Jeff Oloizia: Hey there! Welcome to Writing Forward, a conversation show featuring some of the best and brightest voices from across Wisconsin. I'm Jeff Aloisia, I'm a former editor at the New York Times, a Milwaukee suburbs native, and now I'm a freelance writer based in Madison. Each week I sit down with writers from and connected to my home state for candid, sometimes messy conversations about craft, identity, and what it means to build a writing life rooted at home and away from the traditional centers of the literary world. From fiction to nonfiction, poetry to journalism, we dig into what keeps Wisconsin writers moving forward, one word at a time. My guest today is Christina Clancy. Christina is the best-selling author of three novels: The Second Home, Shoulder Season, and most recently The Snowbirds, about a sputtering middle-aged couple who travel from Wisconsin to Palm Springs for a change of scenery, only for their relationship to be tested when one of them goes missing. Christina's novels have been featured in People, Good Morning America, CNN, and Travel and Leisure, and her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun, and elsewhere. Raised in Milwaukee, Christina graduated from the University of Minnesota and worked at IBM before earning a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She later taught English at Bloyd College before turning to writing full-time. Though her novels often explore reinvention, relationships, and the push and pull between leaving home and staying connected, her work also touches on something deeper. The stories we inherit and the ones we try to reshape or outgrow. Christina Clancy, welcome to writing for. Thank you, Jeff. I'm gonna borrow that copy and put it on my website. That's great. Thank you. I wish that we were doing this over a cocktail, but we are speaking via video chat because you are in Palm Springs right now, but you also moved to Chicago. I know, and I'm I I kinda left in the dark of night. I feel like I snuck out of Madison because we didn't really want to leave. It was just this opportunity we had to give Chicago a try. So ⁓ we used to live there and a friend of ours was ⁓ selling his building. So We'll try. We might be back in Madison. Who knows? I think of myself as a Wisconsinite. We didn't let you get too far away. It's fine. There's so much first of all, ⁓ Christy, I'm gonna call you Christy because it's more natural for me. There's so much I wanna get into, but before I do that, we begin every episode of the show by asking our guests to share a brief passage from someone else's writing, be it a novel, poem, essay, or article that for them evokes Wisconsin in some memorable way. What did you choose? And can you read it for us, please? Sure. Well, when you asked me this question, the very first thing that came to mind was a poem by Lorraine Nedeker. I actually make a very small reference to this in my book, Shoulder Season, because Lorraine Nedeker is from Fort Atkinson. She's just an incredible poet. It's called What Horror to Awake at Night. What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light. Time is white. Mosquitoes bite. I've spent my life on nothing. The thought that stings. How are you nothing sitting around with something's wife? Buzz and burn is all I learn. I've spent my life on nothing. I'm pillowed and padded, pale and puffing, lifting household stuffing, carpets, dishes, benches, fishes. I've spent my life on nothing. That's lovely. Lorraine Nedeker, obviously one of our great Wisconsin State poets. You mentioned that you love her poetry. What what else made you choose that piece? Well, when I was teaching at Beloit College, there was a semester where they did a whole celebration of Lorraine Nedaker and they would go visit her house in Fort Atkinson. She lived on Black Hawk Island, which is it's kind of remote. And her parents ran like an inn there, and her dad was a carp. I don't know, there's a phrase for the kind of work he did with carp. That I'd never seen this word before. I wish I had it memorized. Carp like the fish? Carp, yeah. But she was an incredible poet. And she went to school at Bloyd College for two years. And then she had to leave, probably because her dad couldn't afford to pay tuition. Her mom was going deaf. She had to take care of her mom. So she went back and ended up spending most of the rest of her life in Fort Atkinson. And I feel like there's a push-pull you were talking about when you introduced me. To living in Wisconsin and it's evoked here this idea of like, what does it mean to stay at home? What does it mean to have a life that's worth something? Do you have to go somewhere else for that? Can you find that kind of meaning right where you are? I also find her really interesting because she was introduced to this idea that when you're writing, you don't necessarily have to write about an emotion, but you can write about an object that evokes that emotion. And here you can see that. playing out where she's thinking about a mosquito, you know, and that's that thought that I buzz, I burn, you know, and then when you think about just what a mosquito is, what it represents to you as a person, like you don't think about a mosquito in a comfortable way. They're like niggles through your screen, it wakes you up at night, you know, pokes its head in you and makes you itch. And so I just felt like it was so wonderfully evoked here. And the the melody here is just so gorgeous. Well, you teed our conversation up perfectly. I can also tell that you were a creative writing and and literature teacher in the way that you sort of broke that down. I don't usually do this, but I I sort of want to start our conversation at the beginning. You were raised in Milwaukee. I believe you were born in Denver, is that right? Mm-hmm. But you were raised in Milwaukee. What were you like as a kid? Who was Christy Clancy, the child? ⁓ I love that question. I was really spacey, Jeff. Everyone teased me that I was a space cadet. I