Complicated Conversations with Mary Adkins: Privilege

In Complicated Conversations, we add authors as creators into our discussion about complicated women, digging into their first-hand experiences, process and passion in bringing these women to life.

** Carinn and Kate discuss words of wisdom shared by Mary Adkins' 7th grade English teacher -- “Remember, the arc was built by amateurs and the Titanic was built by professionals” -- and what that meant to us. (00:49)

** Privilege is the story of three very different women, Annie, Bea and Stayja, whose lives intersect unexpectedly when Annie accuses a classmate of sexual assault. (7:05)

** Mary Adkins shares her excitement and anxiety surrounding the publication of her second novel - and we love that she obsessively refreshes the Amazon reviews. (7:35)

*** Kate and Carinn unpack these three complicated young women in their own words then discuss Mary’s relationship with them, and more importantly, how she approached the issue of sexual assault from a nuanced and multi-faceted perspective. (9:20)

*** In true complicated woman style, we chat about how Mary’s second novel is a radical departure from her first, which was an epistolary novel more in the rom-com genre, and how she made the decision to go in a new direction here. (18:33)

*** We deep dive into the duality in Mary herself and her own inner conflict around art and law, which both of us relate to deeply as lawyers. We’re glad Mary hasn’t dropped it all to become a public defender! (23:57).

*** We love the complicated female characters we analyze on the podcast because they are flawed so we asked Mary to share a certain failure that ended up being a course correction or crossroads for her. It ends with karaoke! (27: 51)

*** We asked Mary about a complicated woman that inspired her and she shared words of wisdom from her 7th grade English teacher. (35:09) 

*** In the book Annie googles Tyler and finds out about his life, including this line we couldn’t ignore, “He was a Pisces but didn’t believe in astrology.” Mary shares her sun, moon and rising sign and we dish on our mutual love of astrology, as well as some Meyers-Briggs letters. (37:51).

*** There are so many lawyers turned authors and Mary thinks the ability to sit and immerse in words (reading or writing) like lawyers and law students prepared her to churn out material as a writer. (42:02)

*** Mary shares the challenges of writing while being a new mom and how midway through her process the #metoo movement caused her to reshape her story. (45:35)

*** We dish on country music and the reality TV stars in Nashville, where Mary now lives with her family. (53:25) 

Stay Complicated!

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