Bestselling debut author Virginia Evans joins Zibby to discuss THE CORRESPONDENT, a charming, intriguing, and witty novel in the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, and foes. Virginia shares the long journey to publication—nearly 20 years and nine novels in the making! She also discusses the power of the epistolary form, the influence of 84, Charing Cross Road, the real-life loss that informed the story’s emotional depth, and the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Virginia. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about The Correspondent.

Virginia: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. 

Zibby: And I know this episode will come out later, but we are talking just after your pub day, which is so exciting. So how did that feel getting the book into the world?

Virginia: It was honestly just defied, it, defied description for me. I waited so many years to have this happen and I, I don't think I ever, maybe never really thought it would. And so all during pub day, I felt a little bit like I was floating above my life and observing it or something magical sort of doesn't even touch it, but that's the closest.

Zibby: Aw, that's so amazing. Okay. Tell everybody about the book and then I wanna hear more about this. Journey to becoming a published author as well. 

Virginia: Thanks. The book, The Correspondent, it's, it's about a woman named Sybil Van Antwerp. She's in her seventies when we start, the book is written entirely in her letters and emails, primarily handwritten letters, but some emails thrown in and it starts off at the beginning.

She's just turned 73, I believe. I was just thinking, was it 73 or 73? Four, but I think she just turned 73. She sort of is re She's retired. She's divorced, she lives alone. And, and her attitude and kind of her perspective is this is the last kind of era, this is my last kind of, uh, movement of my life and.

But at the beginning of the book, some things start to happen. One of them, you know, from right off the bat that she's go starting to go blind, and then she starts to receive some, she's, she's a big letter writer. She starts to receive some letters that she wasn't expecting. There's a little bit of a mystery of a connection from previously in her life, but I think, and so the book is really about this era of her life that she thought of as the end and sort of the Mont. But it turns out, I don't think it turns out to be that way. It turns out to be very full. And when I really, what, what the book is, to me, it's like a puzzle and every letter is a piece. And so as you're reading the letters, you're sort of taking a piece of information from her life and putting it in this puzzle.

And I hope, and I think by the end you have this full image of a person and the whole story of her life, and you get this, I guess, a portrait of her, of this woman. 

Zibby: That's amazing. When I first heard about the book, I assumed it would be set, you know, a hundred years ago when people wrote letters, maybe not a hundred years ago.

I was literally just like cleaning out my desk and finding all these you know, personalized note cards. And I was like, gosh, I haven't sent one of these in like years at this point. It's so bad. But, uh, but no, it starts in, I think 2012 and extends onto 2019, something like that. 

Virginia: That's right. 

Zibby: So it is contemporary.

And then I also saw on the cover how Anne Patchett had blurbed it, but then in the book, she writes a letter to Anne Patchett, like right off the bat, and I was like, whoa, this is like fiction marrying reality. What is going on here? 

Virginia: Yeah, she, um, she does, she's very bold and, and Anne's blurb on the front has been such a, you know, that was such a kindness of her to read my book and, and to blurb it that way.

But yeah, letter writing is sort of thought of as very passe, but I did want to kind of bring it into, bring it into modern, you know, modern times. 

Zibby: And you have a couple emails in there, but yeah, mostly letters. And I have to say by the end, especially like the last few that missives and whatever. 

Virginia: Mm-hmm.

Zibby: Anyway, you just ended it. And such a, it was just very emotional and, and just so great. You know. Anyway, I won't give things away, but.. 

Virginia: Thank you. 

Zibby: It was such a great way to sort of wrap it up. Wrap up this chapter really, of our reading chapter of this book. 

Virginia: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: So anyway, why this format? Like, there are, obviously, there's a whole epistolary genre, but I feel like, aside from Kim Faye's recent books, I dunno if you've read those, but 

Virginia: I keep hearing about them and now I've added, I've added them to my notepad of what I need to read.

Zibby: Oh. I mean, they're different, you know, and also they're smaller and you know, just, I mean, that shouldn't be it, but, you know, different in terms of like, those are two sides of a friendship, so it's, that's it. It's a different, but it's a similar device. But anyway, why go back to this epistolary form, like 84 chairing crossroad wasn't that 

Virginia: Yes. 

Zibby: Original. Nice. 