was a daydreamer. I had my head in the clouds. People were always like, Christy, Christy, you know, I just never paid attention. I always was reading books. But I remember when I was 20 years old, no, 19, because I was at in college. I was at the University of Minnesota. And I was walking across the quad. And all of a sudden I had this feeling like I woke up. Like I wasn't spacey anymore. Like this this veil was lifted. It was so weird. And I swear it like has something to do with, you know, how they say your frontal cortex keeps developing. It felt neurological. Like it was just so weird. I'm still a little bit spacey, but I was so spacey before. And I think my spaciness really contributed to my work as a writer. You know, I think I being spacey you'd think means you're not observant, but I think I was like incredibly observant. I was seeing things and then I just think about them. A lot more than most people do. You know, I and I like to fantasize and imagine things and nothing was ever as it seemed to me. So that's kind of what I was like as a kid. What kinds of books were you reading as a kid? Well, my very favorite books when I was a a young kid were Edgar Eager books, which not everybody remembers Edgar Eager. Edgar Eager wrote about kids who find magic. And what happens when they get transported into other worlds. I love any book that sounds like you're going through some sort of portal into something, a that's totally different than what you would think. My favorite one was Magic by the Lake. And then it was funny, I was thinking about Edgar Eager a lot when my first book came out because there's this book he wrote called Half Magic, where kids find half a magic coin and they only get half their wish. So they have to try to find the other magic half of the magic coin to make their wish full. And when my first book came out, it was like I got my wish, but it was only half a wish because it was COVID and so nothing, I couldn't do all the things I wanted to do when my book came out. So it's funny how that book reverberated all those years later. But I also loved trashy books. Like I loved Harlequin romances. I love Danielle Steele. I love The Thornbirds. I love BC Andrews. I love Judy Bloom. Like I kept a copy of Wifey between my mattress and Buck Springs, so my mom wouldn't see it. Like I loved all those anything that was like about romance or love, I loved. ⁓ and then I and then I got into better books as I got older. Do you still have that sort of divide in your reading practice? Do you still read romance, for example? No, I don't read any romance really. Isn't that funny? I ⁓ like I will, like if a friend has a romance book and they want me to read it, I'll I'll read it. And I usually like it. But I'd say when I'm I lean towards literary fiction. I I really like reading things for the sentences. So I find th myself reading books that tend to be like a lot darker. I really like a dark humor when I can find it in a novel, but I don't read romances. I think maybe I'm all jaded now, like life has just done its job. I fe I feel that too. I don't care about romance anymore. Like doing that for the younger people. And did you always want to be a writer or did that come later? I don't think I had the confidence to think that I would be a writer when I was young, but I loved reading. I mean, I just always was reading. So I've always felt, and I think my mom really kind of instilled in this in me that I have an aesthetic and that I I can like like things and that my taste can be unique and it can define me in ways. And so I think that in writing, I remember I had this feeling sometimes I'd go to the library and I'd see all the books and I'd think the book I want to read, I could write it, but it isn't written yet. And then just that thought, that niggling thought, would give me the idea that maybe I could write that. And then I had a boyfriend when I was in ⁓ college and he really suggested to me that I should write and that I had talent as a writer. And I think that was really nice to have that validation from somebody else. And I think that helped me consider actually doing it. But still even to start writing as a serious writer. You know, and I was in college, I got one of the first Macs, the, you know, those boxes. And I I remember I'd sit at it and I'd put my hands in the air like I was Beethoven about to compose something. And then like nothing would happen when I'd put them down. Cause I just didn't think I had an interesting enough life yet. And I think that's true. You know, sometimes you need a little distance from the experiences you have in order to be able to write about them. And now I feel like I have a lot I can write about. ⁓ it's just like figuring out what to focus on. Well, you had a a a fairly unconventional, sort of nonlinear path to publishing, at least your first novel. You you know, you worked at IBM, you went back for a PhD, you taught for years. Yep. So at what point, I guess, did writing a novel start to feel like a real possibility for you? I didn't want to write a novel. I really resisted it. I was very resentful of the fact that you have to have a novel to have a career really as a writer. Right, right. Because you love short stories. Love short stories. And I don't read them as much now as I used to, but there was a period of my life where I knew every short story writer and I'd go to their readings and and I wrote a lot of short stories. And then I you know, to get my PhD, you have to have a dissertation in creative writing. And the dissertation has to be a novel length manuscript. And so I was like, Well, okay, I'll try this. And I did write a book for that, and it's really bad. It's like about page 200, I realized I needed a plot. And so that was kind of bad. And I didn't have a lot of time to work on it because, you know, it was like the last year of my PhD, and before that, I was so busy doing other work for it, and I had two young kids. So then I finished it, and even though it was a bad book, it's