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280 Natalie Gregory | Literary Fiction Author and Winner of the Primadonna Prize
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Literary fiction writer, Natalie Gregory joins us this week to chat about her debut novel and the long and unexpected journey she has been on with it through unsuccessful querying to winning the Primadonna Prize.
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Transcript
Importance of Writing in Storytelling
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer isn't there. So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Guest Introduction: Natalie Gregory
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode I am joined by a writer of novels, short stories and speeches. She won the Creative Writing New Zealand Flash Fiction Competition in 2021, was shortlisted for the Exeter Short Story Prize and in 2023 won the Prima Donna Prize with the opening of upcoming debut novel.
00:00:35
Speaker
It's Natalie Gregory. Hello. Hi, Jamie. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks so much for coming
Natalie's Debut Novel Overview
00:00:40
Speaker
on. Let's jump right in, as we always do with the book, your debut novel, Mother Ghost Mango Seed, which comes out on the 4th of June.
00:00:49
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, so my debut novel is a about a Thai English woman called Lin, who ah yeah after her mother dies, takes her young baby on a road trip through Thailand to find her mother's lost recipes. But realistically, she's, well, not realistically, rather in a magic realist vein, and she's actually trying to find her mother's ghost. So she's hoping to reconnect with her mother, with her heritage. um And
00:01:21
Speaker
It sort of sets her off on a journey um to see different relatives and to explore different places that her mother used to
Novel's Structure and Historical Context
00:01:28
Speaker
live. um And what she finds instead are things that get her to question, you know, who her mother was, ah all the sort of the family history that she was aware of or not aware of, um where her family sits politically, um and also ultimately about, you know, questions about herself and who who she is as a new mother and a motherless daughter.
00:01:55
Speaker
Okay, there's a ah lot a lot going on in there. It's two timelines, right? It's sort of multi-generational. There's two different stories happening at different times. Yes. So it's, it's I don't know if it's, it I think it's more, it's it's technically, I suppose it's three timelines. So I've got the 1976 timeline, ah where we which we sort of experienced through the eyes of so multiple characters who knew Lynn's mother, Nok.
00:02:24
Speaker
um and particularly in the ah sort of in the months approaching ah the Tamasat University massacre.
Impact of Tamasat University Massacre
00:02:34
Speaker
so this was a a really horrific event in 1976 where ah pro-democracy protesters um were sort of ah surrounded and and ultimately violently attacked by a right-wing mob.
00:02:49
Speaker
um And then we've got sort of I suppose I call this mytemporary my contemporary timeline, but ah some of the aspects would probably point towards it being 2020. So 2020 Bangkok, ah where Lin's just um cremated her mother and then she goes off and and takes her takes her baby along with her on a journey through Thailand.
00:03:13
Speaker
Okay. and then third Sorry, then the third timeline is, it's sort of, um I suppose, flashbacks to the couple of years preceding Nock's death and Lynn's experience of her mother's illness.
00:03:27
Speaker
um Although this one I tell backwards ah for for a particular reason, but... Okay, interesting.
Magic Realism in the Novel
00:03:33
Speaker
So chronologically, this was for for a debut novel. This is quite the challenge you set out for yourself by having all these different timelines, all these different things going on at once. Yeah, I mean, I remember having a chat to a friend of mine, and who who's also a novelist, and she said, you've really done yourself in by having all of these complicated timelines. But I just, it's...
00:03:54
Speaker
it's So I wanted to write magic realism because I felt that worked incredibly well for for multiple reasons. And one of the things that appeals to me about magic realism is often some of the classics, especially if you think of sort of the Latin American classics of the genre, they do play with time a lot.
00:04:14
Speaker
um And I think that worked incredibly well for a book about that is in in a lot of ways about grief, because when you're grieving the loss of a person, so ah a person actually dying, your concept of time does warp a lot because you live so you want to live so much in your memories. You don't necessarily want to live in the present. And the future seems...
00:04:40
Speaker
completely unrealistic to you because you can't see that future without this person in it. um So I like the idea of playing around with timelines, which is why one of the timelines is told backwards and also um connecting different parts of history together and playing with the idea of memory and the idea of history.
