learned a ton while I was there, but it's also really meant to give you that. The years that person needs to actually create a manuscript, it's very hard to create a manuscript while working a 9 to 5 job and doing a million other things.

00;29;45;27 - 00;30;15;06
Allison Espach
So so for me, it was my professors kind of encouragement with the actual experience and the time that graduate of the graduate program gave me. And also the the fear of what would become of me once I had to graduate. So I published very early and that is not typical of most writers. I think I get scared when I tell my students.

00;30;15;06 - 00;30;43;12
Allison Espach
When I publish my first novel, they get scared like, Oh no, I'm already it's very normal to publish your first novel when you're 30 or 45 or 70, right. And there's really no age requirement for such a thing. But I, I just knew that if when I graduated and had to get a job like I was, I was never going to be as focused on the manuscript as I was at that moment.

00;30;43;12 - 00;31;11;11
Allison Espach
And so my goal became, you know, as soon as you're done with this program, you're you are going to get this manuscript ready for publication and you're going to send it out before you start your job. And and I feel very fortunate that that worked out for me. So so yeah, you know, and it probably wasn't until a few years later where I was actually starting to call myself a writer.

00;31;11;11 - 00;31;37;24
Allison Espach
Right? So there's a weird long line process when I could never have predicted when I started, which is why I think it is important to to if you're interested in creative writing, to be a part of classes and to be a part of a community that is always teaching you and reminding you what's possible for you as a writer.

00;31;37;28 - 00;32;18;10
Stasia Walmsley
And I think having a community of people who are writers to help have that common language, like you say, and understand the possibilities and understand the options and understand the timeline which might be very different than other types of of jobs and how that all works, I think, is is key. One of the things that I think is interesting right now is the emergence of the audio publishing market and I wanted to ask a little bit, how about how you got into working with Audible and the Audible original short stories that that you've been working on.

00;32;18;27 - 00;32;43;25
Stasia Walmsley
And I'll just the your your series, I think is called In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People, which is sounds really fun and I'm looking forward to digging into that myself. But tell me a little bit about how you got involved in audio publishing and what you think about this is kind of an emerging opportunity for for writers to dove into.

00;32;43;29 - 00;33;18;17
Allison Espach
Yeah. So I in-depth market research interviews with dead people. Next time I'll make sure my title is always something I can easily say out loud without thinking too hard. That wasn't the story that I wrote, but score. Yeah. Just at the tail end of graduate school when I started to pick up some jobs for for money. Right? So start figuring out, okay, well, how am I going to pay the bills once the stipend is is gone?

00;33;19;12 - 00;33;53;15
Allison Espach
And I used to transcribe market research interviews for companies. So the company would do hours and hours of research with interviews with people about the products. And then they would send me the DVDs and I would transcribe them and it it was both fascinating and like mind destroying for me. I mean, it was so boring and yet it was the best education I could have gotten into people's speech patterns and the little things that they reveal about themselves while talking about anything.

00;33;53;15 - 00;34;22;27
Allison Espach
Right. I mean, these people were talking about the car that they bought or they were talking about the Hannah Montana backpack that they bought, you know? And yeah, I felt actually by the end of each DVD, I knew everything about and like, I knew like the foundational experiences of their lives and what made them tick, right? Because when you talk about things that, you know, you just you just can't help but reveal who you are is sort of what I love about dramatic monologues.

00;34;23;01 - 00;34;47;20
Allison Espach
Yeah. Yeah, I think you're hiding things that actually are not. And so, yeah, once I started to have to work these these kinds of jobs, I was so in a way resentful of that, that it was taking writing time away from me and in such a boring way, I tried my hardest to figure out how to use like I was like, this experience cannot be wasted.

00;34;47;20 - 00;35;10;07
Allison Espach
I will write a story out of it. And so I wrote this story for a workshop and I just didn't know what it was. It was weird, you know, it was kind of like a play and not really a short story. It was an interview between two people. One of them was dead, and my workshop was like, Good, but why did I have to be dead?

00;35;10;07 - 00;35;35;22
Allison Espach
I have to be dead. I don't know why. They just have to be. And but I really didn't know why. And so I just let the story sit for ten years because I thought it was like that was just a weird thing. I had to like to process my awful job. And then when I was going up for tenure, I had to look back through all my old stuff and really think about like, Okay, is there anything I really want to work on again?

00;35;35;22 - 00;36;01;18
Allison Espach
And a lot of stuff like that. Absolutely not. It's garbage. Goodbye forever. And then I stumbled upon the the in-depth market research story and I just thought like, what a weird little gem from the past. I go in all of a sudden rereading it. It clicked like I knew why they had to be dead. I knew how that created a certain kind of humor that wouldn't really be there.

