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Episode 520: R. Renee Hess on the Work that Inspires her and the Founding of Black Girl Hockey Club
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"I think, like all writers, I will feel an itch that I have to scratch. There will be an idea in my head that I've got to get down on paper, whether I follow through with it or not," says R. Renee Hess, author of Blackness is a Gift I Can Give Her: On Race, Community, and Black Women in Hockey.
Who do we have this week? It’s R. Renee Hess, but you can all her Renee, of Black Girl Hockey Club. She wrote the essay collection Blackness is a Gift I can Give Her: On Race, Community, and Black Women in Hockey. It’s published by McClelland & Stewart.
After Renee finished her schooling and got a job and had some money, she sought to find a sport to follow that cut against the grain. Instead of baseball, football, or basketball, she thought, maybe hockey and it didn’t take long to realize that there very few Black people on the ice and in the stands. And even fewer Black women in the stands. In 2018, she launched Black Girl Hockey Club, a nonprofit organization that focuses on equity and including for Black women in ice hockey.
Renee was named one of three finalists for the NHL’s Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award in 2021 for positively impacting the community, culture, or society through the sport of hockey. Her work has appeared in Black Nerd Problems, Spectrum Magazine, and Racebaitr. You can learn more about Renee and her work at blackgirlhockeyclub.org and find her on the socials at @blackgirlhockeyclub
In this conversation we talk about:
- Tackling other genres
- Short Fiction
- Reading as a writer
- Going back to the classics
- What sustains the writing
- Taking representation further
- And focusing inward vs. outward in her BGHC work
Really fun conversation about the important work she’s doing and the work she draws inspiration from.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Announcement and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, ACNFers, the next live recording of the podcast will be Saturday, April 18th at 1 p.m. at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene, Oregon, with the mighty Lydia Yuknovich. She's the author of The Chronology of Water, which was just adapted into a movie, Reading the Waves, and the editor of a new collection on Metapause called The Big M.
00:00:21
Speaker
We do this event in partnership ship with the Northwest Review and we're going to have a very talented reader from the University of Oregon's graduate program kicking things off, being the opener.
00:00:36
Speaker
It should be a rocking event. And if you're in Eugene or the surrounding areas, please RSVP with the link that's in the show notes or on my various social platforms to reserve a free ticket.
00:00:47
Speaker
ah It's not going to quote unquote sell out, but it would be nice to have a headcount because this event will probably have more than usual. And we want to give Gratitude Brewing the opportunity to maybe pull in some extra staff.
00:01:01
Speaker
Okay?
Interview with Renee Hess: Black Girl Hockey Club and Racial Themes
00:01:02
Speaker
All right. so Let's queer up hockey a little bit, you know, something.
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNN efforts. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where i talk to tellers of true tales about alliteration and the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara, Rejection E. in Chief. Who do we have this week? It is R. Renee Hess. She goes by Renee.
00:01:31
Speaker
Of Black Girl Hockey Club. She wrote the essay collection, Blackness is a Gift I Can Give Her on Race, Community, and Black Women in Hockey. It's published by McClelland and Stewart.
00:01:43
Speaker
After Renee finished her schooling, got a job, and had some money, she sought to find a sport to follow that cut against the grain instead of this is some of the other major sports like baseball or football or basketball. She thought maybe hockey.
00:01:58
Speaker
And it didn't take long to realize that there are very few black people on the ice and in the stands and even fewer black women in the stands. So in 2018, she launched the Black Girl Hockey Club, a nonprofit organization that focused on equity and inclusion for black women. and ice hockey.
00:02:17
Speaker
A little more about Renee in a second. Show notes of this episode more can be found at brendanomero.com. And if you want to get better at pitches, head to welcome to pitchclub.substack.com and sign up for the forever free Pitch Club.
00:02:31
Speaker
I want to hit 1,000 subs by the end of 2026. That'd be pretty sweet. I'd take more, but 1,000 seems doable.
Brendan's Pitch Club and Patron Acknowledgement
00:02:38
Speaker
And if you want to sell more stories, you can do it by learning how working writers work are doing it with actual examples of winning pitches. And you can hear how they are thinking through the pitches, the amount of rigor and work that they put into these things and how they find editors or find sources and how they land these things. Because that's ultimately what freelancing and what all this this game is.
00:03:03
Speaker
When you really boil it down, it's a whole lot of salesmanship as much as we might not want to admit it. Forever free. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Shout out is in order to new patron, Masha Hamilton. Ah, you might recognize Masha.
00:03:17
Speaker
let me Let me go to the the the show notes at brendanamero.com and pull up what episode Masha was on. She wrote for the Atavis last year. Here we go.
00:03:28
Speaker
M-A-S-H-A. Look at that. Episode 493. Masha Hamilton asks, is the writing worth rearranging your calendar for? That's her.
00:03:40
Speaker
she became a new patron. Thank you, Masha. And Masha sometimes checks in on me when I'm feeling extra shitty. And if you want to support the podcast with a few dollar bills, just like Masha, for as little as $2 a month, you can help the overhead of the podcast and get access to the Flash 52 sessions, among
Renee Hess: NHL Recognition and Inclusion Efforts
00:03:56
Speaker
a few other things. The Flash 52s is just this weekly get-together where we write Flash essays for about 30 minutes and we talk for the other 10. It's a ah short little thing I've been doing on Sunday mornings.
00:04:08
Speaker
That's patreon.com slash cnfpod. So Renee was named one of three finalists for the NHL's Willie O'Ree Community Hero Award in 2021 for positively impacting the community, culture, or society through the sport of hockey. Her work has appeared in Black Nerd Problems, Spectrum Magazine, and Race Bader. You can learn more about Renee and her work at blackgirlhockeyclub.org and find her on the socials at blackgirlhockeyclub.org.
Renee's Writing Inspirations and Genre Exploration
00:04:38
Speaker
In this conversation, we talk about tackling other genres, being inspired by short fiction, ah that moment when you start reading as a writer, going back to the classics, what sustains her writing, taking representation further, and focusing inward versus outward with her work with Black Girl Hockey Club.
00:04:58
Speaker
Really fun conversation about the important work she's doing and the work she draws inspiration from. parting shot about perseverance and fear and pitching and future regret but for now let's cue up the montage riff
00:05:20
Speaker
sort of a for better or for worse thing i tend to be a very heavy editor the psychopath ripping from your book is a compliment that was the lightning bolt You're not crazy. Right? What, like my real practice is I just goddamn right. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:45
Speaker
As someone who is you know writer and you write writing essays and poetry and a lot lot of other things, um and we seek to try to find our inspiration wherever we can find it, like when you lock into, say, like ah a podcast or an interview with a a writer you admire, you know what are you typically hoping to like get from that conversation so you can apply it to like your own work?
00:06:11
Speaker
When I was in graduate school, I did, well, undergrad, I did a writing degree and my graduate was a literature degree. And so I am very familiar with co-writing spaces and working with other writers.