00:05:03
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And I, having read a bit about you online, this is, this is like, in terms of Thailand, um, this is quite connected to like you, you like personally, is that kind of the inspiration for this was like, you wanted to kind of revisit your heritage and things.
Personal Connections to Thai Heritage
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, i I suppose. So um i i am half Thai. So my mother was Thai and my dad's German and I grew up in Southeast Asia, um sort of spent my teens in Thailand, in Bangkok.
00:05:36
Speaker
um And
00:05:40
Speaker
I actually originally started writing a purely historical novel set in the 1970s that was sort of centered around um Two Sisters and ah the Thomas Art University Massacre and A Case of Mistaken Identity. um And I kind of didn't get that far into that manuscript. I wrote maybe a handful of chapters. um And then um my my mother did actually ah ah become ill and and died um in 2017.
00:06:11
Speaker
um And it was the same time that my son had only just, I think, no, it was it was before he'd turned one um And so a lot of my experience of my mother's illness, you know, her diagnoses, et cetera, and her treatment was very closely related to my experience of um ah giving birth and having my baby, my first baby.
00:06:35
Speaker
um And sort of a year after she died, a lot of those different things were playing on my mind and how my mother passing away made me also feel ah much more disconnected to my Thai roots. um And so I really wanted to explore that.
00:06:56
Speaker
um And fiction gave me the space and the room to breathe in order to do so. Okay. Wow. Okay. So this is, this is really like a a way of you putting a lot of your kind of personal feelings and experience into a storytelling and kind of finding a way to reconcile with those through fiction and magical realism.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And I suppose the magic realism gave me, um, ah a bit of a stronger outlet for it. Um, I'm not sure I would have achieved what I wanted to achieve through auto fiction.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
Research for Historical Accuracy
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Gives you a bit more leeway. And I guess also you're doing, um, this is obviously historical. The, how much research did you have to do in terms of like the, the protest and everything that happened with that?
00:07:43
Speaker
so i'd um So I'd already done quite a lot of the research previously for originally the book that I'd set off to write yeah before my mum passed away. um So there's there's some there's a brilliant book called Moments of Silence ah by Tongchai Winichakun. And he's actually a Tamasat University massacre survivor. And then subsequent, I think now he works as a professor in history a university in the US.
00:08:12
Speaker
um And his book is brilliant because it's not a memoir. it It starts, his starting point is the massacre, but he's really much more interested in the sort of subsequent impact that ah the massacre and the sort of Thai government's failure to really address it in any way. So none of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. And in fact, um immediately afterwards, it was the remaining surviving students that were rounded up and thrown into prison because they were um accused of committing Les Majestés, which is ah a law in Thailand. It's it's actually the most um severe
00:08:55
Speaker
ah law I think in the world in terms of protecting the monarchy. So the idea is that if you say or do anything that offends the monarchy um in Thailand, at least you can, you you're likely to be sent to prison for three
Political Impact of the Massacre
00:09:08
Speaker
to 15 years.
00:09:09
Speaker
um So it's quite a severe punishment for that, um for that offense. And so his book really looks into the impact of not talking about the event enough and actually not resolving but not not have not giving people the opportunity for justice for the event.
00:09:30
Speaker
um And i mean, it's it's something that i I've always been a ah little curious about because I think when I was a teenager and then i yeah during the time when there was sort of coming up, coming onto the anniversary of of the massacre, there was something in the papers. And so I read a little bit about it and I asked my mother about it and she really struggled to talk to me about it. um She found it really difficult. She didn't like talking about it.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I suppose that just made me even more curious. um She wasn't at university at the time. She'd already graduated a couple of years beforehand. um But she that's that is the university that she went to.
00:10:11
Speaker
um And, you know, she knew um one of her friend's sisters, I think, was one of the students that survived by jumping into the river and and swimming ah swimming away.
