Publisher and podcaster Zibby Owens will help you decide what to read this summer
Owens also runs an eponymous publishing company; owns Zibby's Book Shop in Santa Monica, Calif.; and hosts literary salons and retreats around the country, including around Boston. She's also a writer and editor herself ('On Being Jewish Now,' an anthology featuring Jewish writers reflecting on identity; 'Bookends,' a memoir centering around the death of her best friend on Sept. 11).
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
She's been candid about her connectedness — Owens grew up in Manhattan; her dad is businessman Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group — but she's also really vulnerable about the universal struggles that level us, from divorce with four little kids to self-image issues to identity crises, and she amplifies a variety of voices on her platforms. We chatted about rejection, self-discovery, and summer reads.
Advertisement
Sign up for Parenting Unfiltered.
Globe staff
#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
Subscribe
*
indicates required
E-mail
*
You went to business school at Harvard. What took you down this road?
Books have been the throughline of my own story forever. I fell in love with reading with 'Charlotte's Web.' I started to cry and was forever hooked on reading as the way to think and feel and cry and laugh. You probably know this from your sons, and I know from my kids: You can develop a love of reading, but some people are just born readers. I was just one of those born book lovers.
I had my first miniature book published when I was 9 by my grandparents. One of the essays was 'Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers,' about a set of twins in a haunted house. Another was how the doughnut got its hole in the style of Rudyard Kipling. They did a limited print run of 20 books and gave it to me on my 10th birthday. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I eagerly handed out my books to my teacher and all these people I cared about. I had an essay published in Seventeen magazine that I wrote when I was 14 about how I felt in the wake of my parents' divorce and how I had gained a bunch of weight over the course of one year.
I interned at Vanity Fair, and I realized after a day that there was no path from editorial to quickly becoming an author. I realized professionally that there was no easy path to being an author.
Advertisement
I went to business school, and two weeks after I got there, my best friend died on 9/11. She had been my college roommate, and it changed my point of view on basically everything.
I realized that 'life is short' is not just something people say. Literally, she was here one minute; gone the next. I was unpacking all her clothes and [thought], I might as well do the things that I want to do in life before it's too late.
After business school, I took a year off to freelance full time and write a book full time, a fictionalized version of what happened with her and me. I got an agent. It ended up not selling.
My dreams of being the youngest published author in the world had faded by then. It wasn't until I got divorced — fast forward, I'd ended up having four kids — I suddenly had all this time, every other weekend. I started writing a bunch of essays. The essays led me to want to try to publish a book again, because I honestly was so humiliated by my other book not selling that I didn't try to write fiction for over a decade.
You know, I write about families, parenting, and how hard it is to find community. It's very easy to feel like we're out there alone, doom-scrolling at 11 o'clock before we fall asleep.
Using books, you've been a conduit for creating community with 'Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books,' which I know is now 'Totally Booked.' What do you hope that people get from these podcasts?
Moms like me were so busy. We'd talk about books, but a lot of people didn't have time to read them. We didn't want to feel like we were totally missing out. I used to rip magazine articles out and share them with friends before Facebook.
Advertisement
I wanted to give women like me a free pass. You can be a non-reading reader and still maintain that piece of your identity. I feel like so much identity can be stripped away when you're a parent, especially with young kids. By interviewing the people who wrote the books, I felt like I was at least giving people a way to stay in touch with that piece of themselves.
It was with a sense of humor, a wink, and a nod. Obviously, it was not going to be The New Yorker podcast. It was supposed to be the way you would talk to a friend, which is sort of how I do most things in life, whether it's a social media post or the tone of an anthology I'm curating, or my own memoir. It's authentic and close. I feel like people who are attracted to that end up being similar in some ways: They're nice people who want to connect and want to laugh at the craziness of life.
Part of the name change is: My kids are a little older now, I don't feel like I'm that frantic young mom that I was, and so many people were deterred from listening because of the 'moms' label. I didn't want that to happen anymore, especially because I don't talk about parenting books, per se.
Zibby Owens.
James Higgins ©2025
What's the author criteria for your podcast?
Most of the books are contemporary fiction, memoir, or nonfiction designed to help me see the world or myself a little more clearly. I don't do science fiction. I want to read books that help me live my life better.
Advertisement
In this cultural moment, which is fraught in so many different ways, what's your sense of who's buying and consuming books right now?