00:06:27
Speaker
And I've never been shy or afraid of constrictive constructive criticism. So I'm going in looking for something that I haven't seen, if it's my own writing, because obviously we have blind spots as writers in our own work. So if somebody is looking at my writing, I'm looking to see if they are seeing something that I don't see, right? If they're catching something that I don't catch. And as a writing teacher, I always would tell my students, like take it or leave it right? You can take the advice or you can leave the advice, but hear it.
00:07:02
Speaker
So I don't get offended by constructive criticism because I want to know what other people think and get inside other people's heads a little bit about my own writing. If we're talking about writing in general,
00:07:16
Speaker
Honestly, i am always open to learning about how folks tackle other genres. um I recently had a conversation with a romance writer. i was thinking about dabbling in romance and she was talking to me a bit about her craft and how she does it. And I was so surprised to hear that she she uses a spreadsheet to plug in plot points and narrative points in her books. And she you know she i used to always tell my students that if you do an outline of your paper, right, and an argument paper, a research paper, it's almost like cheating because you have already kind of laid out that structure for yourself. And that's how that spreadsheet was for her. that It was almost cheating because she would lay out all of her, you know, the the big meat, the the way that they would have some confusion in their relationship. And then she would plug that into the larger story and bing, bang, boom, she had her novel. And so I love learning things about how people, you know,
00:08:26
Speaker
are outside the box using different ways to create in their specific genres that I'm maybe not as familiar with so that I can use it or I can plug it into what I'm doing. You know, there's nothing new under the sun, right? And so we're always kind of, um I don't want to say stealing from each other, but we're always plucking ideas from other writers in order to make our own writing better. And that's one of my favorite things about having conversations with
Book Structure and Literary Influences
00:08:56
Speaker
other writers. Yeah, right now I've been on ah on a short fiction kick because I i mainly work in like narrative profiles and kind of like biography and narrative nonfiction in that regard. But to make things a bit more, ah to to be thinking in terms of word economy, what scenes are doing the most, showing, and so forth. like I'm finding short fiction, the way they get into the story like really kind of as close to the middle as possible, and they're in and out as quick as possible. i like There's a lot to be learned in terms of word economy and how they're building scenes and even dialogue that I can like, all right, can I reverse engineer this for when I report out a feature or something and to make it read more like fiction, even though I hope everything in there is is all buttoned up and verifiably true. So that's that's kind of where like my head's at.
00:09:45
Speaker
I love short fiction ever since I was a kid. um One of my favorite genres was like short stories. yeah because you can pick up a book and turn to any chapter and get a rich experience and then shut it and move on right? And whenever I was writing my book, one of the things that I wanted it to be able to do was to be used in the classroom. As a classroom university teacher, I have always picked up books and maybe not use the entire thing, but one or two chapters here or there. And I wanted my book to have that flexibility as well. And so a while it's not each individual chapter isn't necessarily a short story, it is its own universe. And you can look at it individually. My publishers were real big on making it all connect. I was like, fine, whatever. Universal theme and all that. But um I really wanted...
00:10:45
Speaker
readers to be able to pick and choose and not feel that they had to go in order, to not feel that they were missing out if they skipped a chapter, or that they could go back and read something out of order. Because i i love reading short stories like that. you know I have one that I've had for a really long time. um And the the author's name just left me. But the title of the book is called When is it going to be Black Futures Month? And it's a Black female author who writes sci-fi and kind of otherworldly texts. And one of my favorite things to do is to pick up that book, which is a few hundred pages long, and just dive into one of her short stories there because they're all so unique. Yeah. um So I do love a good short story genre. Yeah. oh I got to pick that up because what's what's really cool about him, you can either like shotgun the story yourself, like just on its own, or if you're struggling with,
00:11:46
Speaker
I don't entry points or something to get into a story. You can, as my my friend Glenn Stout says, like shotgun leads, whether that's nonfiction or even short ah nonfiction or short fiction, you just, how are these really great writers getting into these stories? And then you just get them into your bloodstream. yeah And then maybe you can model them or just be like, oh, okay, I see what they're doing here. Maybe I can just mimic this a little bit and and using my own style, my own voice and my own reporting or whatever.
00:12:13
Speaker
And then suddenly the skids are greased and you're kind of off to the races. Yeah, that's a good point. I think that we learn so much from reading, right? And that's something like as a teacher, trying to impress that into a group of students that hates reading or writing, just that's just the the the base point that reading is important, yeah right? You can learn a lot from you know shutting down down the world for a few minutes and picking up a book or a magazine or a comic or whatever, you know, your media is and engaging in the text. And then, you know, I personally believe you can learn so much from fiction as well. A huge moment of fiction. um I've had conversations with my stepfather, who has just never picked up a fiction book that he likes about the value of fiction and how you know we can peek into other lives and the way that people you know different people live and look at different scenarios and put ourselves there.
Balancing Writing with Life Responsibilities
00:13:20
Speaker
ah He doesn't see the value in it, but i i find it fascinating to to see the way that different authors engage in particular subjects. via
00:13:31
Speaker
you know the the route of fiction Yeah, there's always a moment when, you know, we, a lot of us who are writers now, we kind of grew up as readers and loving reading. And then there's that moment where you might want to become a writer, and then you start reading like a writer.
00:13:47
Speaker
or learning how to read like a writer and that that moment can be kind of weird because then suddenly you're kind of like seeing the matrix and then even your reading experience fundamentally changes in that like okay now I'm reading this like how did they do it instead of sometimes just like surrendering to it ah but do you remember what that moment was like for you when you started to go from that just reading as a reader to reading as a writer I think probably my undergrad years as I started taking more writing classes and learning how to analyze introductions and conclusions and the you know those styles and the words that people use, but I still find myself
00:14:28
Speaker
getting caught up in the writing, not so much when I'm reading, because if I'm reading a book, and I can't get past the first chapter because of the writing, I'll just put it down. And I'm like, I spent the money, it's fine, I'm supporting this writer, but it's just not for me. But with film, if I'm sitting in a movie theater, or I'm watching a movie, and I am distracted by the dialogue, or I'm distracted by the bad writing, I will hop out of that moment so fast and start analyzing Who's writing? Who was the writer on this? Why am I not like what is going on with this dialogue? And I was watching.
00:15:04
Speaker
I just watched recently the Frankenstein movie, the one that I think it's on Netflix, I believe. Okay, Guillermo del Toro's. Yes, Guillermo del Toro's, which I love him. But let me tell you, the writing was not that great.
00:15:20
Speaker
i It kept popping out of the story and saying, who wrote this? What what kind of dialogue is this? you know um And then maybe a week later, i went to the theaters and I saw the Dracula movie, which just came out. It's got some bunch of actors I've never heard of.