00:10:24
Speaker
and so and and then speaking to friends of mine, they had similar experiences trying to talk to their parents about about the massacre. And it's it's just not something people are comfortable talking about in Thailand. And it's not something that's ever been, quote unquote, resolved. um Although, and i think I think that idea of resolution so ah is is quite important, um because it's so hard to move on from something and move on from a traumatic event, unless you're willing to talk about it.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. That's interesting. So you have, you have a few sort of like almost firsthand connections to this. And then obviously, you know, reading this novel, which is a firsthand account. Um, it sounds like you had a pretty good, it's a, it's a nonfiction book. Um, ah so he goes, he goes through the history of the sort of, um,
00:11:22
Speaker
80s and 90s Thailand and kind of charts how Thailand's current political landscape is still very much related to the sort of the structures that were in place that led to the massacre happening in the first place.
Political Challenges in Thailand
00:11:36
Speaker
And we still have quite a tumultuous. I mean, it's such it's it's so strange because Thailand is The most wonderful country. I mean, it sits so deeply within my soul and i wouldn't like there are there's no reason for people not to go visit Thailand. Actually, there are so many reasons why people should go visit Thailand.
00:11:55
Speaker
Politically speaking, it's um you know we have military coups every every few years. it's it's It's not the most stable political system. And yet it what maintains that system just keeps continuing because people don't have the ability to question it too deeply.
00:12:16
Speaker
Right. Yes. ah We're wading into ah an area of politics that I'm not qualified to talk about. No, it's okay. but it's just it's It's an area of interest for me which which what led me, which is what led me into this subject matter in the first place. Yeah, absolutely. And and and it sounds fascinating. and And I'm sure sort of reading the book, which is, will be ostensibly about the experience of the characters that you will learn quite a lot about this anyway. um Changing lanes a bit here, going back onto you and your writing. So this will be your first, your debut novel, but you have published and placed in competitions with your short fiction. um ah you You have a short story and in an anthology book, Here Are Stories. So i'm wondering, um
00:12:57
Speaker
you You briefly talked about how this was a slightly different story originally, but had you written any novels or wanted to write a novel before Mother Goes Mango Seed, or was this your kind of first run at doing a full long form fiction?
Natalie's Writing Journey
00:13:10
Speaker
I mean, i've I've probably wanted to be a writer since I was like five years old or something. I still remember... um a friend giving me, you know, this little booklet of, of stickers with pick pictures in it. And the idea was you could take the stickers and then write a story alongside them. Um, you know, I, I used to write really saccharine poetry in my preteens.
00:13:35
Speaker
Um, I tried writing a fantasy novel when I was, 14 and i think I maybe got five chapters in and um i think the problem I had was that I basically killed off all my protagonists before I could really get going. and so I've always wanted to to be a writer um but then but then I kind of felt forced to grow up and I sort of put it on the back burner and i i just never had the courage to really um do anything significant with it. um And honestly, i think what really catapulted me and catalyzed me into going for it was my mom dying. And, you know, just the idea that life's really short and we should just do the things we love and be with the people we love.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yeah. okay. So this was obviously it was a started off as historical fiction and then, and then it moved into the kind of multi-generational thing, but but this was the first time you tried to write a full novel.
00:14:35
Speaker
um was it having written quite a book, quite a lot of short fiction? Did it, was it kind of, did it feel like you were exercising different muscles moving into doing a full length novel?
Transitioning to Novel Writing
00:14:45
Speaker
Oh, completely. Um, I mean, it was so overwhelming. i umm like i i I thought I'd made a plan and I'd written down okay where I thought the story would go. and but what really was a turning point for me is a friend of mine suggested that I go on like an a tutored Arvon retreat, ah which was amazing. And one of my tutors there, Edward Dox, gave me some of the best advice ever, which was write shit chapters.
00:15:16
Speaker
plan Plan your book out, literally chapter by chapter, the really basic plot points, who says what, like what happens, how are they feeling?
00:15:27
Speaker
And then just write without worrying too much about, you know, the beauty of the words, um which is something I'm i'm definitely at fault for because i I can just lose myself in words. And and I love a beautifully turned out sentence.