okay. You know, I think I learned a lot about writing a book. It gave me the idea that. As long as I got to the end, I had a book, and then I realized that that's totally not true, that that's just when the work begins. Like Stephen King said, you have to get to page 300 in order to get to page one. And I love that line because that's so true. And then my friend Paul, who's a a good writer friend, he said, you know, sometimes your second book becomes your first book. So I was also my my dissertation was set in Exerbia. And he said, you know, instead of writing about a place you don't love. What if you wrote about a place you do love? And I was like, Well, I love Wellfleet in Cape Cod. That's where my grandparents have retired. It's where I'd spent a lot of time. So I just kind of started picking it that story and, you know, as teaching. So I could only write in the summers and in the winter. So it it took a while to get going with it. And then I went to a writing conference and I met a woman, Janelle Lindsay, who's ⁓ she works in Hollywood and she worked on all these reality TV shows. And she was also working on a novel. And You would think she'd be an unlikely writing partner, but I would send her my chapters and she was great because she knows how you have to have momentum. You know, like what when you are a TV producer, you have a built-in audience and you've got to keep people entertained. And so I remember I'd send her chapters and she's like, Why did you write this chapter? Like, we know the cove is pretty. Like, how is this moving the story forward? And sometimes I think when you write like the most obvious feedback, like I should have figured that out, but You need somebody to point it out to you. After I worked with Janelle long enough, I was like, you know, I have enough for a book here. And I just got really serious about it. I spent two years just putting it together, tearing it apart, putting it back together, and then it became the second home. I think sometimes, you know, screenwriters and poets sometimes make for the most interesting novelists for for separate reasons. You know, the poets bring such a imaginative sense of language, but the screenwriters are so good at dialogue and so good at As you said, sort of moving things along. What made you pursue a PhD rather than an MFA? I loved getting my degree at UW Milwaukee because at the time the professors were so supportive that it's not a competitive environment. You know, everybody wants you to do well. And I think that's unique. I think a lot of, you know, I've heard stories about Iowa that everyone's really competitive with each other. And yes, there's camaraderie and people support each other, but people are there really to advance their own careers. Whereas I felt like at UW Milwaukee, they like you, they they want you to do well. And so everyone encouraged me to get my PhD, which seemed insane. You know, I'd had that job at IBM, I had two young kids, I had to learn a foreign language, which I was terrified about. And then I just decided to do it. And I'm so glad I did, because I really wanted to teach. I like teaching a lot. ⁓ You know, you brought this up. I think most readers don't. understand that often when you are reading somebody's first book, you're reading their, you know, their third or fourth or fifth try at writing a book. So we don't always see the sort of work that goes into it. It's so much work. It's just so much work. And I feel bad for people who are working on novels and they think their novel sucks or that they're bad writers. It's often just that they haven't spent enough time with it. And you have to be willing to throw stuff away. To just completely ditch stuff to make it the the best thing it can be. I actually think in a in a really weird way, my mom is an avid knitter and I grew up watching her knit. And everything I learned about craft, I learned from watching my mom knit because she would be almost done with a sweater and realize that one sleeve was too short or there was a loose stitch or something. And to watch her tear it apart was painful for me. But I remember thinking about that a lot when I'd work on something. And I'm like, I just have to get rid of it. I just have to make it perfect. And that focus on craft and, you know, and having like watching her run her hands over a line of knitting and feel the perfection in the row. Like that's what you want when you write, you know? What an incredible metaphor for revision. Yeah. I did want to ask you about something else that sort of happened before you published your first novel. So in in 2011, you did something that is on a lot of Writer sort of Mount Rushmore, which is that you published a modern love essay in the New York Times. For those who may not have read it, can you tell us about like what that was about? Sure. Well, my very best friend at the time was going through a separation from her husband who had ⁓ walked out on her and it turned out that he was seeing somebody else. So most couples know when one of your friends goes through a breakup, it's it's hard on you. Like you feel it yourself almost as if. And we we had done everything together, like them as a couple and my husband and I as a couple. And then he started coming to my spin class because I was a spin class instructor with his new girlfriend. And it was so hard for me. I just couldn't believe that he was. like in my class. I was like, there's so many other classes to go to. And so the next week when they came, I planned a class around making it really hard for him. And I put her on a really easy bike and him on a hard bike. And I played music about cheaters and cheating. And I'd like stand behind them while I was teaching, which I never usually get off my bike. But I just I wanted to make it really hard. And at the end Well, I don't want to give away the essay in case people read read it, but I've had this feeling while I was sitting on the bike. I was like, I know this is a story right now. And I didn't