00:15:38
Speaker
And the writing was so great in that movie. I was i was enamored with how cheesy and romantic But well done, the the writing was. And just comparing, because I'm a huge horror fan and I've read both of those books multiple times. I've written about those books. And I'm actually more of a Frankenstein, a Mary Shelley fan than than a Dracula fan. But to see the the very large differences in The disparities in the writing and it it popped me out of the the watching experience. And as a writer, that's when I'm like, ah damn, I guess I can't enjoy this one anymore, you know, because I'm here analyzing what what do they think they were doing with that? And why is this, you know, and it's never the production, it's always the writing. that gets me. Yeah. Well, you you bring up such a great point, Renee, and that I think especially when we're coming up and maybe trying to develop our voice and style or whatever you want to call it. And we conflate sometimes the pyrotechnics for like good writing. But really good writing is almost invisible writing because like you said, the bad writing is pulling you out and now you're like starting to deconstruct things in ways that you didn't that didn't allow you to surrender to it. But when you realize when you really immerse it and you do surrender to it and you forget about the writing like, oh, that's really great writing.
00:17:05
Speaker
Exactly. I've started to read um just recently ah an Octavia Butler Parable of the Sour. I've never read these books before purposefully because i knew it was going to be very emotional.
Influences and Inspiration from Renowned Authors
00:17:22
Speaker
I know she's an amazing writer. It's right up my alley. But at my work, I organized a book club. And one of the books that we one of the other folks brought was was that the two Octavia Butler books. And I snatched them up. That's my books, you know, and I started reading them. And I have flown through them. I read them on my lunch breaks usually, and I'll sit in the back and I'll i'll be reading my book. And just the writing is so immersive. i don't even, i'm not even thinking about it. I'm just following the story. And those are the books. Those are the authors that we strive right to be like, because her writing
00:18:05
Speaker
sucked me in so much that I'm sitting in the back on my lunch break with tears going down my cheeks and damn it I have to get back you know i really want to power through but it's such an interesting way that she has taken this you know sci-fi dystopic Afrofuturistic kind of genre and brought it down to a very raw kind of level with her writing that makes me want to not just power through the first book, but also the second book and maybe anything else she's ever written because her writing is just that good. Yeah.
00:18:46
Speaker
Oh, and incumbent upon finding a text that is like so good in that regard is that you don't just finish it once. Like you rarely do you just like read it again. But though sometimes the best ones, you're like, I'm just going to start reading this one again. But these are the texts that you revisit because like, why not? Why not watch the game tape of this great thing and try to keep getting into the bones of it? So what are some books in maybe essays or short stories or whatever that you return to to just as a as a way to reeducate yourself about how how these great things are done?
00:19:21
Speaker
Well, I mentioned Mary Shelley. When I went to graduate school, I had spent my bachelor's doing writing and I had focused on you know more modern things, current authors. I did a lot of read a lot of children's literature YA. And so during grad school, I decided I wanted to go back to the classics. I had never really read romantic authors or even Shakespeare, you know, And so I spent those years going back and somehow the English romantic era became my speciality. i don't know. I was, I became a huge Keats fan and I was reading a lot of Shelley and, and I came across Mary Shelley and of course, Frankenstein, we all know Frankenstein, but she also wrote other things as well. And so I, I often revisit, I've got a, I've got
00:20:14
Speaker
um my grad school copy of Frankenstein with all the notes and, you know, the little the little bookmarks in there ah for for my research. I go back to Zora Neale Hurston a lot. She's a you know Black American author who was writing during the Harlem Renaissance around the same time as Langston Hughes, but she was also an anthropologist. And so she drove down south with a, you know, a benefactor a grant that she had and recorded stories from actual, you know, black folks in the field. She recorded old, like African songs. And she actually wrote a book where she interviewed the last living African that had come across on a slave ship um called Katilda. And so those are the authors I go back to. My aunt, Lita, she was also a huge reader. She passed away about a decade ago. But I remember her telling me that she read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar every single year. just to kind of find something new. And so I tried that. That wasn't my book. I read it a couple of times, but I couldn't read it every year.
00:21:32
Speaker
um But I find myself going back to things like I liked as a child, Anne of Green Gables, A Wrinkle in Time, the C.S. Lewis series, Lord of the Rings, you know, things that are comfort pieces that I still find so much value in. Nice. Nice. When you know you have some time to to write, you know you've got you've got a lot ah lot of plates to spin. you know You've got you know day job and black girl hockey club and all all this stuff. And then amidst all that, you know you're you're a writer too.
Renee's Writing Routine and Research Methods
00:22:03
Speaker
So how do you find the the time to you know to carve out that kind of holy space so you can actually get some of that generative stuff done?
00:22:11
Speaker
I think like all writers, I will feel an itch that I have to scratch. There will be an idea in my head that I've got to get down on paper, whether I follow through with it or not. Like the talking to the ho the the romance novel novel person, I was thinking about writing a hockey romance.
00:22:31
Speaker
This was before Heated Rivalry came out. And so I wanted to talk to her about that. I wrote a couple chapters and then I kind of folded it and put it away. And I told my my agents, I don't think this is going to work for me, but it was an itch that I needed to scratch at that moment. And that's usually what happens. um That's not what sustains the writing, though. You know, when I wrote my book, Blackness is a Gift, I had to schedule that time. i had to sit down every single day. I have a very weird and type A routine that I have to start my day with like a coffee and a candle and the house is clean. And, you know, like everything has to be set in its perfect way. so that I can feel comfortable enough to sit for six hours and work on my writing. But there's always an itch, right? that It starts as an idea, something that you can't stop thinking about. Got to get it down on paper. And then you you figure out what the heck it's going to be and how you're going to organize it. And when I started writing Blackness is a Gift, I had mapped out each...
00:23:46
Speaker
topic of each chapter chapter. But when I sat down to write each chapter, I was like, okay, well, I have about four paragraphs on each chapter, but I need, you know, 20 to 30 pages. What else do i do I have here? And so I think it's ah it's a combination of creative you know a creative push but also you have to have that mental fortitude to be able to sit down and plot out something from the air and from scratch and you know when i was in school i loved creative non-fiction and i loved doing research and finding out those little details to fill in the gaps in in the writing. And so that was something that I really enjoyed about writing this book, was doing the research and, you know, having the freedom and the the free will to write about anything that I wanted in each one of these chapters, pulling in you know, stories that I had heard and things that had
00:24:54
Speaker
been important to me as I think about these topics and sharing them with the reader. And really when I published this book thinking, well, I hope somebody likes it and I hope somebody reads it, but I like it yeah and I enjoy reading it. And these things are important to me. They're important to my daughter and maybe like three other people that i know So other than that, I, you know, i wash my hands of it. It's out there in the world. But the reception and has been really great. And I feel like people have learned from from some of these stories just the same way that I've learned.
00:25:29
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And i I love getting a sense of um a book's family tree, if you will. Like, you know you know, your book lives out on a branch of a particular tree. And then yeah a lot of things that you have read it have informed, you know, what became of this. So what might have been some other essay collections or just other texts that kind of ah are in the lineage of what you've written?