This is not exclusively, but older women and young women — people who, I think, are really trying to find their place in the world: young women who are coming of age; out with their friends and not quite settled, and then women who maybe are empty nesters and feel a little bit unsettled — those life stages when you have a little bit more time and more willingness to be led. I feel like those two groups of women read the most and certainly shop the most often.
A lot of the men who come into the store are looking for information on something like education or nonfiction. Women are looking more for escape and connection.
As a writer, it's tough not to be hard on yourself. I remember hosting an event in Boston with famous authors and thinking, 'They're so much younger or more successful than me!' How do you put that in perspective, when you're interviewing people who are wildly successful authors?
That's such a fun question. When I was writing, before 'Bookends,' I just kept pitching, and I would get a rejection and close out of email and sit down with another author who was a mega-bestseller with tears still on my eyelashes. I thought: Maybe this is not going to happen for me. I have to live with that.
We all get choices about what to do with our limited time here. I started to realize that maybe the value I bring to the world is not in the books that I write. Maybe there are other things that I'm called to do. I try to justify it that way. If I were only writing full-time books, I would get more done. But I'm not only writing full-time books. I'm doing a million things that I also love, and so are you. Everything is a tradeoff.
Advertisement
This is just the way I was made. I'm not made to be a novelist, only sitting at my desk in a fictitious world all day. I love doing that, but I can't do that exclusively.
What are you reading?
I'm doing a series of live shows right now, so I'm prepping for all of those. I'm finishing Jeanine Cummins's book 'Speak to Me of Home' [about three generations of women connected by their Puerto Rican heritage]. And also 'Greenwich' by Kate Broad, which is quite delicious, although I have to say: I'm probably 70 pages in and I'm like, 'Who dies? Somebody is supposed to die! Who is it going to be? We still don't know!'
I'm also prepping [to feature] 'What My Father and I Don't Talk About,' the anthology from Michele Filgate [about the complexity of the writers' relationships with their fathers].
I know you don't talk exclusively to moms, but we're a big part of your audience. How do you hope people feel after listening to your podcast or going into your bookstore?
I hope that I help them navigate the world a little more easily and with a sense of humor. They're not alone in anything they're going through, no matter how isolated they might feel. All they have to do is open the next book, and they realize that.
Anytime they feel that sense of loneliness or isolation or overwhelm or 'less than,' they can read and immediately feel better, or they can listen to a podcast and glean something about the human experience that maybe they would have missed.
Interview was edited for clarity.
Kara Baskin can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
15 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Jake Brasch's ‘The Reservoir' suffers from arrested character development at the Geffen Playhouse
All unhappy families of addicts are unhappy in their own way. Unless, of course, you're a stage family, overrun with 'characters' who don't so much speak as deliver laugh lines and dispense nuggets of moral wisdom. Those families tend to be all alike, regardless of the superficial differences among them. Grandparents play a larger role than usual in Jake Brasch's 'The Reservoir,' which opened Thursday at the Geffen Playhouse under the direction of Shelley Butler. But the theater's ability to turn family dysfunction, be it alcoholism, Alzheimer's or just garden-variety existential agony, into entertainment and instant illumination, has long been a staple of the American stage. My tolerance for the artificiality of the genre may be lower than most theatergoers. Some take comfort in hoary comic patterns, souped-up eccentricity and reassuring pieties. Overexposed to this species of drama, I slump in my seat. Indeed, my patience was as thin for 'The Reservoir' as it was for 'Cult of Love,' Leslye Headland's drama about a family breakdown during the holidays that made it to Broadway last season after its 2018 premiere at L.A.'s IAMA Theatre. Neither play is beyond pandering to its audience for an easy laugh. Serving as protagonist and narrator, Josh (Jake Horowitz), the queer Jewish theater student on medical leave from NYU who wakes up one morning after an alcoholic bender at a reservoir in his hometown of Denver, exhibits the snappy, manic banter of a drunk not able to face up to his