Ep. 354 No One Is Begging You to Create with Kaliane Bradley

Written By Megan Caballero

This week, we're joined by debut author Kaliane Bradley to discuss her novel, The Ministry of Time, which is The Stacks Book Club pick for January. We talk about how her pandemic obsession inspired this book, how she feels about her novel being called "genre-breaking", and what it was like to land on Obama’s summer reading list.

The Stacks Book Club pick for January is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. We will discuss the book on January 29th with J Wortham returning as our guest.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Kaliane Bradley 0:00

I think the important thing for any creative person to remember is that no one is begging you to to create, right? If I'd never written a novel, the world would have been fine. The reason that ministry happened and worked, and I hope, has brought people some joy, the same kind of joy has brought me is because it was just, it was a pleasure to do. It was something I wanted to do with my human brain. I wanted to, I wanted to share and communicate in that way, and I wanted to express a kind of joy and code joy in a story that could then be decoded by a reader. I think that's the important thing in creativity, the sense that you do want to be sharing, and not the sense that you have to be handing in homework you

Traci Thomas 0:46

Welcome to the stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host. Traci Thomas, and today I'm very excited to welcome Kaliane Bradley to the stacks. Kaliane is the author of this month's book club pick her debut novel, The Ministry of time. The book blends historical intrigue with speculative fiction. It's got a little romance to it too. And today we talk about all of this and so much more. It is this month's book club pick. So do not worry, there are no spoilers in today's conversation. And don't forget, our book club conversation of the Ministry of time will be with J Wortham on Wednesday, January 29 so you have two weeks to finish the book and then come back and listen to our chat. Everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes, and listen. If you love this podcast and you want inside access to it, you gotta go to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks pack. You're gonna get a bunch of perks, like our bonus episode, access to the discord, the mega reading challenge. But also, if you join right now, before January 31 you're going to get a shout out on this podcast. We've offered this perk since we started the Patreon back in 2018 but the perk is going away. No more shout outs on the show if you join after January 31 so if you want to hear my soothing voice. Say your name to billions of listeners. Go to patreon.com/the stacks and join. Shout out to some of our newest members of the stacks. Malavika, praseed, Kelly coyner, Sarah Garber, Stephanie TV, Elaine Miller, Alicia Stephanie, Martinez H Barbeau, Laura paradi, book talk, etc. Caitlin, Campbell, Ashley N Jerry, Sarah Kelly and Bethany Becker, thank you all so much. Everyone else, go to patreon.com/the stacks. Join the stacks pack. I could not make this show without all of you. Okay, now it's time for my conversation with Kaliane Bradley.

All right, Kaliane, welcome to the stacks. Today we are talking about your book, the Ministry of time, which is our book club pick this month. It is, I think we call this genre bending. Though, I did see someone say genre breaking, and I was like, Okay, we're upping the ante. Welcome to the show. Thank

Kaliane Bradley 3:08

you very much. I'm very excited to be here and to break some genres over the knee. Yes,

Traci Thomas 3:12

we're gonna naughty genres. We're gonna take care of them. Will you sort of in like 30 seconds or so, tell folks what your book is about,

Kaliane Bradley 3:22

absolutely. So the ministry of time is about a government experiment with time travel. The British government have time travel, but they haven't started using it yet. They need to check whether or not it works. So they start dragging people from the past. They call these people the expats. And the book opens with the expat Graham Gore, a Victorian polar explorer being dragged from the Arctic and dumped in a government laboratory where he's told, welcome to the future. Everyone you've ever known and loved is dead. The British Empire has collapsed. We just need you to live in 21st century Britain and prove that assimilation is possible by a not dying and be demonstrating you can be a 21st century citizen. And to help him do that, he's assigned this person called a bridge, who is a civil servant who lives with him for a year, and she has to monitor him. She has to assist him, but she's also reporting on him for the ministry.

Traci Thomas 4:14

And she is our unnamed narrator. She

Kaliane Bradley 4:19

is indeed our unnamed narrator at the beginning of the book, she also doesn't really know what's going on. She's been put through these interviews for this very high paying job that she wants because it pays very highly, but she doesn't know what she's going to be doing until the moment she starts doing it.

Traci Thomas 4:34

Did you think about her as sort of being our bridge, like for the reader? Because I sort of felt like she was my bridge a little bit. I'm really glad to hear that.