Virginia: I'm so glad you said that because I read that book with my book club. And I loved it and I was, I was so moved by it. And that book is very short, and those letters are, you know, those letters are so brief and, and the book is so brief, but the letters span, I think 20 years or 25 years.

But it, it was so moving and I love that. And I think, you know, sometimes when I pick up and I, and I. I've always been a reader. I feel I read pretty widely, but sometimes you pick up a book and you sort of feel like you have to take a deep breath and, and dive in and say like, okay, I'm gonna commit. I remember when I read Anna Corina for the first time, I had to force myself to read 35 pages a day. It was sort of like, you have to read 35 pages a day, or you will never finish this book. And so that is one kind of, you know, one kind of important book. But then I remember reading 84 Chairing Crossroad, and it was such a delight. It just felt so easy to read the book. It felt, you know, you would read the page.

There's a sincerely, you know, and it's done and you can, and there's always a nice stopping point. You finish a letter, you can put the bookmark in, you can put it down. But also what I found is that I'd never really wanted to put the bookmark in. You know, I never wanted to, you know, sometimes when you're taking a eating a book that's like a steak. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm.

Virginia: You sort of are like waiting for the moment. You can put the bookmark in to like breathe and come up for air when books are so dense. And I love those sometimes, but with a book of letters and I felt this way. There was that book, the EY Literary. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Virginia: Peel Pie Society. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Virginia: That's a long title, but I think everybody knows what I'm talking about.

And that was one too, that, you know, you just kind of feel like, oh, this is kind, I'll just read one more, it's just one more page. I'll just read one more. It's one more page and then you get to the end. And I love the, the lightness of that. There was like a sort of just a, an airiness about that book that I loved and when I finished it I thought.

I can do that. This is sort of this like madness that has pushed me through throughout my writing life is reading something like, I remember the first time was in high school, I read The Grapes of Wrath and I thought I can do this, which is like so insane. But I did think that, and I always kind of have that thought I could do this and so I I thought, I wanna try to write a book in letters. And that, so that was really the, that was really the catalyst was I wanna write a book in letters and see if I can do it. And then the story kind of started to grow after that. But the letters were my, were my opening kind of incision. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I love that.

And then. Am I making this up? Did you say that you had a family friend who lost a son or is, am I confusing this? You did, right? 

Virginia: Yep, it's right and it's in the acknowledgements, which I had their permission to put in the acknowledgements. Obviously that's very sensitive to them, but yes, some really dear friends of mine, I had written the first, I think draft or two of this novel, and their son got sick suddenly.

And was hospitalized and over a really terrible three months, he grew sicker and sicker. And there was a lot of hope at the beginning that they would figure out what it was. And there was, I mean, hundreds of ideas of what it maybe, maybe what was going on. And finally, after a couple months, it became evident that it was a matter that was not solvable and he passed away on December 2nd of that year. He went into the hospital at the end of September. And so that whole era, I had been working on this book and, and that the element, that element of grief and losing a child was already. In the book. And then I walked through this very closely with these friends.

I mean, my husband and I spent many days with them in the hospital, outta the hospital. You know, my husband brought coffee to them, like, you know, every morning for weeks on his way to work. And you know, during that time. That really shut down my brain to everything else. And you know, the books over here and my life's here.

And that became sort of like the only thing. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Virginia: And it was so strange because I had been writing this book and then I, and then I was actually dealing with that situation and it changed. I mean, it, it changed, it changed me. I mean, it certainly changed me and it changed my husband and, and our family.

But I also changed the book and I went back into it when I finally kind of emerged from the pit later, kind of the following year in the spring. I went back to the book with this new, this new frame of reference of what that is for someone and what happens and, and then I sort of went back and changed things, and added things, and took things out and realized, and still, I, I, I haven't had that lived experience, although I think I originally wrote that aspect of the book out of my sort of primary primal fear as a mother of losing a child.

But then, you know, we. We went through that and it really, it really did, it really did change the book and I'm so thankful that you asked because that's a huge part of that, this story. And it's something that I want to say and I wanna say his name was Wade, his name was Wade. So I wanna say that, thanks for asking.