problem. Patricia (Marin Hinkle), his long-suffering mother, has had it with Josh's relapses, but how can she turn away her son who lies bleeding on her couch? With his mother's help, Josh gets a job as a clerk at a bookstore as he tries once again to pull his life together. Fortunately, Hugo (Adrián González), his manager, is quick to overlook his lax performance. Apparently, drinking has so scrambled Josh's brain that alphabetizing books takes every ounce of his strength. I didn't quite feel as indulgent toward Josh, but not because I didn't sympathize with his struggles. My beef was that he sounded like an anxious playwright determined to string an audience along without forced exuberance and sitcom-level repartee. (Compare, say, one of Josh's rants with those of a character in a Terrence McNally, Richard Greenberg or Jon Robin Baitz comedy, and the drop off in verbal acuity and original wit will become crystal clear.) What gives 'The Reservoir' a claim to uniqueness is the way Josh's four grandparents are conscripted not just into the story but into the staging. Seated in a row onstage, they serve as chorus to their grandson's travails, chiming in with their own opinions and acting out his description of the way his thoughts compulsively take over his mind, like an unstoppable train or a raging river. Each also has an individual role to play in Josh's recovery. Patricia's mother, Irene (Carolyn Mignini), for example, has been transformed by dementia since Josh has seen her last. She's always been his favorite grandparent. He fondly recalls baking cookies, playing Uno and singing along to 'The Sound of Music' with her. Even when she pulled away after he came out in high school, his affection has remained steadfast. He would like to connect with her again and fears he has lost his chance. At the bookstore, he reads up on Alzheimer's disease and hatches a plan to build up the cognitive reserve of all his grandparents by feeding them spinach and keeping them mentally engaged. He's trying, in effect, to save himself by saving them, but they're too feisty to be corralled by their unstable grandson. Irene's fiercely protective husband, Hank (Geoffrey Wade), an arch religious conservative, is too grumpy. As for Josh's paternal Jewish grandparents, Shrimpy (Lee Wilkof) is too much of a practical joker with sex on his mind. And Beverly (Liz Larsen), an electrical engineer who doesn't mince words, is too gimlet-eyed not to see that Josh is focusing on his grandparents to avoid doing the hard work of recovery. Having been sober for many decades herself, Bev recognizes the narcissism of addiction, the way addicts have a tendency to put themselves at the center of the universe. She offers Josh the tough love that he needs, forcing him to see that a grandparent isn't just a grandparent but a human being with a complicated history that needn't be worn like a Kleenex visible from under a sleeve. Josh sets out to be a savior but ends up getting an education in the reality of other people. Brasch's intentions are noble, but 'The Reservoir' doesn't plunge all that deep. The play draws out the distinctiveness of the grandparents by ratcheting up their zingy eccentricities. How easily these characters fall into a punch-line rhythm. Larsen has the most consequential role and she imparts just the right note of astringency. But the staginess of the writing makes it difficult for any of the actors to transcend the shtick that's been assigned to them. Hinkle brings a depth of realism to her portrayal of Patricia, but the character isn't fully developed. Whole dimensions of Patricia's life are veiled to us. Both Hinkle and Gonazález gamely play other characters, but these sketched presences compound the general impression of a comic world drawn without much nuance. The staging is frolicsome but visually monotonous — a problem for a play that is much longer than it needs to be. More than two hours of looking at the fey-preppy outfit costume designer Sara Ryung Clement prepared for Horowitz's Josh becomes a kind of fashion purgatory for audience and protagonist alike. I'm not sure why a production that doesn't take a literal approach to settings has to repeatedly trot out the front seat of a car. The spry assistance of stagehands, who not only move set pieces but help flesh out the world of the play, is a jaunty touch. But the sound and lighting effects get rather heavy-handed during Josh's hallucinatory meltdowns. Blame for the inexcusably clunky dream scenes, a writing fail, can't be pinned on the designers. Horowitz had the Geffen Playhouse's opening-night audience in the palm of his hand, but I heard an actor playing his comic lines more than his character. Horowitz, however, is only following the direction of a playwright, who has a harrowing story to tell and needs you to enjoy every tricked-up minute of the zany-schmaltzy telling.