Kaliane Bradley 4:43

Well, actually, when I first started writing this book, I was writing it for a group of friends, basically, who are all very into polar exploration. So the original version of the bridge was almost a stand in for all of us. She didn't really have a complete. Personality. At that point. I hadn't given her, her background or her family or her, you know, her, her sense of self. She was very much a kind of way for the reader to enter the text, almost, quite literally, it was written in second person. So yeah, very much. She's She's also our bridge.

Traci Thomas 5:16

I love that. Um, okay, I've read some interviews I've heard. I've heard, like, sort of the origin story of this book, but I don't know if my audience has So my understanding is that during pandemic times, you, like the rest of us, got obsessed with the thing. In this case, it was Arctic exploration, and then you discovered Graham Gore, who is a real life person, and you got obsessed with him. Does that feel accurate? That's how I've read it. But I couldn't tell if that's just like, pithy or if, like, that's really what happened it's

Kaliane Bradley 5:50

I mean that yes, it's very that's very accurate. There are some like, steps along the way, but the skeleton is got very obsessed with polar exploration. Found Graham war pretty much by accident, just because I was obsessed with polar expiration. Polar exploration. And this particular expedition, Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to the Arctic, and the rest is history. In fact, although your listeners can't see this, I'm going to move slightly to one side. You can see that Graham Gore is behind that shit.

Traci Thomas 6:19

Wow. Framed photo of the of the like Soul picture of Graham Gore, right? I need to know why polar exploration. What was it? Because, like, I am a person who, for sure, goes down these rabbit holes. Generally, for me, I'm gonna take you to, like, a cult related place, like, I will give you years of research on like waco or like Jonestown, like that is my bread and butter, ocean, cold, long ago. Not so much my thing. But I'm wondering how you were like, do do to do Wikipedia, like Franklin's expedition? Like, how did we get here?

Kaliane Bradley 7:01

Okay, firstly, huge respect for the Jonestown knowledge that sounds like I can feel in my brain that if I go too far, but go too deep down the hole, it's gonna I'm never gonna be able to get out book two. Book Two, here we go. Interestingly, I don't like being cold. I was never before this interest in polar exploration or the British Navy, which to me, was just, you know, part of the military industrial complex, and in the case of the Victorian Navy, part of the Imperial project. What actually happened is, in a very 21st century way, I watched a TV series called The terror, which is based on a book called The terror, which is a kind of fantastical reimagining of what might have happened on this lost expedition. Because on this expedition, you know, everyone vanished. They never came back. 129 men, two ships, the most highly equipped ships of the British Navy at the time, sailed off to the Arctic, and they were just never seen by Europeans again. They were seen by the Inuit who were like, What are these idiots doing here? Really, for clothing, not like not being able to speak to any of us. But they all vanished. And the TV series was immensely compelling. It's a great work of art. It's it's very emotional, it's very complex. There are so many named characters in it. They all have their own, you know, background stories going on which unfold throughout the course of these 10 episodes, but they are almost entirely white men with mutton chops wearing duffel coats. So they were quite just tell apart. So when I was watching it, you know, it was locked down. I had locked down cheese brain. I thought, I better just check on Wikipedia or something, just to make sure that what has happened in this episode is what I think has actually happened. So I actually found a fan wiki of the first episode, and was reading through that, and that's how I found the name Graham Gore, which is how I found the Wikipedia page of Graham Gore, which led me to this very sexy photo. In fact, it's his fault, because otherwise, I don't think I would have gone there, because I became so interested in this guy and the story of the Franken expedition and the kind of hubris around it, and the hubris of polar exploration. British polar exploration, by the way, is mostly a history of extreme failure, which we've tried to, we've tried to, like reframe as noble failure. But also there's something kind of fascinating and tragic about the way these men died, often for just no reason. There was no reason for them to be in these places, particularly in Inuit homelands, there is a kind of lasting fascination with that sense of hubris, of stupidity, of bravery, of wanting to reach out towards the ends of the earth. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. Once I got a hold of me, I couldn't let it go, right?