create that situation in order to make the story, but I could just feel the story happening. And I just that was one of the essays. I just sat down and it just like flowed out of me. And then I finished it and I was went for a walk and I found a lucky penny. And I was like, I'm gonna send this to the New York Times because I found a lucky penny. And I sent it, and then like a day later. The editor sent me an email and said, I'd like to talk to you about your essay. And I was so excited about it. It's like, well, he just wants to talk to me about it. I don't know that it'll actually come out. But it's really interesting. He said, like, so many stories are really sad where they're about cancer. And he's like, I very rarely get kind of a funny story. And I've never had a he said he had to go back and look. He'd never had a story set in a spin room. So it's like nice to know that they look for novelty when they're working on deciding on what to publish. And then he I was so excited. And then, you know, you you can't write about people who aren't real. Like you have to get their approval. And I was like, there is no way this guy's ever gonna let me publish this. But we agreed we could call him Mr. Spin Class Kisser. And ⁓ and then we the pronouns in the in this piece I think are a little bit clunky, but they just have to be that way because I don't I would never wanna evoke him by name. And The essay was hugely popular. It's been syndicated. They did a podcast later on to follow up on what happened with Modern Love Stories. But I never really enjoyed having that essay published, to be honest. You know, even though it's like the holy grail for writers and it's fun to have that audience. And I got permission from my friend to publish it. I just always felt a little bit like, I don't know, like I was kind of maybe throwing them under the bus. And then after it came out, like two years later, my friend Paul, who I mentioned earlier, He was like, Christy, your writing has sucked ever since you've had that essay in the New York Times. And I said, Why? He said, You're so afraid of hurting someone's feelings. ⁓ you got The guy who I wrote about read the essay and he felt really bad about it. And I felt terrible. And I I just didn't think he'd even read it. Like, I didn't think he'd see it. I don't know. I was so naive. ⁓ but it taught me a lot about with writing that was my story. It was my truth. It was how I experienced it. And sometimes It's okay to do that. Sometimes it's not okay, but you have to think a lot about who you're writing about and and using real people. That's a great lesson to take away from that. For some, I'm sure that the day you publish anything is like the best day of your life. But I find it's incredibly vulnerable feeling and revealing to ⁓ to have anything out there in the world. So especially something that like has ⁓ sort of personal stories about other people, you're never sort of never gonna be more exposed than when that happens. It's such a weird thing being a writer, because sometimes you want to be a writer because you want your way of experiencing the world and your ideas to matter to somebody else. And so that's really great. Like I think that's why most people want to be a writer. But then you also wonder, like, why do I need to share this experience? And people don't know me. Like my third book, everyone thinks that that's me as a character, just because it mirrors a lot of things in my life. But they're really like in my mind, the characters are really made up. And I I sometimes thought, why do I put myself out there like Why would I want people to think that that's actually me when it's not? You know, why would I make this so close to my real life? But I also think, like again, back to my mom. She is never embarrassed. You know, when we were growing up, we lived in a community in Whitefish Bay where everybody had money and she was a single mom. And I was embarrassed. I didn't want people to drop me off in front of my house to see that we had a small house. I didn't want them to see that our the Ford Fiesta that we drove, you know, because everybody else had like, you know, really nice cars and ⁓ and my mom didn't care about any of that. She she would tell people flat out, like, yeah, I went to the Sarah Lee outlet to get baked goods because that's all we can afford this week, you know, or no, we we couldn't afford any books at the Scholastic Book Fair. We shop for Lee jeans at Sears. And yeah, Christy's jeans smell like tires, but it's what I can afford, you know. And I'd like cringe, but I also was watching and I learned how to not be embarrassed myself. And I think that that helps as a writer. I don't like I I I I worried with that essay that I hurt my friend's feelings, but in general, I don't worry about embarrassing myself by writing about things in my books. The other thing I want to ask you about that experience of having published the Modern Love essay, I think you hear these stories sometimes about people who publish in those kinds of places and all of a sudden they have agents reaching out to them. You know, they get a book deal, they ⁓ they get tapped to write a screenplay about the essay that they wrote. How, if at all, did that change things for you as a writer? How did it change how you thought about yourself as a writer or what might be possible? I think it made me feel like I I was kind of validated. You know, everybody wants to be in the gray lady. And it also felt weird. I never thought that could happen to me. You know, it s seemed like this sort of thing that happened to other people. And it gave me a glimpse for the first time that maybe I could actually continue to publish in in good places or write a book that gets picked up by a major publisher. But it I never had the arrogance to think, of course, that would happen. You know, I I felt like I'd be lucky if it did, but it maybe gave me a little bit of a thought that I could at least shoot for the moon. Yeah. I want to read something