00:25:53
Speaker
I read ah Roxane gay Bad Feminist, and I loved how she had her her book set up in such a way where you could pull out chapters. And so that was part you know part one of the inspiration. um i was I'm a huge fan of ah Dr. Angela Y. Davis and her work around you know social justice issues. And so i I wanted to make sure to bring her work into the text. I believe I have the Combahee River Collective in there, some of their work that is very important to Black feminist movements. I wanted to make sure that if readers were reading my work, that they knew who I was also inspired by. So of course I talk about Zora Neale Hurston in my book. I even mentioned, you know, my love of supernatural because all of these things inform where I am right now or where I was when I was writing this as a hockey fan, as a fan ah in general of popular culture and as a you know, black woman in America.
00:27:05
Speaker
it's crazy how, you know, how you, how how you came to hockey. was really cool. Like, I believe you were in Pittsburgh and you were like, saw the black and gold the around, you were stuck in traffic and you're like, what's this about? And, uh, and that was kind of like the, the entree into it. So i don't know, just like kind of put us in that moment of like, Oh, what is this? And and how you ultimately really leaned in to, to hockey.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely was in Pittsburgh and and was very curious about something that I knew nothing about. Right. As a writer, as a self-proclaimed nerd, sports just was not something that I ever felt I had access to or an entry point to in Pittsburgh.
Engagement with Hockey Culture and Representation Issues
00:27:51
Speaker
at that conference talking about Mary Shelley, actually, and in a paper and a creative nonfiction short story that I had written for that ah academic conference. I remember seeing hockey on the television and then seeing hockey fans and not having any idea what was going on, but being really curious about route it.
00:28:13
Speaker
um But, you know, none of my companions really cared. They weren't interested in what I was interested in. And so I kind of tucked it away and didn't really think about it for a while. But when I finished graduate school with a little bit of time, a new, fresh, you know, good paying job under my belt,
00:28:33
Speaker
I wanted to do something with my time. i didn't have papers to write. i didn't have classes to go to. I had all this free time and I had money. i wanted to do something with it. And I was writing for a pop culture blog at the time. And I was kind of i was going to like comic cons and interviewing people and kind of stretching my journalistic kind of legs there. But i wanted something for me that wasn't...
00:29:01
Speaker
that not anybody else I knew was really interested in because that's just the way I am. And I had a friend who lives in the Midwest who was is a sports fan and also a pop culture writer. And I would talk to her about how disparate that seemed, you know, how, how,
00:29:18
Speaker
It just didn't seem to fit. And she was like, no, no, no um Let's let me tell you a little bit about hockey. And she gave me a hockey primer. She told me, you know, which teams I should be rooting for. Pretty sure she specifically told me not to root for the Penguins, which was why.
00:29:35
Speaker
I became a Penguins fan. um and And, you know, I started listening to games. And as a writer and as a reader, actually listening to sports analysts talk, doing the color commentary for a sports game was something I had never done before. And it was so much fun. Just the use of language, the the so many words that I didn't know that I would have to go look up, right?
00:30:05
Speaker
And that was exciting to me as a writer to hear this whole new type of language being used in such a familiar way that i I got hooked. And then I went to an actual game.
00:30:21
Speaker
in person. And it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The aesthetics of the game are just so exciting, right? You're in this huge arena. It's cold. It smells like ice. Everybody's all excited. it was just very different than anything that I had experienced before. And so, know, my love of hockey was kind of born out of a little bit of resistance to to the norm of what a writer or what a, you know, a pop culture nerd would be involved in. And then I see, you know, now 10 years later, sports really so kind of creeping into popular culture. with these crossovers like heated rivalry and and other things, you know, that are kind of showing a different side of sports to regular pop culture fans. So I think that's so interesting and it keeps me interested yeah in in sports and also how they connect to popular culture as well. Yeah, I love hearing you say that part of your appeal for hockey in particular, but you can extrapolate this across ah all all kinds of sports, is is the language of it and like the vernacular of a particular sport. I've never really thought of it that way, but I think it's really that's really cool way to like get into a sport. I love its vernacular. It was so fun. There are some really...
00:31:52
Speaker
exciting color commentary folks in ice hockey in particular. um the one The first one that I ever listened to was the Pittsburgh announcer, and he is retired now, but he's an older gentleman who has been doing this for 20, 30 years. And everybody in Pittsburgh knows these phrases, smile like a butcher's dog, you know, and and things like that, where I was just enamored with how people react to those those phrases and to that type of language, and also how normalized it is in the sports spaces. And then I started listening to the Dallas ah Stars commentary, and And that's Daryl Razor Ray. And he's very different, right? He's younger than the the gentleman from Pittsburgh.
00:32:46
Speaker
um And he has these Razorisms that he calls them, where he makes up words and just kind of puts them in his vernacular. And I just found it so whimsical.
00:33:00
Speaker
And I didn't expect to find whimsy hockey. Yeah. No, yeah, it has a reputation of just being a bunch of goons on the ice. But when you think about what they do on the ice, it is spectacular feat of coordination and athleticism, what they can do on skates. It really is a spectacular sport. I need to get more into it. As someone who grew up in the Northeast, I should be like a diehard Boston Bruins fan. No, no, no, not the Bruins. Not the Bruins. But now I live in Oregon. So I'm like, I love the Kraken. I love. Kraken. There we go. Yeah. I love that. The fact that they, yeah, that they have the sea monster. Their logo is awesome. The colors are cool. It's just like, all right, I can do this. I can be a Kraken fan.
00:33:49
Speaker
But like but to your point, like as you got into hockey and like I'm sure this is what part of what spurs ah like Black Girl Hockey Club. Like you go in there and there are very few, if any, black athletes and certainly the audience and the fans are predominantly white. And so you're entering that space and be like, oh, maybe perhaps some addressing here to make it feel a bit more inclusive. Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, that was, you know, when I did go to that first game, that was the first thing I noticed. And it's not unusual, right? As a English major in college, I was the only Black person in my cohort. And I was oftentimes the only Black person working as an English teacher at my university. yeah And so I understand with that burden that I have a responsibility to address why i am the only Black person. why you know we're not reading more Black literature, why we're not addressing more Black issues. And so, you know i as ah as a teacher, i would take that opportunity to introduce my students to different types of reading and different types of social issues that perhaps they will not get access to or exposure to until maybe much later in their college careers. And so I don't teach anymore. 2020 kind of ruined it for for me. It was very, very difficult to teach in universities where it became obvious that higher education was not for the students, but it's for the shareholders. um So that that was, it became kind of difficult to teach in that environment.
00:35:42
Speaker
When I you know became in, when I started Black Girl Hockey Club and I became more involved in ice hockey, It was a natural progression for me to talk about issues maybe that other people weren't talking about. And i recognize going into these spaces that I may be the only black person, definitely the only black woman in those spaces. And instead of pretending I'm not or ignoring that fact, I lean into it the way I always have. And I i talk about those uncomfortable you know those uncomfortable topics. We have those uncomfortable conversations. we had Black Girl Hockey Club had a whole campaign called the Get Uncomfortable campaign where we would encourage hockey teams to have these types of conversations, not just with you know me as a Black woman leader in the space, but also amongst themselves when I'm not in the room. Have those conversations. Talk about
00:36:44
Speaker
why you're having such a difficult time finding a Black person to sit on your hockey panel at this conference, or why in you know the C-suites there is only one Black woman who started in 2017.