Traci Thomas 9:50

I'm curious. Like, sort of, I mean, all of those things you're talking about, bravery, hubris, stupidity, this like reaching out all of that is death. Definitely like present in the ministry of time as well. I mean, I think it's like a pretty assuming, purposeful, apt metaphor of, like, the exploration of the unknown. And like, Who do should we why are we doing this seems kind of cool. Also seems like really a waste of time and resources. So was that, like, was the idea of this book Born out of the expeditions themselves? Or did you ever consider, just like writing, you know, your own version of Arctic exploration novel? Like, how did this story come out of that obsession? You

Kaliane Bradley 10:38

know, I think it was the there's a certain amount of friction that comes about. If you are a 21st century person, 20th Century person who is interested in British, Victorian polar experation, particularly, you know, as I am,

Traci Thomas 10:53

so you're you, if you're one of one,

Kaliane Bradley 10:59

particularly if, like me, like some of the other people who, who I made friends with, who were interested in this expedition, if you come from a country, or you have heritage, your family comes from a country that was colonized by one of the European powers, there is a very kind of complex sense of, how do how do I relate to these, these Men, because I find them almost romantic in this tragedy and this stupidity. And I find there's something quite escapist and dramatic and beautiful about what they were doing. But also these people would have been so awful to me, like the the racist aggression that I would have experienced from these men would have been, you know, mind blowing. And so I was interested in that friction, and wondering how I would actually cope with being confronted with the reality of one of these men, the reality of these men and their beliefs and their the belief system that shaped them, which in many ways, has shaped the Britain I live in. So I was mainly deep in that. And the only way I thought it would be fun both to write this kind of fun game for my friends, like, what would it be like if your favorite product explorer lived in your house? But really, what would it be like, right, if a white supremacist Victorian actually lived in your house? Like, what's gonna think about your life? You just

Traci Thomas 12:19

said, what would it be like if your favorite Victorian explorer lived at your house? Did all of your friends? Do they all have different favorites? Or was it like Graham Gore a one? Oh,

Kaliane Bradley 12:27

absolutely different favorites. Graham Gore is, is a very unusual choice, actually, because he is such a minor figure in history, there's not very much about him, which is one of the reasons why writing the book was so freeing. I could make so much stuff up, right? And I really there's just so many gaps. There's so much I could fill in and say, functionally, the character in the book is a fictional character, of course, whereas there are some very well known figures in Victorian Arctic exploration and later Edwardian Arctic exploration, where people you know have been writing books about them and thinking about them and I'm dreaming about them for generations at this point, right, right?

Traci Thomas 13:03

Have you read this book, the wide wide sea? It's about American exploration. I see American I don't know. Do you know I'm talking about this book? So the book is called the wide wide sea, Imperial ambition, first contact and the fatal final voyage of Captain James Cook. Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. So this book came out last year by Hampton Sides, and it was on, like all of the year end lists, including the New York Times top 10 books of the years, one of their five fiction, non fiction picks. And I had kept seeing it, and I love non fiction. And I was like, I'm not, I'm not fucking reading this. Like, I can, I don't do both. Like, this is like, there's, like, this, this thing, not for me. I started it. I was so bored out of my mind. But then I started your book, like, a few weeks later, and I was like, Oh my God. I wonder if this is the same people. I don't believe that it is, but I was like, I wonder if Kellyanne has read this book like, I feel like this is for you, because it's the same, same kind of shit, right? They like, got lost at sea. They got lost.

Kaliane Bradley 14:16

In fact, the interesting thing is this, James Cook is in Captain Cook, who was right, rightfully murdered in Hawaii. I

Traci Thomas 14:24

think so. Yes, I think this is him. I don't know. I think that's the fateful voyage, but he's he predates Graham gore. He's like 1776

Kaliane Bradley 14:33

Yes, so I think I'm right in saying he does predate Graham gore. And the reason I know for sure that he predates Graham Gore is that one of his lieutenants was Graham Gore's grandfather.

Traci Thomas 14:43

Oh, see, connected. All of our great colonialists are connected

Kaliane Bradley 14:53

in hell.

Traci Thomas 14:56

Okay, I have to ask you this sort of hypothetical question, which I'm sure you have an. Answer too, if COVID Never happens and you never go Arctic, historically exploring, if you will, what was your book going to be? What were you working on? What did you think you would write about? Because you were a writer, you're an editor. You had stories like you were writing other things. And I have to assume that this obviously took you by surprise. So what did you think you were going to do?

Kaliane Bradley 15:22

Oh, my God, the version of the version of me that never met, the time

Traci Thomas 15:26

travel version of you. Take us back to like, june 2019

Kaliane Bradley 15:33

with swim, American time. Um, so the book I was writing at the time was what I thought was going to be my first novel, and what I thought was going to be a serious first novel. I think, I personally think the ministry of time is a serious book. Just because it is a funny book, it does not mean I don't take it seriously, right? But I was writing a serious book about Cambodia. My mother's Cambodian. Half my family are Cambodian. And I thought that I had an obligation, in fact, to write about Cambodia, to write about the Khmer Rouge, about Pol Pot's genocide, about the refugees from Cambodia, and about the Cambodian British diaspora. So I was working on a book about a family, part of whom escaped the genocide, some of whom don't, and whether they're going to be reunited or not. It's told, it was told from the point of view of a mixed race British Cambodian academic. And when I was reworking ministry, and I wanted to make the bridge more of a person, I thought, You know what? I think that character might work very well in the place of this narrator, instead of an academic, she's now a civil servant, but she had the same complicated relationship with her heritage and with our structures, in the original case, with academia, in this case with the literal British government. I don't know if I'm actually a good enough writer to write that book yet,