from your website because it feels like it gets at a a sort of through line in your work. You write, my novels feature restless people trying to figure out how and where they can feel at home in this world. Are they their best, most authentic selves in a summer house in Cape Cod that holds secrets and memories in the small Wisconsin town where they grew up and made mistakes, swearing never to return? Or maybe they can leave the cold of the Midwest to find themselves and each other in Palm Springs. That's good ad copy, but it's also I think something true. You recently, as we mentioned, moved to Chicago after many years in Wisconsin. Has that shifted your sense of where home is? Good question. And actually, like the honest answer is I've been struggling with that a lot lately because moving and getting older are two things that are happening at the same time. And I think part of this move was precipitated by the idea of like we don't have forever to play out our ideas of where we might be most comfortable. And I did leave Chicago over 20 years ago wanting to go back. This opportunity came up and I've been feeling really like this idea that as I get older, I that I need to become unmoored. Like that place doesn't necessarily matter to me as much. Cause you know, if I stayed in Madison, which I mean we we may end up going back, Madison very much feels like home and I've been thinking about that a lot. But I also feel like if we stay, a lot of my friends might be moving. You know, like life just keeps changing and nothing you can never count on things staying the same. And now, you I've traveled around a lot, probably too much. You know, I I do feel ⁓ unmoored, you know, and I I've just been thinking lately that I need to stop feeling like I need to go back home or find a home and accept that I'm a citizen of the world and that wherever I go, I should be comfortable with myself so that anywhere feels like home. And it's a real vibe shift from The way I used to think about home, where I I I'm often I'm a cancer, you know. Like I I when we lived in Madison, like I loved being at my house. I loved having people at my house. And ⁓ home was really important to me. And I think I'm maybe too tied to home. I was reading the safekeep. Did you read that book? No. The character is obsessed with home and knows exactly how many teaspoons are in the drawer and how many like what which plates are chipped and what belong to who and ⁓ I remember reading that and feeling like I was gonna suffocate. I was like, I'm kind of like that about my house. Like I know everything about my house. And even when I'm not there, I'm thinking about the pile of mail on the table and the cracked window that needs to get fixed. And I kind of just don't want to be that housebound anymore. But yet I have been for all these years, and I think I struggle with it. My first book is about two sisters who are I never realized until after I wrote the book. They're totally inspired by housekeeping. Marilyn Robinson's book. You have one sister who is like wants to be footloose and travel around the world and she's very itinerant. Then the other sister is is becomes a I think she becomes a shop teacher. I'm trying to remember, a home egg teacher. And I realize I I I had that same dynamic between my two characters. I have one who's at home, one who wants to travel. And I feel like I feel that inside myself so much. It's such a struggle for me to go places or stay home and I see it reflected in my friendships, you know. I have friends who it's very, very important to them to know exactly where all their friends are. And I think my lifestyle is upsetting and discomforting to them. And then other people who find it great, like it's they're totally fine with just being in different places, but I'm uncomfortable with it. But that's just how I live. I'm I'm always in different places. It's like fine Waldo. I don't know. It's that's a long answer. No, it's a good one. This might be a good way to transition to talking a little bit more about the snowbirds. You know, a lot of your work I think centers on people who are trying to change something about their lives, you know, sometimes by changing where they are. In the case of the snowbirds, this couple that sort of like uproots their life because they're feeling a little bit dissatisfied. What draws you to that kind of story, ⁓ other than what you just said about sort of feeling itinerant yourself? Yeah, I do think that people think they're gonna be actualized in a place. They'll go somewhere and they'll just be their most authentic self. I think about that and you know, it it's on my website. So it's something I think about in all my books. But I think Kim, my character, assumes that if they leave Madison and go to Palm Springs, that she might suddenly like she can express herself, she can have fun, she's in the sunshine. And I think a lot of people actually think of Palm Springs. as a place that has all these qualities, you know, because it is sunny and it is gorgeous and people here are happy. It's just true. You know, like there I I can see why people want to come here. That's why I wanted to come here. And it's a place that used to always also ⁓ be a place for healing. You know, people would come here to s recover from tuberculosis or, you know, there's lots of rehab centers in Palm Springs. It's a very optimistic place that you can be your best person. You know, we're always looking for ways to be better. And this idea that if you're in an environment that's more your own ecosystem, which is something that ⁓ a friend of mine from Madison, Carrie Schumann, had mentioned that one day she said, ⁓ we all have our own ecosystem. And I think that really drove a lot of that thinking for that novel. I was like, What is my ecosystem? Is it the Midwest, even though I really can't stand being cold? Is it Palm Springs? Is it like where where are you most comfortable? I think most people think there's a certain geography that they connect with. I