00;36;01;20 - 00;36;21;09
Allison Espach
They were alive in sadness, of course, but it's primarily meant to be comedic in a way, and I just could see the whole thing. And so I started, I rewrote it and I sent it to my agent and but, but I sent it to my agent being like, I still have no idea who would publish this. And she suggested Audible.

00;36;22;04 - 00;36;49;10
Allison Espach
And I didn't realize that Audible was really seeking that kind of content. But they are particularly stories that would, for whatever reason, work really well read aloud. And obviously an interview would be that kind of story. And so, so I sold that story to them. And then we just started developing. We tried to develop it into more of a series.

00;36;49;10 - 00;37;23;13
Allison Espach
And I use the initial concept to, to come up with two more interviews. So I believe bound to paper towels and temper payback. And it was it was fun. I you know, that was one of my my more fun projects alongside the novel that I was writing, which felt very intense for me. So I'm a strong believer then that it's always good to have two projects going at the same time, one that's just fluff and one that feels like your main project.

00;37;24;24 - 00;37;45;05
Allison Espach
And yeah, and I think it is really a new opportunity, right? That people really do listen to audio stories now in a way that they did not even like five years ago, you know? Yeah. So there's a, I think there's a whole new market for it and it doesn't necessarily have to change the way you write your story.

00;37;45;05 - 00;38;09;04
Allison Espach
But I think it is a great generator for new ideas, right? As writers, as fiction writers, we tend to be so focused on just how the reader will read it on the page. But it's fun to think about what might happen if you start writing, thinking of it more as a that might be read aloud and playing around with those those new possibilities.

00;38;09;04 - 00;38;40;05
Allison Espach
And because I loved it so much, I am slowly, very slowly working with a professor here to develop a course and sort of oral storytelling. Oh, very thinking about the different ways you can have students try out something like an audible story, but also telling stories on stage and whatnot. So so I'm really looking forward to that and that's all really a product of this unexpected work that I didn't realize I'd be doing as a writer in.

00;38;40;17 - 00;38;45;01
Stasia Walmsley
Do Is Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance on is there an audio book?

00;38;45;07 - 00;38;49;13
Allison Espach
There is. And you didn't use it? I did not.

00;38;49;13 - 00;38;50;04
Stasia Walmsley
I know you did not.

00;38;50;04 - 00;39;21;06
Allison Espach
I didn't read it. Yeah. No, no, no, I. I have endless admiration for audiobook voice actors. Holy moly. She, the narrator for notes is. Is wonderful. I've listened to a bit of it, though. I think I need to give it some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just reread the book like, a thousand times to get it ready for publication.

00;39;21;06 - 00;39;22;15
Stasia Walmsley
Oh, I can imagine it.

00;39;23;05 - 00;39;23;17
Allison Espach
Yes.

00;39;24;07 - 00;39;34;23
Stasia Walmsley
What classes are you currently teaching? I said, you know that you're in you're working on this kind of audio reading class or audio literary class. But what are you teaching right now?

00;39;35;07 - 00;40;11;20
Allison Espach
Right now I am teaching in the Development of Western Civilization program, as well as a seminar in the prose poem, which is a hybrid form, a poem that is prose or prose that is quite poetic. It's a very, very short form, and it's one of my favorite classes to teach. The students don't have much experience with it before they get to class, but the form, I think, really brings out something special in what they write.

00;40;12;17 - 00;40;49;03
Allison Espach
Or Peter Johnson used to teach this class to me when I was a student as one of my my few creative writing classes. And I remember he said, the poem's great because you can write without feeling like Shakespeare sitting over your shoulder. There's really not much of a tradition of the prose form that extends past the seventies. So so there's something about the freedom, the total freedom that they have and the the super short form that keeps them restrained.

00;40;49;03 - 00;41;25;16
Allison Espach
And, and it just creates these little beautiful pieces that they like. It keeps stunning me with every week. So that's been really lovely. Next semester I'll be teaching a fiction workshop as well as a literary nonfiction workshop, which is, of course, I developed here and and that course is based on my experiences writing nonfiction and selling nonfiction as a as a way to survive as a writer in my early twenties and mid twenties.

00;41;25;16 - 00;41;42;06
Allison Espach
So that course is really designed to help students come up with ideas for magazine length nonfiction. That's a thing you'd find in The New Yorker or The New York Times or forgetting the name of any magazine right up.

00;41;42;26 - 00;41;43;14
Stasia Walmsley
The Atlantic or.

00;41;43;14 - 00;42;18;24
Allison Espach
Something like that. The extent of my memory and how do they take those ideas, draft them, research them, revisit them, rewrite them, workshopped them, and then think about pitching those ideas, too, to an editor in that class. Really, I hope, more than some of my other writing classes prepares writers at P.S. to actually read and start working as a writer.