00:37:00
Speaker
Let's have those conversations and figure out how to fix those systemic issues from the inside out. It hasn't been easy, and it doesn't always work, but it's important to me that folks not forget and pretend perhaps that it's not an issue, that there are you know Black women out there who play hockey, who love hockey, who want to work in hockey or maybe already do, who are
00:37:33
Speaker
vastly underrepresent ah underrepresented when we're talking about the sport. Yeah. And what's so important is just for people to be able to see people who look like them in these positions of power or or on even on the ice for like a little kid be like, oh, I can, oh, ah it it is possible for for me to lace up a pair of skates and and possibly play out there. But when you don't see that representation as someone like myself growing up the way I i grew up as a and Now a middle-aged cisgendered white guy like I see myself everywhere. like Everything's a possibility. But unless you see it out there as someone from a more marginalized community, then it doesn't feel like a possibility. And as a result, things just get like whiter and whiter. And that and that serves nobody except you know the oppressive class, really.
00:38:22
Speaker
And I think what I've tried to do over the years with Black Girl Hockey Club is we start at representation, but we don't stop there because it's great and all to have somebody like me in the room at the board, you know, at the board meetings, sitting around the table. But what are the protections put in place so that I will stay?
00:38:46
Speaker
Right. Are my... Are the microaggressions being addressed? are Is the lack of representation being addressed? Are those systemic issues being addressed? Or am I just a you know a fail stop put in place so that folks won't complain anymore? And do I feel safe? Do I feel like I can use my voice? in those spaces. And so taking representation even further to not just include, you know, this last Olympics, we had Layla Edwards, the first African-American playing for the women's Team USA ever in 2026. But she wasn't the first Black woman to play
00:39:31
Speaker
at that level She was just the first to get picked to be on the Olympic team because people like Blake Bolden and Angela James, who had been playing hockey since the seventy s were overlooked.
00:39:45
Speaker
And they were, at the last minute, pulled off. those teams for whatever reason. And so when we saw Layla having this opportunity that maybe she might be called up to the national Olympic team to play hockey, we didn't let folks forget that she was there. We talked about her for a two years before the Olympics. We interviewed her, we went and supported her when she was playing for her college team or for the national team. And we didn't let hockey forget that she was on the ice and she was damn good at her job. And when she ended up at the Olympics, it it's a whole nother ball game, right? To have her on the ice represented for other little black girls to see somebody like Layla Edwards playing ice hockey at the highest level and then winning gold. yeah
00:40:33
Speaker
That is just amazing. She's now she's not the only black girl to play hockey. We have Sarah Nurse up in Canada. She was the first, you know, eight years ago. But what does that say about ice hockey?
00:40:46
Speaker
The very first happened in this decade. You know, that's that's not progress. That's very, very slow. And so what are we doing to keep folks like Sarah and Layla in ice hockey? What are we doing to retain those little Black girls who have now decided hockey is something they want to do, but maybe don't get the support at the youth levels and you know as they go through? Folks...
00:41:14
Speaker
folks the kids, the black kids learn to play and then what? Right? There's a whole NHL program called learn to play. And I always think, you know, and then what? They learn, they love it. And then they encounter systems that don't want them there. So what are we doing to help combat that?
Addressing Systemic Issues and Community Building in Hockey
00:41:35
Speaker
And that's what Black Girl Hockey Club is all about. That's what my book is all about. How are we combating those systems from the inside out?
00:41:46
Speaker
yeah it's ah Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, you get that, um yeah, the learn how to play and then it's like, okay, well well then what? you know Gear is expensive, travel is expensive. So it's like, how do you make that accessible? So yeah, you do have the retention once you have representation. The more retention, the more representation, the more retention, like it kind of, you can see it. a Yeah, you can see it really blowing up from there. so you know from From your vantage point, what do you feel is key and integral to that retention that is yeah so desperately needed?
00:42:22
Speaker
Honestly, i think addressing the fact that there's low retention. Starting there, being honest, saying we've not been so great at this over the last few years, but we're we're acknowledging that fact and we're going to be better. Talking about you know doing research that addresses you know where what are the demographics of ice hockey at the youth level? Why are there no Black girls playing ice hockey at the youth level? Why are there no Black women on our board of directors or in our our executive positions?
00:43:02
Speaker
making sure that the lack of representation is addressed and those disparities are addressed and talking about them, I think that's where we need to, that that's the only place to start because hopping in and saying, okay, well, the USA is now, you know, we're we're free of racism because Layla Edwards is on Team USA and look at, you know, we had Barack Obama as our president. So we're post we're a post-racism society. That's,
00:43:31
Speaker
not helpful for anybody, not for white folks, not for black folks and everybody in between. it We need to address the disparities and talk about white supremacy in these spaces in order to overcome and to move forward, I believe. Yeah, well especially in this political climate as well, you know, DAI just totally rolled back under attack if it's even still in place with certain companies, which is all the more just like Google what's ah still available, like who still has the I and like support those companies and like eschew the other ones because we are in capitalism and that like that's what seems to drive as the primary driver. Right. And you write about that in the book as well. um But yeah, just in this particular climate, it's just in the work that you're doing, it's just what, you know, what are you seeing and what are the challenges in place given the such rollback and attack on DEI and this, you know, um on what we hope to be more inclusive?
00:44:35
Speaker
I find it's challenging to focus outward, right? If I start thinking about who doesn't support us, who's not calling anymore, who's not inviting us places, i i get worried and I start thinking, oh my gosh, the world is against us, right? And so I flipped that kind of way of thinking and now I'm focused inward.
00:45:00
Speaker
Black Girl Hockey Club is focused inward and we have been for the past couple years, you know focusing on how we we can retain folks and how we can make folks feel comfortable and safe in our space. and create room for supporters and allies and Black women in hockey spaces and go from there. Because honestly, i am not trying to force my values on any individual.
00:45:32
Speaker
um That's not what Black Girl Hockey Club is about. Black Girl Hockey Club is about making sure that Black folks and our friends and our families and our allies have a space when and where we want it because we deserve it. We are good at the sport. We spend our money in the sport and our time and our energy in the sport.
00:45:52
Speaker
Why not gain that same recognition and acknowledgement as everybody else? So that's what Black Girl Hockey Club has done. Instead of worrying about who doesn't like us, because that would be a plethora of folks. yeah We're worried about how we make Black women in hockey spaces feel safe, feel comfortable and feel seen. Yeah. ah There's a moment in the book that I that i really appreciated when you, you offering scholarships to people or just, you know, just, yeah, just scholarships, be it for, you know, gear enrollment, whatever it might be.