feel that. I think that's probably true. I want to shift gears just a little bit. So in 2018, you published an essay in The Sun that I I read later, but that has stayed with me. And it feels like it's wrestling with some of these same ideas, but in a more personal way. in that piece, you're writing about growing up and you're writing about your father who struggled with. Addiction and mental illness. And also this tension between wanting to distance yourself from where you come from and realizing how much of it stays with you. I'm curious, how did writing that essay feel different from writing fiction? You know, that essay was the hardest thing I've ever written. The essay originally was about the preppy handbook because I was obsessed with the preppy handbook, Living in Whitefish Bay, and I reread the Preppy Handbook because I I like I never realized it was satire. I took it so seriously. And so I reread it and I had excerpts from the Preppy Handbook and I sent it to the sun. And you know, I don't know but the kind of writer I am, like that's where you wanna have a s an essay because their readers are so devoted to what they read. So I ⁓ I sent it to them and then they sent me an email and I just thought it was a rejection. They said, We really love this essay, but nobody here even knows about the Preppy Handbook. And we don't think that's interesting, but we think your dad is. And we'd love for you to write more about your dad. Cause he just kind of like kind of entered the essay. And then I thought, This is just a rejection. I'm not gonna do anything with it. And about three months later, the editor emailed me again and said, We are just wondering, are you working on revisions? 'Cause we'd really like to see this. And I like, I never even thought that happened in publishing, you know, and I And I didn't really want to work on it, to be honest. Like it's a hard essay. And I I was gonna just ignore it. But I had a writer's residency for a week and I went to this ⁓ house that is in ⁓ this it the driftless area. And it was actually, I remember I couldn't open any windows and it was really hot and it was suffocating. And I think that actually helped me write the essay, that feeling of like just being with myself and like suffocating and like having to kind of dig in. I wrote it and I You know, when with an essay, you can write yourself into a corner. You get this idea, and then you're like, what is the what is the universal here? Why does anybody care about this? What is this essay even about? And a lot of times you have to rewrite an essay starting with the end and turning it upside down. I remember just thinking about embarrassment. And when I went to Denver and I went back to the Alcoholics Anonymous house that my ⁓ dad had gone to. And how thoughtful and wise the woman was and how she reminded me that even though I had been embarrassed of him, he had had people that treated him like a human being and it shaped how I I look back and I used to be really mad at my dad for being an alcoholic and for not being a good father. And then I I think as I've gotten older, you just realized people are complicated, that struggles are hard, that I needed to have more grace and how I thought of him and it It I had to be an adult to be able to have that revelation. Had you written about your dad before then? No, not really. Although I think he kind of seeps into a lot of my books. I think he kind of represents for me the lack of control, like self-control. I've always kind of resented that he couldn't stop doing the things that he wanted to do. So I think there are aspects of that that's that's in all my writing. Like when you have characters who can't control themselves, I think that's probably a little bit of my dad. To connect this to the snowbirds, there's a section in this essay, which I I just want to say too, it's a fantastic essay. We'll I I know it's available on your website, but we'll we'll link it in the show notes as well. There's a section in which you move to Whitefish Bay where you're sort of like trying to learn the rules and fit in and present a certain version of yourself. This is where the preppy handbook, is that what it was called? Comes in. But it feels almost like a social novel, you know? And I see that too, I think in in the snowbirds when you When you first when the character first arrives to see what I mean? Palm Springs. I know it's I'm falling in the trap. But she has to learn the ways of a new place and and especially a place that's so different from the one that she's come from. Do you see a connection between that experience, your your sort of adolescence in Whitefish Bay, and the way that you write about social dynamics in your fiction? ⁓ it's such an interesting question. For those listeners who aren't familiar with Whitefish Bay. It's this very wealthy community and it has like your reputation is really important in a place like Whitefish Bay. And there's a real sense, at least when I was living there, of fitting in or not fitting in. And so I kind of learned how to become a chameleon to kind of fit in. So I mean maybe there's this sense of everyone trying to learn to both fit in and stand out at the same time. ⁓ and Palm Springs, it is interesting you Come here and you're not sure like what's everybody doing? Like how is everybody having more fun than I am? Like I remember I was working on the book one day and I was sitting in my backyard and I was hearing all these ⁓ vans coming by and they were filled with ⁓ like party supplies and stuff. And ⁓ and I was like, gosh, this is a place where you feel like everyone's having more fun than you are no matter what you're doing. ⁓ yeah. You know? you feel like you need to rise to the occasion. You need to have as much fun as everybody else, but then you realize that everyone's just doing their thing and that their experience of Palm Springs can be kind of different. But even here you feel pressure to to fit in. So it's also interesting too because like you know, like