Zibby: Aw, I'm so sorry for Wade's family for all of you. I mean, it doesn't matter sometimes, like, you know what the relation is? Is it a nephew? Is it a close friend? Like it doesn't, the labels don't matter. It's your emotional connection to somebody and the closeness and just that image of the coffee. I mean, how could it not change you?

How could it not? It's, it's, of course, it's everybody's worst nightmare and yeah, right. 

Virginia: Ugh. Yes. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, I'm glad. You know, selfishly for the readers that you didn't give up on the project, you know? 'cause I would imagine at times you were just like, what does it matter? 

Virginia: Yeah. 

Zibby: Or I feel like, I feel like I get that way.

Like whenever anything really bad happens, anything else, I'm just like, what does it even matter? Why am I doing this? 

Virginia: Yes, I definitely did. I definitely did have that. And I think, you know, there's a lot in this book that comes out of my own. Life experience. I, this book I, I had written a different book that my agent had been trying to sell for a while and it didn't sell, but she did this sort of beautiful dance of always saying, it's not selling yet, but maybe you should work on something else.

I mean, she was very good at like, not crushing my spirit, but saying you should probably start working on something else. And so when I'd started writing this book, I was. It was during COVID ID and we had been living abroad and we had moved back sort of before we wanted to, and had maybe started discussing maybe we didn't wanna move back and we had had to move back.

And so I was writing it during that era of just a lot of sadness and a lot of grief, and a lot of aspects of this book are pulled out of things that I was. Either dealing with then or had had been dealing with or people that I knew. And so I was writing this book because I was exhausted from the failure.

And I've written several books before this and none of them have ever, none of them have ever gotten through the finish line of publication. And so I think I had so much grief and so much. I mean really being crushed. I just was crushed and I started writing this book as an exercise I think for myself, which is probably why the book has such audacious moves.

Like writing in The Voice of Joan Didion, or, I mean, it was things I just wasn't planning to show anyone. I was just writing it. I wrote it inside my closet. We didn't have a space in our rental at the time. I, I shoved a desk in a closet. I mean, it's very, it was just low. It was a, it all came out of this very low.

Kind of sad time. And then I, and I'm trying, and I still can't quite remember how it happened, but my agent ended up, I gave it to her. She asked me for it or, or however, and she said, I think we could keep going with this if you want to. I mean, she was very open-handed with me, but she sort of said, I think maybe it has what it take, what it would take to get through the, through the gate.

So thank God. Because I, I told, I've told people, I had just started to think, I'm gonna law school. I'm just gonna go to law school. I'm gonna do something else. I can't do this anymore. Was crazy. 

Zibby: Did you like, from what age did you wanna write a novel? Like how long? 

Virginia: The first novel? Yeah. I wrote my first novel when I was started when I was 19.

And I think this is my ninth. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. 

Virginia: I was just yesterday counting them on my fingers. I was like naming the titles and you know, kind of going through. And then I realized there was one I had forgotten about. I think this is my ninth novel. And obviously like some of the really early ones, that's all.

You're young and you know, maybe I wrote one when I started 19 and then maybe I'm 22 and then maybe I'm 25 and getting, but all those through all that, that's me. That's my life. That's me growing up. That's me coming into my. You know, knowledge of, I don't know. I, I'm, I'm thankful, I'm thankful that maybe that this is the first one and it has, it shows a little more of that I'm a weather beaten sort of person and not so like, fresh faced. So I might have been my first, my first eight novels. But, um, yeah, I think I, I know the whole thing has been a huge learning experience and I'm grateful, but it was grueling. I mean, it was, it'll be 20 years this fall. I'll be, I'll be 39. So 20 years 

Zibby: I had the same thing.

By the way, I really tried to sell my first novel when I was 27, and it went out in submission and was rejected everywhere, and I was so crush, like you said, that I like didn't even try fiction again for over a decade. I was just like, I can't, it wasn't meant to be. I can't believe it. It's so hard. I mean, 

Virginia: It's so hard.

Zibby: Theater are fragile, you know, you can, on the one hand think you can outdo John Steinbeck. Right. And then on the other you're like, I can't even write an email.

Virginia: I know. And that, that's so true. And it's, you know. That, that whole experience, it's now, you know, now I have this experience of being published and having this really exciting start with a, with a cool publisher and with a great team and all of that.