Boston Globe
20 hours ago
- Boston Globe
In ‘Kill the Lax Bro,' Charlotte Lillie Balogh asks whodunit — and who let it happen
The aftershock of this betrayal was one of several personal heartbreaks that fueled Balogh's debut YA novel, is actor Chris Evans — Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Almost everything in this book really happened in some way,' Balogh tells the Globe. 'There were quite a few Easter eggs of my exes sprinkled throughout.' Advertisement The murder, she assures, is strictly fictional. The mystery is set in the fictional Massachusetts town of Hancock during the 1990s, where star lacrosse player Troy Richards is the target of four students' attempts to ruin his reputation. But when Troy winds up dead during Hancock High's Lock-In Night, Andrew, his former teammate/best friend; Stassi, his straight A ex-girlfriend; Naomi, the shy but observant freshman; and Tatum, the burnout with a secret grudge, must unravel the whodunit before the crime is pinned on them. Advertisement With and commentary on toxic sports culture, status quos, and self-discovery. While Troy is the doomed, titular 'lax bro,' the sometimes-negative impact of student athlete culture and toxic masculinity are Balogh's real targets. She had been a member of her high school's rowing team and later rowed for Syracuse University as an undergrad. As a student athlete, Balogh observed the different coaching approaches for girls vs. boys team sports firsthand. 'I know a coach who told me it's easier to coach boys because they're very competitive,' says Balogh, who coaches a youth team in Los Angeles, where she now resides. '[While], girls are not encouraged to be as ferocious so quickly in life.' She was especially inspired by 'New England life'; in particular, her high school alma mater's boy's lacrosse team — Troy and Andrew are amalgamations of the memories of her classmates and her own. While Balogh describes Andrew as 'the boy next door,' his increasingly volatile actions reveal his more vengeful underbelly. Troy, though (dead and) the antagonist, becomes more sympathetic as his backstory is uncovered. The intention was to 'flip archetypes. 'They both have their own ways in which they're perfect and idolized by their classmates. And it's like, which of them is better?' she says. 'Are either of them better?' Balogh also drew from 'cinematic perfection' that is 'John Tucker Must Die,' the early-2000s teen dramedy about a group of girls who, upon finding out they're dating the same guy, team up for revenge. Advertisement Spoiler: John Tucker does not die — it's more social sabotage than murder — but Balogh, a TV writer by trade, had wondered: But what if they actually killed him? 'Kill the Lax Bro' started as a 50-page TV pilot script in 2020, but eventually caught the eye of Balogh's literary agent, with whom she had previously worked on another manuscript. (That story — about a Boston high school rowing team, ahead of the Head of the Charles Regatta — will be the basis for her second novel, slated for fall 2026.) When the manuscript was put out on submission, an editor at Penguin found a video of a table read of 'She watched this video and was like, 'I want to buy that as a book instead,'" says Balogh. Charlotte Lillie Balogh will celebrate the release of 'Kill the Lax Bro' at the Natick Barnes & Noble, July 12, 6 p.m. 1324 Worcester St., Natick. Marianna Orozco can be reached at
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Buzz Feed
Most Controversial Song Lyrics Ever Released
Let's cut to the chase: So many artists have penned controversial and outrageous song lyrics over the years. Like, horrific. Here's a look back at some of the most shocking: 1. 'Playin' with the pussy ain't enough / Imma treat it like Rihanna, bitch / Call me Chris Brown' — Glasses Malone on '#Rihanna' 2. 'In about three years, holla at me Miley Cyrus' — Mack Maine on Young Money's 'Every Girl' 3. 'Put Molly all in her champagne / She ain't even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed that / She ain't even know it' — Rick Ross on Rocko's 'U.O.E.N.O' 4. "I be fuckin' broads like I be fuckin' bored / Turn a dyke bitch out, have her fuckin' boys" — A$AP Rocky on "Fuckin' Problems" 5. "How I'm antisemitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch" — Kanye "Ye" West on "VULTURES" with Ty Dolla $ign 6. 'I hate these blurred lines / I know you want it' — Robin Thicke on 'Blurred Lines' 7. 'First you find a house and scope it out / Find a Chinese neighbourhood, 'cause they don't believe in bank accounts' — YG on 'Meet the Flockers' 8. 'Age ain't nothing but a number / Throwing down ain't nothing but a thing / This loving I have for you / It'll never change' — Aaliyah on "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number," which was written by R. Kelly 9. 'Don't touch what you can't grab / End up with two backhands / Put anthrax on a Tampax / And slap you 'til you can't stand' — Eminem on 'Superman' 10. 'I don't care if you're just 13 / You look too good to be true / I just know that you're probably clean / There's one little thing I got to do to you / Jailbait, you look so good to me' — Ted Nugent on 'Jailbait' 11. 'I'm a runaway slave master / Shittin' on the past, gotta spit it like a pastor' — Iggy Azalea on 'D.R.U.G.S' 12. 'At break of day when that man drove away I was waiting / I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door / She stood there laughing / I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more' — Tom Jones on 'Delilah' 13. 'She's only seventeen (Seventeen) / Daddy says she's too young / But she's old enough for me' — Winger on 'Seventeen' Feel free to share other examples in the comments.