00:46:25
Speaker
And, you know, you specifically write that, know, you know Even if you're ready to give up the game, like it's okay. like you you know You don't have to feel beholden to it, ah but you're always a part of Black Girl Hockey Club, whether you choose to keep going or you maybe you do drop out at 13 because you're just you're done with it, or you keep playing to your middle age because you just love playing rec league hockey or something. In either case, like you're still a part of the part of the family. and I kind of like that ethos that taking the pressure off of it for someone who might be on the receiving end of a really great gift.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, hockey is all about pressure. It's all about be being under pressure and continuing to perform. And i think in within Black Girl Hockey Club, I've seen even our players, there's pressure all around them. We're not going to add to that pressure, right? say you have to play and we want to see you in the Olympics, which we do.
00:47:23
Speaker
But I always say we will support you playing hockey as long as you want to play hockey. And one of our scholarship girls from Canada, actually her picture is in the book. Her name is Paika. And she played hockey, you know, all through high school. And she's, she got a scholarship. I met her when I went up to Toronto, she got to meet Sarah nurse and hold her gold medal. at One of our events.
00:47:52
Speaker
And i was up in Canada. I want to say it was January 2024. And she was in her first year of college, I believe, and she wasn't playing hockey anymore. And it kind of made me a little, you know, feel a little bit of a way. I was kind of sad, like she's so good. She loved the game so much. She, you know, she had all this potential. But as I'm talking to her, the reason I got to see her was because I reached out and she wanted to volunteer at one of our events. And so she came out she volunteered and she talked to people about Black Girl Hockey Club All the while, she doesn't even play hockey anymore. And I thought it was real testament to the power of Black Girl Hockey Club and the community that we have been building there, that while she's not involved in the sport in the same way, she still loves it. She still loves the community and she wants to encourage other folks to to be part of it. And that's really all I want as you know, the self-proclaimed auntie of all these girls that are but um my my little Black Girl Hockey Club scholarship winners, I want them to feel that they have a space in the sport, even if they're not, you know, playing or spending money, right? That they still can come and feel safe and comfortable and have a good time and be loved on and recognize
00:49:21
Speaker
for who they are in this space. Cause I don't think that happens a lot in hockey for them. And so we're going to keep that going as long as they want to be part of it. We're going to keep it going. Yeah. Did you get a sense of, what of why she gave up playing?
00:49:38
Speaker
You know, I think it's ah for women in hockey, it's different for than for the guys because there aren't a lot of opportunities. If you're not at a school that has a hockey team, first of all, college, you're not going to be playing hockey. if you Even if you do are at a school that plays hockey, you know, we think of Layla Edwards again, the Olympian. She was at Wisconsin. She played on the Badgers hockey team, very famous hockey. called women's hockey team at the college level. If she had not gone up into, you know, the national team, she would have stopped there.
00:50:16
Speaker
Right. So there's not a lot of opportunities. The PWHL exists um now and the players are getting paid fairly decently.
Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Hockey
00:50:26
Speaker
But 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. I mean, even in the 2018 Olympics, our women's national team boycotted at first because they weren't getting the same treatment as the men's team. They were having to pay for things that the men weren't having to pay for. They were getting paid much, much less, and they still are. But when they boycotted and told the national, you know, the the IOC that they were serious, they got a little bit of leeway and then they went to go ahead and win, you know, win gold. um So, you know, I do think that.
00:51:04
Speaker
It's important to allow these women to kind of take the lead on where they want their careers to go, because I think as especially, you know, for Paika and other girls that are in college right now, it's very clear that there aren't a lot of sports opportunities like to be an athlete unless you're going to jump.
00:51:25
Speaker
to the professional level, right? It's different for guys than it is for girls. And so it's funny because if you look at the PWHL and at the olymp you know the Olympic teams, these women are not just hockey players, they're doctors, they're teachers, they're social workers because they had to go get a real career and get a real education and get that degree in order to survive. and Hockey is something that they do for fun. and because they're passionate, because they love the game, and they're damn good at it. But it was never something that they thought was going to pay the bills. yeah And so that's different, I think, for men and women. And so when I see somebody like Paika, you know, deciding that she doesn't want to try to pursue to be a professional PWHL player, I'm not surprised, and nor am I upset about it, because there's not...
00:52:19
Speaker
I mean, it's a one in a million gig, right, to get to the to this big show. It's not going to happen for everybody. And so I think women have had to be a little more realistic about their goals in professional hockey because of the lack of opportunity.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah. And ah there's a moment in the book, too, that I really love and found just, you know, ah very illuminating. And to your point earlier about like, yeah, there have been, you know, black women playing hockey for, you know, a while. They just haven't gotten the right attention. And then you go back to Herb Carnegie, you know, one of the one of the better hockey players going back to the 1930s. And, you know, let me see where where's my nose? Yeah. Con Smythe, of which there's a trophy named after him in the nhl But he was like, you know, Smythe famously said that he would pay $10,000 if someone could make Herb white, an acknowledgement that while Herb's playing was excellent, the color of his skin made it so hockey would not accept him. I just found that. It's just so, like, emblematic of the times. was so tragic that here was someone who had that the skill that he so desperately craved, but because he was...
00:53:28
Speaker
ah You know, a black man, he's just like, ah you know, sorry, shit out of luck. You know I'd rather rather not invite you onto the ice than spend the ten thousand dollars to you know pay you equitably to make my team better.
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah. And i I look at like who the, you know, I look at black players now and and I'll talk about the men more because I feel like the women have a little more freedom in like social freedom to be who they want to be in their league. You know, we've got out, you know, queer women who are out and proud in the league. They've got a handful of black women playing in the league as well. um But the men's league is so,
00:54:08
Speaker
hegemonic, right? Like it's, everybody's the same. And you would think after however many hundred years of the National Hockey League, that there would be one queer player who has come out, but there's not, you know, i look at the men's league and I think that this is not, hockey has not created a safe space for these men.
00:54:30
Speaker
You know, patriarchy is is ruining it for them. They're not allowed necessarily to be who they really are. And it's probably been groomed into them since they were kids that, you know, this is the way that hockey is. right And so I look at the men and I think,
00:54:51
Speaker
you know i look at the Black men in hockey and I think, you know who would you be if you were given the freedom to express yourself a little more authentically? you know i And we compare, say, Subban to some of the men in the and NBA and the way that they express themselves and how they've they've been given that freedom to be a little more culturally ah
00:55:22
Speaker
and socially kind of free to to do what they want to do. And folks like PK, folks like Ryan Reeves, um you know some of our are Black male players, they just don't have that freedom. um And so I i wish that for them. I wish that for them that they would ah be able to be more authentic in who they they want to be and also be able to have that same space in hockey. But i even in 2026, I believe that that's a disparate concept. there's There's cognitive dissonance there where they are not actually allowed to be fully you know who they want to be. There's a story in the book about ah Joel Ward and how he had to assimilate and he he didn't have anybody to cut his hair when he was a billet when he was billeting in hockey and you know having to really up upend his life as a young black man ah and kind of plop into hockey culture and assimilate. And so that's one thing that I always wish for for the men is to be able just to be a little more authentic. And for the women, ah all obviously as well. But I feel that women's sports are a little, i mean, we're girls, we love each other. We just want the best for each other. you know It's a little more authentic, a little more open and accepting than men's sports have historically been. And so we see you know at the Olympics, our captain, Hillary Knight,
00:56:58
Speaker
from Seattle, ah the Seattle Torrent, proposing to her girlfriend publicly, you know, and sharing that with audiences and being her authentic self in in that space. And I just want that for for the guys. and Let's queer up hockey a little bit, you know.