I think I do appreciate it more. I feel like I appreciate it more than anyone appreciates it. Like every time someone writes me an email, hello, you have a, you have a publicity call. I'm, I'm like, thank you so much. I just feel so grateful. I'm like, thanks, I'll, I'll go anywhere, anytime, whatever. You know, my agent's like you can demand a little more.

I'm like, no. I'm just so happy to be here. But I think that sometimes now people will say. You know what? It was all worth it. Like it was worth that. And, and I, and there is one part of that that's true. And I, and would I do it again? Yes, but it doesn't delete. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Virginia: Like the agony of being alone rejected thousands of times.

I mean, hundreds, hundreds of to board like hundreds of queries to agents, you know, putting essays out on submission, putting short stories out on some, you know, just this. I mean, if I had a bucket of failure points and, and then this like one sort of beacon of, okay, we did it, it doesn't, this doesn't delete that, but it, I'm not sorry for it, but it's still there.

It's still part of like who I am. I think all of that. So, ugh, it was tough. Plus years maybe. 

Zibby: Maybe there is hope. That one of the older ideas now with your new vantage point and now you have like a platform and such a big deal book coming out and all of you know 

Virginia: Yeah. 

Zibby: You could maybe resurrect 

Virginia: Yes. I've, I have thought that and I, and I do wonder, so we'll see.

I feel open handed. If it does, great. If it doesn't, we'll just keep writing some new things. 

Zibby: Well, I really appreciate you sharing. All that vulnerability, which, 

Virginia: Oh, thanks. 

Zibby: So many people can relate to and doesn't often get really adequately shared. So, you know, I think it, people are afraid. It makes them seem like, well, if, if I've had more rejections, then I must not be as good a writer as someone who just had their first thing.

Right. They must have just been better. But that's totally not it. 

Virginia: Yeah,.. 

Zibby: Not it at all. But still, it's hard to get past that. 

Virginia: Yes it is. And I, and if I had, if I wasn't here now, I would still be in the pit. So I just wanna, I just never wanna forget that. I don't wanna forget that. And I wanna say that. I will say it, I'll stand on every roof and scream it, because I needed people to say that along the way.

I'll never forget reading an interview with Elizabeth Strout. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Virginia: And she talked about her journey and how many like job jobs she had. You know, writing on the sides, writing in the wings. How many rejections, how many failures, and getting to an older age and finally kind of breaking through. I always call, I always felt like, I feel like I'm like rocketing up, like in Willy Wonka, and then you slam your head into that glass ceiling and that's how it felt for so long.

And then finally it like shatters and you get through. And I needed to hear that. I needed to hear someone else say, this was my story. It do, and, and, and now I'm, I did it. I just kept doing it and I did it. And that. I can't tell you how many times I would read those little things or hear those little things along the years, you know, every couple years.

Hear an interview like that and think, okay, I. I guess I can, I guess I'll try again. Roll it back. Start over, you know, do something else. I'm thankful. I'm really thankful for that. For her specifically, but other people too. 

Zibby: Ugh, that's amazing. I love it. Okay, so what should we learn from Sybil? Like what is, what do you want us to take away from her story, her life, her point of view.

We put the book down and you want people to feel or think what? 

Virginia: Yeah, I don't know that I would say I had, you know, a goal like that when I was writing. I was just writing the story about a person. I was just, I think what I thought was I just wanna tell some very normal person's story and show that every person's story is interesting. Every single person, no matter how sort of normal or boring or simple on the outside, they seem to be that everybody has this story. I mean, I think about how I see my own life and what I think about, I think. Look at my life. Look, look what has happened in my life. But maybe someone else would be like, oh, she just, she's just a lady that lives, you know, lives on the street, whatever.

But you know, the inside, you know, I have had this big life and I think when I started writing I, that was what I was wanting. That was what I was wanting, was to take a simple kind of distant view of a person and then open the door, climb inside and tell the story of what had, what had happened and what was happening.

And so at the end of the book, I think now in hindsight, looking at it and kind of, I haven't really fully reread the whole book in its entirety again, and maybe I never will, but I've sort of flipped through and, you know, reread some things and I know what, know the story. I think I, I hope people will feel the freedom to forgive themselves and to say we all, we all make huge mistakes. All of us make huge mistakes. I've made huge mistakes and small mistakes, and I've messed up and hurt people, but also I'm a human being with dignity and this is my life and I can be forgiven. Like I can have forgiveness, I can forgive myself.