00;42;18;24 - 00;42;34;29
Allison Espach
So I really focus on the, the, the transformation from, from having written the thing, okay, now what do you do? How do you pitch this to an editor? What does it mean to pitch to an editor? And we work with that a little bit.

00;42;34;29 - 00;42;44;12
Stasia Walmsley
And you said that you're teaching in the development of Western civilization, what we call Civ here. The good part of our core curriculum is that a colloquium or teaching.

00;42;45;15 - 00;43;10;25
Allison Espach
This semester it is to a one. So it's the third semester of the of the regular Civ program. And I do teach a colloquium with back Cristina Rodriguez in the spring and we've been teaching it for about five years now, six years. It's called me, myself and I. The reading and writing of autobiography. And that is another one of my favorite classes.

00;43;11;05 - 00;43;42;26
Allison Espach
We read autobiographies. Professor Rodriguez does a lot of literature a professor does with books. Right. And she teaches the students how to approach them and unpack the books with with the students and analyzes them. And then I offer paired writing exercises where they imitate these works and try to slowly work toward writing their own kind of mini autobiographical essays.

00;43;42;26 - 00;44;00;21
Allison Espach
And so that's the final project at the end of the semester. And it's very surprising to some students that they get to do a little creative writing and. So it's really fun to to introduce that to them at the very end of their careers.

00;44;00;26 - 00;44;13;05
Stasia Walmsley
I imagine after the first two semesters of Civ where there there's not a lot of creative writing, that's something third semester to be able to do. That is pretty exciting. I imagine it's a pretty popular class.

00;44;13;13 - 00;44;27;29
Allison Espach
I hope so. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it is it is there there's there's some confusion at first with like, wait, what do you want me to write about my mom? What does this have to do with that? Right. So it's.

00;44;27;29 - 00;44;29;11
Stasia Walmsley
Not Saint Thomas Aquinas.

00;44;29;11 - 00;44;41;05
Allison Espach
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's fun to to make that connection, that and unexpected connection between what's going on in their own lives and and everything that they've done in sin thus far.

00;44;41;13 - 00;44;48;22
Stasia Walmsley
So I just want to end with two quick questions. One of them being, what are you working on? And the other being, what are you reading?

00;44;49;11 - 00;45;18;06
Allison Espach
Good, good question. I am working on a new novel and and halfway through it, hopefully it won't be another decade long experience that I, I think I'm I hope I'm past that and I would describe it, but I am under strict orders to not say a word. Oh, okay. It's not that it's super exciting. It's just we're not talking about it quite yet.

00;45;18;06 - 00;45;46;06
Allison Espach
But I but yeah, I'm really I'm really into that at the moment. That's it's been a lot of fun for me to work on the summer. And what am I reading? I am mostly reading Civ books to me and right now that's Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Just having read the Communist Manifesto, obviously by Karl Marx and Engels.

00;45;48;05 - 00;46;14;14
Allison Espach
So a lot of good books, a lot of prose poetry at the moment. So I am at night when all the work is done and I'm just trying to relax. I've been reading Sheila Hetty's Autofiction called my Motherhood. I really loved her. Her first book, How Should Yeah How Should a Person Be? That was her first novel and loved it.

00;46;14;14 - 00;46;24;03
Allison Espach
I love her writing and so far motherhood. This is just wonderful and I'm getting a lot out of it, so.

00;46;24;13 - 00;46;38;07
Stasia Walmsley
Well, I think that's really important as a writer to be able to find the joy, continue to find the joy in reading right like and find those moments, especially when you're so busy writing yourself, teaching all that good stuff. So thanks for sharing that.

00;46;38;16 - 00;47;03;12
Allison Espach
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And you know, sometimes you're a little too tired to do it and you just want to not read more words. So at the end of the night, but I every time I pick it up and then convince myself to be just a little bit for fun, it's so worth it. You know, I think reading is one of the best things that we can do to remind ourselves of why we write in the first place.

00;47;03;23 - 00;47;08;07
Allison Espach
For me, that's that's absolutely true. So I need that. I need those reminders. Yeah.

00;47;09;03 - 00;47;25;11
Stasia Walmsley
Well, thank you so much, Alison. It's been such a pleasure having you on the podcast. And I know personally I'm a big fan and I'm excited to hear more about what your next novel will be about when it's when it's ready to be disclosed. And I hope you'll join us again when it when it comes out.

00;47;26;04 - 00;47;28;16
Allison Espach
Well, thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure.

00;47;29;00 - 00;47;41;06
Stasia Walmsley
Thank you for listening to this edition of the Providence College podcast. And thank you to our producer, Chris Judge. I'm Stasia Walmsley. Check in on Mondays for new episodes available everywhere you get your podcasts.