00:57:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. The women's sports are just so much more socially conscious and progressive. It's like for some, i just I find that so refreshing in that regard in that there's no. you know They're not hiding who they are. They're not necessarily you know code switching to such a high degree that the the more professionalized men's sports are. And I'm sure they that's what you notice too with the with the the black hockey players. You're like wanting them to be more authentically themselves. They're like in this world that they probably don't feel comfortable you know expressing themselves to their fullest personality. Yeah.
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's um I think it's changing with the younger generation. yeah but but hockey doesn't want to to change. And I think, you know, to your point of DEI and the shifts in the states around that particular concept, we see hockey reverting back to, you know, good old days and and not wanting to push through and be, you know, against, go against the grain and go against the administration and go against the status quo. And i don't know if it's because it's easier or because it's what's really wanted or because it's, you know, financially more ah sound to be that way.
00:58:45
Speaker
But it is, as a hockey fan, it's frustrating to see particularly the nhl kind of regress a bit and, and change their policies from being more open to, to being even less obviously supportive of marginalized groups. yeah And Black Girl Hockey Club has definitely felt that impact. But again, i don't worry about who we're not touching and who we're not affecting focus more on who is supporting our work and who does want to see us succeed. Yeah. And how have, since, since it's founding, how have you seen it, especially as you focus, you know, on what you can control and focusing inward, know, in the hopes that it, you know, spreads from there, you know, where do you see it going, you know, from here onward?
Allies and Local Efforts for Inclusivity in Hockey
00:59:38
Speaker
You know, i have been pleasantly surprised to find, co-conspirators within hockey spaces. There are, you know, podcasters, journalists, C-suite executives, ticket distributors who are,
00:59:58
Speaker
fighting for a change within the space that they hold. And in the book, I talk about, you know, not being able to, that you can only control what you can control. You can affect change in the space that you occupy and not to think too big, right? Like I'm a, I'm a big picture person, but I also recognize that that is not always healthy mentally to worry about this estate of the global world and every billion person that's in it when I can only affect, you know, the handful of people whose lives I touch. And so I think that meeting folks in hockey who are
01:00:41
Speaker
adamant about progressing the sport and focusing on what we can do together, that's my bread and butter. You know, finding folks in individual hockey clubs, folks that do work in those C-suites at the NHL, who do want to affect change. Those are the folks that I love to work with because we come together and we decide how we're going to architect a moment or a space for Black folks in hockey. And that's where we have to put our energy because if we think, you know how are we going to change the entirety of ice hockey?
01:01:24
Speaker
It's just ah an impossible uphill battle. But if I think, you know, what can I do for black girls in Toronto post hockey season? that's a little bit more tangible. That's a little bit easier to, to focus on for me anyways. Yeah. And from reading the book, you know, you get a sense that, that Pittsburgh is doing things, doing things well. Who are some other teams that, that you're admiring that are starting to, you know, adopt these ideas to be more inclusive?
01:01:55
Speaker
You know what? I'm in California and I live about 15, 20 minutes away from, from AHL team, which is you know, the American Hockey League. So it's one underneath the and NHL. i live i live about 20 minutes away from one of their arenas, the Ontario Reign. And they're the feeder team for the Los Angeles Kings. And I have been so pleasantly surprised in the last couple of years as I've tried to cultivate community in my city, in my, you know, where I live, because Black Girl Hockey Club is an international organization.
01:02:30
Speaker
We've got scholarship winners in Kenya in Canada, in Texas, in London. i mean, they're all over the world, Black girls playing hockey. But I, in the last couple of years, have been really trying to focus in California, if where I live, and what can I do in this space? And the Ontario Reign have Pleasant has has been a pleasant surprise because they have supported us. They have, you know, invited us to their arena. They have donated to our scholarship fund and really shown that they're a club. that wants to be progressive. And and even when you go to their games and their arenas, it's so much more diverse, even than a Kings game, which is just, you know, half or an hour down the highway from me. And so I've been really pleasantly surprised with the rain, but also other AHL teams as well. I feel like that maybe they don't have as many eyes on them and as many restrictions as the National Hockey League. And so they've got a little more wiggle room to connect with the community and to connect with the specific communities that they sit in in order to affect change. I've mentioned you know the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Los Angeles Kings are do a great job Working with their community.
01:03:58
Speaker
i will say in the last year, it's been a little quiet on the the National Hockey League front. um And I don't press, you know, if they've they they got to figure out what they're doing before we get involved, because I want to make sure. that if Black Girl Hockey Club is involved with a club, that every single person and under the that umbrella is, I feel like they're my responsibility. I don't want them to feel unsafe or unwelcome in a space. And so just because we're invited or just because, you know, the team talks about us does not mean necessarily that they are um a space where my girls and my my crew will feel safe and comfortable. And so I want to make sure that any time are connecting with a hockey team in particular, that they're aware of those discrepancies. yeah And they're aware that when we walk into the arena, we might be the only black women there. So how are you making sure that we feel safe and secure in that space? And there's a lot of great people that work in hockey, you know, from Tracy McCants-Lewis in the Pittsburgh Penguins to Miss Kim Davis, the VP of the National Hockey League. um So, you know, I'm not so worried about the teams in particular. i look at the individuals and who in those spaces is willing to go against the status quo a little bit.
01:05:28
Speaker
Nice. oh wonderful, Renee. Well, as bring these conversations down for a landing, um I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners, just like anything you're finding fun and cool that you want to share with them. And so I would just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing.
01:05:44
Speaker
Okay. Anything fun and cool that I want to share? i am currently, well, I told you I was reading Octavia Butler book, but for funsies, I've been reading an author called Hafsa Faisal. She is a writer who does, I want to say it's like YA kind of sci-fi fiction. um It's a book with a map. Okay. There's a map in the front where there's a map I'm into it. Uh, And so I've been reading a bunch of Hafsa Faisal. I had one of her books. It took me two years to read it because I would only read it on airplanes.
01:06:25
Speaker
I don't know why it was my airport book. And so the last trip I went to, I just sat down and I finished the whole thing because I bought
Book Recommendations and Reading Experiences
01:06:33
Speaker
her second book. And I was like, okay, I'm going to finish this one much faster than two years. And then I open it and it's double the pages. It's like 600 pages. so hopefully it's not going to take me four years to finish it. But I love a series and Hafsa Faisal is one of my my new favorites.
01:06:49
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. Well, Renee, it's so great to talk some shop with you and and get to talk about your incredibly illuminating and very important book. I'm so glad i I read it and will continue to reference it indefinitely. So just thank you so much for the work you're doing and for for writing the book. I really appreciate the the time and the work you put in.