00:15:42
Speaker
um But when you're first time writer, I think you have to balance that kind of self-belief with the self-doubt. And the problem is if you keep reviewing and reviewing and reviewing your prose, at least for me, i get too much self-doubt creeping in. So that was the best advice because it just meant i'd I allowed myself to write almost without stopping and just get through it to have the words down and then go back and edit it.
00:16:11
Speaker
um And I guess having worked in communications for such a long time, editing other people's words, um writing speeches and then editing speeches and all that sort of stuff ah meant that I...
00:16:27
Speaker
actually editing wasn't as difficult for me in the beginning. um So yeah, I think the the short the short fiction, you don't need that same kind of stamina in a way. Although,
00:16:43
Speaker
Really, really great short fiction writers do so much editing and do so much work. And I'm always in awe of people who write poetry because I just can't.
00:16:53
Speaker
I just can't. I can't condense. a world into that few verses. And like, sometimes I read brilliant flash fiction and i'm like, Oh my God, I feel like I've read a novel and actually it's only a page long. How did they do this? It's like sorcery.
00:17:12
Speaker
um But I think I'm, I'm, Although I have dabbled in the short fiction in the beginning, I was never particularly good at it, I don't think. And so novels are definitely more the format that I feel comfortable in, having now written one and actually drafted my second. um It's definitely ah the form I'm more interested in and more comfortable with.
00:17:36
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like the, what many writers affectionately call the vomit draft is, was like a very helpful piece of advice recommendation for you Oh God, that's awful. I've never heard that. I've heard ah Margaret Atwood calls it downhill skiing.
00:17:52
Speaker
so it's like, you just, you just need to get off the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. i like that. Um, I wanted to, from what we were talking about just then, I wanted to also ask you before we go to the, to the Woodland cabin, you mentioned the speech writing.
Insights from Speechwriting Experience
00:18:07
Speaker
I'd love to know how you got into that and what it's like as a, I've never spoken to someone who writes speeches before. So like, what, what is the kind of format? Like, what are you producing? Is it like something you have to do turn around very quickly? How does it work?
00:18:18
Speaker
ah So the speech writing I did years ago when I was working for the British Council um and i I worked in a comms role, ah but I got the opportunity to also write speeches for the chief exec and for the chair and then also contribute to speeches um by foreign office ministers when they did events with the British Council.
00:18:46
Speaker
um And I mean, process wise, it is very different. I mean, you get a lot. So i I sort of the research that I do is depending on what the event was and what the speech was for, um you know, i'd I'd speak to country directors, et cetera, to get kind of the information about whatever it might be, it might be launching a specific policy or a program um about i don't know global education um ah or like an artist's exchange or something somewhere in the world through the British Council. um
00:19:21
Speaker
And I quite liked, I mean, there's a very particular structure that you can follow in terms of oratory for a speech. And you always want quite a clear conclusion and something I always like quite like the conclusion to link into the intro.
00:19:38
Speaker
um But I also always try to fit in a bit of storytelling because unless you have a sort of a sticky story, people kind of tune out. um And so probably one of the speeches I was most proud of was Aung San Suu Kyi visited the UK.
00:19:58
Speaker
can't remember what year it was now. But anyway, and i I was so excited because growing up, um she was sort of politically one of the few female figures in Southeast Asia ah that was sort of well known and, um you know, was sort of quite revered for being this sort of pro-democracy figure.
00:20:21
Speaker
And and i ah ah spoke to the country director, ah the British Council country director, quite a lot to try and get like little little stories maybe about staff in in in the office there etc and so I was able to weave in this this really lovely story for the the chief executive to mention before he then introduced Aung San Suu Kyi and um the first thing she said when she got on stage was in direct response to that story so it's ultimately it's still about having that human connection um yeah and and finding that that little nugget that people can latch on to
00:21:03
Speaker
and connect with and engage
Creative Processes: Speechwriting vs. Novel Writing
00:21:05
Speaker
with. Um, so it's not at its heart, it's not that different, but of course it is, it's a much quicker process. I mean, if I think about, uh, mother goes mango seed, which took me sort of, uh, I suppose the best part of eight years to write yeah in amongst, in amongst working, ah working almost full time and and raising two children. Yeah, speech writing was a lot quicker, but you also had a lot more cooks in the um yeah in the kitchen. So i'd you know i'd have to review and edit with whoever the speaker was. um I'd have to you know patch it through if it was a collaborative event with the Foreign Office, patch it through to whoever was in in charge of the speech writing on their end. And ah yeah, it is a much more collaborative process.