what do you fit into? You know, it's like everyone's kind of older here. Do you fit into like a retiree circle? There's a really amazing fun gay culture. Like Do I fit into that? Do I, you know, go to gay bars with my friends and go dancing and drink tequila sunrises until two in the morning? You know, just figuring, ⁓ well, I have. Good. Okay. Yeah. It's just figuring out how you want to embody the ethos of Palm Springs. Yeah. And and for some people, it's just not for them, too. You know, they come here and they're like, great place, but it's not for me. And it's interesting how a place cannot be for somebody and it can be for somebody else. ⁓ a hundred percent. I think about this all the time. I love where I've sort of landed, but I I have friends and people that I meet that that don't love it so much. And ⁓ And also why do we care what other people think of the places we're in? That's something that we think about in Wisconsin all the time. People have such strong ideas about Wisconsin when they're not in it. ⁓ yeah. Do you think we have a chip on our shoulder? I do. And I think we're like we're overly modest, you know, we're like, ⁓ I'm just from Wisconsin and people from New York aren't like that. People from other places aren't like that. Like Wisconsin's amazing. It's beautiful. It has the nicest people. The food is great. There's biking and swimming. And it's just it's an extraordinary place. But I feel like a lot of times if I read a book by a writer who's from New York or something who's never been to the Midwest. But they want a Midwestern character, they always just say they're from Wisconsin. Right. Uh-huh. But to me, I'm like, well, what part of Wisconsin? Cause I know all the different towns. I know that if you're from O'Connell, it's a lot different than if you're from Green Bay versus Rhineland or versus Milwaukee. It's a really wild, varied state. Yeah. And I we shouldn't feel like we need to justify living there. It took me a long time to learn that lesson. I didn't want to move back to Wisconsin when I was younger. I think I felt like it represented kind of like a lack of imagination. To go back to where I was from. And then I remember one day I was just like, I'm really happy here. I fit in, it's comfortable, it's my home. And it it's weird that it took me a while to get to that point, that I didn't just feel that naturally. But I when I worked on shoulder season, my book that's set mostly in East Troy, that book was mostly inspired by my friends who are from East Troy, who I think East Troy is like the most enchanted, wonderful place. Like definitely it has issues like anywhere. But I thought they were so lucky to grow up there. And they all were like, no, you always have to leave a small town in order to come back and appreciate it. Yeah. And that's what I wanted to write about in in shoulder season. Well, you did it so beautifully. ⁓ I wanna like put a fine point on this discussion thematically. I think your work, as we discussed, both sort of in fiction and nonfiction, seems really interested in this idea of reinvention. Do you think we can really reinvent ourselves? Or do you think we just sort of carry everything with us? I think it's kind of both. It's like when you have a lot of ingredients in your refrigerator and you can make something, but you could also make something a little different. Like you definitely have all your baggage that you came with and and your sensibility. But I do think There have been occasions in my own life where I've had a revelation, like when I'm just going on a walk and suddenly I'll think of something like the one I was just telling you about, where I realize, like, I'm really happy in Wisconsin, or somebody points something out to you that you didn't realize before, or you have a traumatic experience. I think those moments in life you can reassess and you can move forward differently. I think it's really important to not. Think about like reinvention does sound kind of fake, right? Like we talk about reinvention all the time, especially in midlife and older life. Like, yes, you can still reinvent yourself. I think the question is more can you make adjustments to stay vibrant and to keep life interesting and to make changes? And I mean, and look at us, like we just moved to Chicago, which is so crazy. Yeah. But you know, yeah, I can do that. And it has changed me. I'm still me though, you know, but it changes my outlook a little bit. It changes the way I see. Myself and the world. And that's the power of being in a different place, I guess. You know, I'm navigating different situations now. Yeah. Maybe it's not you that changes so much as sort of the perspective you have on yourself or, you know, seen through a different lens. We're getting out on time here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, what are you working on now? Anything that you want to talk about? I'm actually working on something I'm having so much fun with, which is really No, because I, you know, with the snowbirds, I was on a deadline for it and it was fun to write, but I also felt a lot of pressure to make sure I had it done on time. So I'm just working on this book. My only goal for myself is to have fun. That is it. Like I just want to enjoy it. And I had this revelation while I was working on it, because it's set in the Azores, which is crazy. Like it's a character from Chicago, but she's in the Azores and it I've never been to the Azores. I'm going next month on a research trip, but I kind of feel like I've been there because in my head. I've been writing about a place that feels super real to me. And I wanted it to be an island. I've always been obsessed with the Azores. I don't know why. But where are the Azores? Yeah, they're midway between Boston and Lisbon. Okay. Like in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, I just find islands so crazy, you know. Like one of my friends, James, he said, Going to an island is like going to a party without a car. There's no way