01:07:08
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Brendan. It's been a great time chatting with you.
01:07:17
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Pretty cool, huh? Right before this, I ate like a little too much pasta. The curse. The curse. I can't control the volume of food I eat.
01:07:35
Speaker
I have a really weird relationship to food. Name of the book again is Blackness is a Gift I Can Give Her. Be sure to follow the show on the socials at Creative Nonfiction Podcast and check out the show notes and stuff at brendanabar.com.
01:07:51
Speaker
And don't forget about the live event on April 18th, 1 p.m. Gratitude Brewing for Lydia Yuknovich, RSVP, with a free ticket. a Link in the show notes and also link in bio of at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram.
01:08:07
Speaker
right, so it's been a little over a week since the latest latest proposal was turned down and a little over a week since my agent wanted to talk and we still haven't talked. So naturally, I've been in my head for the better part of 10 days or so. It's always a fun place to be.
01:08:23
Speaker
It'd be a mistake to give up on the book, I think. now Maybe the timing isn't right, or maybe the framing is wrong. That's way you like do about that. I think a good idea is to and i'll keep like pecking away at it.
01:08:38
Speaker
yeah Maybe not keep pecking away at it with the fury of a rabbit during mating season, but more of a marathon-like cadence. Maybe even like... ah Just do like five to ten articles a day, file them away interview one or two people a week.
01:08:57
Speaker
Maybe keep reporting it out, almost like a side hustle, though I feel like my whole life is a side hustle. I want a front hustle, man. Thing is, if I keep tortoising it, the shape might reveal itself, or maybe something more revelatory will surface, like Sasquatch. I believe, damn it.
01:09:15
Speaker
The problem with the tortoise approach is getting scooped. Then it will have all been for naught. In the meantime, what else? I can pitch a few features to bigger media outlets that will help bolster the platform, which will make me more attractive as an investment to a publisher. Make no mistake, they see you as an investment more than the curator of good taste.
01:09:40
Speaker
I'm increasingly clear-eyed about this tonight dynamic when I look at, let's say, the movie business. you know Filmmakers who make a splash and make the studio a lot of money get a longer leash and bigger budgets for subsequent projects, which then they put a lot of their institutional backing behind, which makes the movie already a draw, which makes them more successful, and then they can get that longer leash...
01:10:05
Speaker
You know, and you see this flywheel spin and spin and spin. Take, for instance, Christopher Nolan.
01:10:14
Speaker
I'm still confused at how he landed such high-profile gigs break really early on in his career, but let's table that for a second. That's a conversation for another day. i believe he had come up with the idea for Inception, his mind-bendy dream heist movie from 2010, like many years before that.
01:10:33
Speaker
But he knew he couldn't get it made. He didn't quite have the clout to pull it off. If he ever would yeah gain the clout to pull it off. Too high concept, too expensive.
01:10:44
Speaker
So he made some great movies like The Prestige, which I think is maybe his best movie. One of his best for sure. An underrated one. Memento, Insomnia, and of course, yeah Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
01:10:58
Speaker
And Dark Knight came out in 2008. After The Dark Knight and the fact that it sort of reinvented what superhero movies can be and in making upwards of a billion dollars worldwide, he could then finally pitch Inception and make it make that dream a reality.
01:11:18
Speaker
So like he had Inception as an idea in the drawer for a long time for the timing to be right. So I guess the same can be true for books. Like maybe you do have to feel out the market a little bit. Maybe you do have to make the publisher, your publishers is a few bucks. then Then you get the longer leash to sell the thing that was tabled or outright rejected. It's amazing how much better an idea gets the more bankable a commodity you are as an artist.
01:11:44
Speaker
You see this with actors, too, like many who break through and they make a few bucks in a superhero franchise or something. ah Then they pursue the acting that really tokes their joint. I think of Chris Evans doing Snowpiercer or Knives Out only after he had made generational wealth as Captain America.
01:12:04
Speaker
So there is this element of selling out, which is not exactly baked into my DNA as a 1990s kid. um That makes it possible to then do the work you really want to do, which isn't to say that doing something more commercial can't be fun, but we can always marry our passions with our talent and rigor.
01:12:24
Speaker
to the market. Sometimes you do work to build up your standing and level up your visibility, draw good attention to your platform. yeah And once you lower the odds of the risk on you, suddenly the publishers will be betting the house on you, one hopes.
01:12:44
Speaker
Take, for instance, the forthcoming release of Patrick Radden, Keith's new book. He won't be coming on the podcast. He told me he's not doing the podcast rounds. He prints money for the publisher, and the publisher then pumps more of the marketing budget on his work, which is like betting a horse at one to five odds.
01:13:01
Speaker
It's a chalk-eating weasel kind of bet, but it's the kind of bet that keeps people employed. Keith doesn't need that marketing heft at this point, right? i mean, he's just... He can just do it.
01:13:14
Speaker
ah But 20 other authors of the imprint sure as hell could use some of that help, but ah they are longer odds and not as a sure thing. ah But in theory, if you threw some of the money at, like, take it away from the known quantity and give it to 20 other people, like, maybe you can make five more stars out of that 20 stable, you know?
01:13:34
Speaker
I don't know. That's how i think about it. But again, people are very averse to risk. Understandably so, I guess. All of this is to say, investing in the right kind of platform building makes saying yes to you far less risky.
01:13:48
Speaker
That might mean tabling a book for the right moment while you work on some other things that draw attention to you in good ways, like I said a moment ago. All of this is to say... It's not linear and it's messy and you try new things.
01:14:01
Speaker
And you don't give up just because someone said no. There's a tendency to play it safe. And to give up too soon. Sometimes we stay in it too late, but now oftentimes give up too soon.
01:14:13
Speaker
And for one, I live in constant fear of future regret. Like i can see myself on my deathbed surrounded by nobody except maybe like ah you know a nurse who's like, ah when do we get to turn this bed over?
01:14:28
Speaker
Or like robots maybe by then. But either way, it's going to be a dispassionate person who doesn't give a shit. I can just see myself here like, damn it. It's too late now. I should have done the thing.
01:14:40
Speaker
And I live in fear of that moment. Big time. And I'm more scared of that than actual death itself, than actual mortality. That feeling right before I die. Or even like when I know like I'm probably going to die in a month because I think you have an idea. And the morphine drip is coming and you're you're like, ah shit.
01:15:02
Speaker
Should have done it. Can't do it anymore. What did I even leave behind? This isn't scripted, by the way. I'm getting back to my script right now. So that extends beyond my writing into other areas as well. So you go to events, you go to the conference, you have fuck around with new technology. Maybe you take a goddamn break from it all.
01:15:21
Speaker
And then, for for the love of God, don't get into the comparison game. Man, that's a miserable way to live, speaking from experience.
01:15:32
Speaker
You know, maybe go cheer someone on. I don't know. You kind of caught me in a more buoyant mood today, believe it or not. So let's quit while the going's good, all right? Let's quit while I'm ahead. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview, because I can feel myself starting to crater. See ya. See