I can like I that, that's what I hope at the end of the book, that's the feeling, is that she can be at pee, like have peace. And I think as you read the book, it is her story, but it's also all these other stories of the lives of people that are in her life and everyone with their own massive portion of heartache and joy, like joy and sorrow in the same hand.

In every character's life, and I, and I want, I hope that the book shows. How every person, people in this book, there's people all over the world in lots of different families and backgrounds and socioeconomic levels and political backgrounds and faith backgrounds, and that everybody in some way is the same.

That they have joy and success and hope, and they also have sorrow and loss, and, and that's true for me. And I think that's true for everyone. And I hope that's like. The book seems to resonate with readers from what the feedback I've received personally. And when I think about why, I think that's why because everybody can read the book and say, yeah, that's me, or Yes, that's my mother, or, or that's some somebody I know or something.

And so I hope when, I hope the feeling when you close the book is satisfaction and like fullness and warmth or something of, I don't know, just that it's okay, like it's okay. You're just a person and you are. You did your best. You're doing your best, and if you messed up, it's okay. There's people that love you.

You're loved, you can, I don't know, I just, I hope there's something in that in the book, which was probably what I was needing to hear when I was writing it. It was probably what I was needing to feel when I was, when I was writing it. 

Zibby: You must be such a good friend. 

No really. I bet your friends are like so lucky that you're a close friend 'cause you are so like empathetic and present and have that like old soul wisdom to you and all that, so you can just tell.

Virginia: Thanks anyway. 

Zibby: Are you making cards with this? Like are there going to be. The correspondent cards with these little birds and everything. 

Virginia: Okay. I love, thank you for asking. I'm kind of talk, so have you seen the Ger, there's a German book cover that is different. 

Zibby: No, I haven't seen it. I'll go look. Sorry.

Virginia: Yeah, no, it's great. But it just kind of came out. But I have a dear friend who I grew up with and she's a painter in Charleston, South Carolina, and she's rather well known and ha, you know, is already has her own big thing going. But she designed a cover and I sort of pitched it. Raw to Crown and they didn't wanna use it.

And then I pitched it to Michael Joseph, which is the, my publisher in the Uk and they were doing their own thing. And so when Germany was looking for their cover, I sort of said it there, you know, I, I said, my friend designed this, she's a painter and they took the cover. 

Zibby: Oh. 

Virginia: And so the cover is her design of this painting, of the writing desk.

And so she and I have been talking about maybe she would design some stationary or some, um, some like letter writing paper. But um, I do think it would be, I do think it would be perfect. I know that they were talking a rifle paper company about doing something, but I think it was like a giveaway. I'm not sure.

But it would be, I do think that would be a perfect kind of,.. 

Zibby: If you want, I have, um. I have this like collab stationary thing with a company called Felix Doolittle. 

Virginia: Oh yeah. 

Zibby: They, they paint too though, so I don't know. But I feel like I should introduce you and maybe you could do something. 

Virginia: Yes, I would love that.

If only, even if only for myself and for you, we can have a set. 

Zibby: Yeah. But yeah, I would love that for the letters that I don't write, but I wish I were writing every day ask. It's like, as. Inspirational stationary. 

Virginia: Yes. I think that's, I think that's good. I think you could lean into that. It's like people who say, I wanna be a reader, but I'm not a reader.

I'm like, it's okay. Go a stack of books. Look at it sometimes. 

Zibby: Exactly. 

Virginia: It'll be fine. 

Zibby: Non-practicing reader. 

Virginia: No, that's right. 

Zibby: Non-practicing letter writer. 

Virginia: That's right. It's okay. 

Zibby: Well, Virginia, congratulations. I'm so excited for you. And now I'll just be, you know, watching as you launch into this world and you know, live vicariously with all of your enthusiasm, which is so wonderful and something that I think people who sometimes stay in the industry too long get jaded and forget.

And this is at the heart of why people write and why people read, and it's so wonderful to see. So congrats. 

Virginia: Thank you so much. What a treat to talk to you. 

Zibby: You too, 

Virginia: Thanks. 

Zibby: Okay, take care. Bye-bye. 

Virginia: Bye-bye.