00:21:53
Speaker
But I think creatively and artistically, it's probably not too dissimilar. I don't know. I guess the big difference would be that you're kind of, you have to weave in certain points that need to be hit and like talk about certain things. Yeah. There's there's less freedom in terms of ah going like too far away from those points. Yeah. I mean, I can't just chuck in, you know, ah a ghost that takes the shape of a Naga. I can't have quite as much fun with it, but yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:22:21
Speaker
Um, yeah. Okay, cool. why I was just really curious because it's, it's something that I'm not that familiar with, but it's, it's, it's, it's a path that I think quite a lot of writers do end up taking if, if they kind of, uh, depending on where they're kind of applying their skills.
Desert Island Books
00:22:34
Speaker
Um, That brings us to the point in the episode where I ask you, Natalie, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
00:22:48
Speaker
Oh, so this is this is so hard. And I know everybody complains about this question, but like, um and that must really annoy you at some point. and So it's like I'm caught between do I bring something that I absolutely love and I would love to reread? Or do I actually use the circumstances um of being snowed in and of being cut off to read something that I've always wanted to read. So i I haven't really in the last few years read that many classics and there's still so many classics on my shelf that I haven't got around to. I mean, it's just so easy to be distracted by the shiny new things and the things the things that everyone's talking about. And also I know so many writers now, so it's like I want to read their work so that I can comment on it and you know we can have these lovely conversations about it. But so i i I've never read Count of Monte Cristo. And it's actually my one of my best friend's favorite books. And she's also one of my most trusted beta readers. So I'd probably use the opportunity of being snowed in to read The Count of Monte Cristo.
00:23:54
Speaker
Okay, that's a great one. That was, ah yeah, I mean, it it is a classic. It's not one of the, when people say classics, it's not one of the ones I immediately think of. But that's a great story. I mean, I've read, ah I've probably read some more of the um the other classics. I've, you know, but it's just, yeah, I've never grown got around to Count of Monte Cristo and she really loves that book. so I kind of feel like I should, I should read it one day.
00:24:15
Speaker
yeah i mean and if you if you but if you have faith in her as a beta reader then i would imagine that there's definitely some kind of alignment in what you two would both like to read so i'm sure you'll love it as well and she's also very opinionated so that that helps as well okay great that's what you want in a beta reader no messing around no nonsense um awesome that's a great addition to to the thing i think it just had a they just did a recent adaptation with sam cloughlin i think Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, but this is the thing. I don't want to watch it until I've read the book. Naturally. Yeah. Got to read the book first. And so sometimes you'll read the book and then be like, you know what? Maybe I don't need to see the adaptation anymore. Maybe the book did it. It satiated everything I needed. I hope yeah. Next up, we are going to talk a bit more about Natalie's publishing journey, what she'd been doing in the lead up to the prima donna prize and then how it'll happen after she
Podcast Wrap-up
00:25:08
Speaker
won. That will be in the extended episode available at patreon.com forward slash right and wrong. What
00:25:15
Speaker
like The launch is ah is is is amazing and that you're not too worried about it. You can remember to enjoy it. um I'll try my best. Yeah, that's it. All you can do is try your best. It's been so great chatting with you, Natalie. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your your debut novel, Mother Ghost Mango Seed, which is out June 4th. So it will be out by the time this airs. um Yeah, thank you so much. It's been so fun and interesting hearing about your writing and publishing adventures.
00:25:42
Speaker
Thank you, Jamie. Thank And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Natalie is doing, you can find her on Instagram at NatalieGregory underscore writes or on her website, NatalieGregory.co.uk. To support this podcast, like, follow and subscribe, join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:26:01
Speaker
Thanks again to Natalie and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.