out. You know? just that's kind of what I want to capture in the novel. So I'm working on it and it started out one way and then I had an artist residency. And I went on a walk one day. I was listening to the Great Gatsby. And for some reason, like just this voice started getting into my head with this different character. And I was like, you know, I'm just gonna see where this goes. And now I've got like 40 pages in this character's voice. I don't know where it's going. Even if I have to trash all these pages, which I don't think I will, I think I'll be able to use them. But I love how they're reminding me that what I love about writing is making stuff up. Like you can be in a totally different environment or different place. And I feel like I'm like I'm telling a story to a little kid at night. You know, like tell me about what happened next. You know, I have a little post-it note next to my laptop and it says you're writing a story. Cause I feel like when you're in the middle of writing, sometimes when you get stuck you forget that most basic thought. That's all you're doing. And you can get so caught up in in everything else and and full of self-hatred and loathing. And then you're just like, wait, I'm just, I don't need to worry about this. And just I'm remember, you're telling a story. So I I don't want to say too much about what it's about yet because it might change. It's a lot, it's a lot about mother-daughter relationships. I love that. I think you know it goes back to what you were saying about sort of being a child and reading these stories about going through the portal and into a new world. And you're, yeah, you're in a new world. You can, you can say whatever you want, you can make up whatever you want. Yeah. And you know, and also it's kind of nice being a little older now writing. Like I feel like I can write what I want. I don't need to worry so much about you know, making my mark on literature as a certain kind of writer. I can just write a story and have fun with it. Amen. You want to do a quick speed round? Sure. All right. Christy, what is your favorite book by a Wisconsin author? I know this is a hard one and I'm putting you on the spot. It is. I I mean the book that just popped in my head is still true by Maggie Ginsburg. She's such a thoughtful writer and it just comes through in her work and I enjoyed reading it so much. But there's so many I'm friends with so many Wisconsin authors, I feel like I'm excluding others that I just love all the books I've read from Wisconsin writers. Do you have a favorite short story of all time by any ⁓ writer from any place? I totally love that question. I think it's ⁓ Stephanie Vaughn's Able Baker Charlie dog. Lori Moore used to teach it when she was at UW Madison in their MFA program, and a friend of mine recommended it because I was obsessed with Lori Moore. Birds of America, her collection of short stories, is the book I give my friends when it's their birthday because I just love that collection. So I was like, okay, if Stephanie Vaughn's story is good enough for Lori, it's good enough for me. And it's I would say it's so much like that essay you're from the Sun magazine. Like it's it's a woman's relationship with her dad and his issues. And and maybe I never even made that connection until just now. But I don't know if I read that before or after I started that essay, but it might have inspired me to write the essay. Mm. Do you have a favorite place to write? Yes. The only place I really get a lot of writing done is our cottage. Our cottage is we bought it like in nineteen ninety nine and it's like a golf cart, you know, it's so basic. It's not insulated. It's not heated. It's just ⁓ very rustic. But on the sun porch, I get all my writing done. And I think that's why the snowbirds is kind of hard because I was working on it mostly in the winter and I couldn't be in my place. But that's where everything I write, like eighty percent of all my books are written in that cottage. What is the best place to overhear a great conversation? ⁓ I love that question. I guess at any restaurant, you know, I just like I love overhearing the people sitting at the table next to me. I eat out all the time because I hate to cook. So I'm always at restaurants. So it's like my social outlet. Do you have a favorite place to eat when you're back in Wisconsin? I have to say Lombardinos. In Madison, my daughter used to work there. We just go there all the time. It's like our restaurant. We know all the people that work there. It's so good and it's so great on a cold winter night because it's just so warm and cozy and Italian inside and they have really good martinis and old fashions. Okay, last question. Where in Wisconsin do you feel most like yourself? Hmm. I have to say at our cottage. Like just walking around barefoot in the grass, like near the water. I love to swim. I'm always comfortable near water. ⁓ so I think knowing that there's a body of water nearby is always nice. but yeah, I just I love I love everything about it except for loud boats. Christy, thank you so much for doing this. I really thank you for having me, Jeff. I'm really excited that you're doing this podcast. There's so much to learn from Wisconsin writers. Another big thanks to my guest, Christina Clancy, and thank you for tuning in. You can find Christy's writing online and sign up for her newsletter at ChristyClancyRights.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or share it with a friend. It really helps. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss new episodes. They come out every Wednesday. You can reach me anytime at jeffaloisia.com slash writingforward. That's J-E-F-F-O-L-O-I-Z-I-A.com slash writing forward. I'd love to hear from you. Writing forward is recorded with support from Dane Arts. It's produced, edited, and mixed by Anya Van Wagtendonk. The theme music is by the Lolo Ombre. Logos and episode art are by Tim Burton. Thanks again for tuning in. Until next time, keep writing forward.