Traci Thomas 16:55

but I we love the self deprecation around

Kaliane Bradley 17:00

but I really tried, and I really, I really thought that would be the first one. I'm sort of glad I didn't, because I'm not sure I would have done the story justice. But, you know, I'll say again in 15 years.

Traci Thomas 17:11

Yeah, well, I'm curious about the word you use that you should write that book. What, Where do you feel like that pressure came from? Or why do you feel like it was a should, versus like I really wanted to tell this story?

Kaliane Bradley 17:24

Part of it, I think, is the sense that the maybe the generation directly above me were not able to finish telling stories. And given that I am alive and I am the child of a survivor, maybe it's my duty almost to people who have gone before me, to to say something which is ridiculous. Of course, no one has any obligation to say anything. That's just not how either historic record or, you know, creative practice or community holding works. That's That's not how it works, but that that's what preoccupied me, maybe because I worked in publishing, and so there was only really one thing that I was looking at, which is what people were publishing and writing about and what they were trying to say through books. So maybe it just seemed like the obvious, the obvious outlet for me. I mean, you know, I think for anyone who comes from a marginalized identity, I think there's sometimes the sense that this is the thing that I think about so much, and this is the thing that has shaped my life so profoundly, and it shaped the way I think and the way I live in the world. Surely it's the only thing, surely it's the only thing that I can, that I can express, again, untrue. It's a self pigeonholing

Traci Thomas 18:40

so interesting to think about. Because I think like, the the word should jumps out at me only because I interview so many authors, and it's not a word that I hear people talk about when they talk about their work. And I wonder if, if that distinction between should and want is the thing that actually propels you to like, make the thing like, if you still feel like it's in a should place, it's like, not quite ready yet. But then when it's like, in the like, I mean, especially like thinking about how you've been talking about the ministry of time, that just felt like such a thing. Like, I want to write these stories for my friends. I want to tell, you know, and like, I'm just thinking about the difference between those two words, as a creative person and like, for the practice of creativity.

Kaliane Bradley 19:22

Absolutely, I think, I think the important thing for any creative person to remember is that no one is begging you to to create, right, right? No one to write a novel. If I'd never written a novel, the world would have been fine. The reason that ministry happened and worked, and I hope, has brought people some joy. The same kind of joy has brought me is because it was just it was a pleasure to do. It was something I wanted to do with my human brain. I wanted to, I wanted to share and communicate in that way, and I wanted to express a kind of joy and code joy in a story that could then be decoded by a reader. I think that. That's the important thing creativity, the sense that you do want to be sharing and not the sense that you have to be handing in homework.

Traci Thomas 20:08

Yes, no, homework. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

We're back.

Graham Gore is not our only time traveler in this book. This is not a spoiler. There are other people who are expats that come at the same time to the 21st century. And I'm curious about those people. There's are they all real people as well? Are they figments of your imagination, and they come from different time periods. So how did you pick when they would come from? How did you decide who, who these people would be? Feels like such an important choice to me, like it feels like something that my brain could spend, like, years thinking about. So I'm curious how you how you came to those people. So

Kaliane Bradley 21:02

the other expats, as they're called, the other people who've been dragged through time are all fictional. Graham Gore is the only one who's based on a real character, but they are based on periods of British history that are very studied in the British school curriculum. So they are all from different periods which loom very large in our cultural imagination, where we might feel familiar with their hype, almost from literature, from studying history, from, you know, just the world around us. So there is Arthur Reginald Smythe, who is dragged out of the First World War. Margaret Kimball, who's pulled from the Great Plague of London, Thomas cardingham, who's pulled from the English Civil War, and Alan Spencer, who's pulled from the French Revolution. That was, by the way, that was me. Like, can I remember? Like, hello,

Traci Thomas 21:51

are these people? I don't remember

Kaliane Bradley 21:55

them. So especially for Arthur and Margaret, the plague the First World War, those loom enormously large. In the British cultural imagination, First World War, there's this great sense of like, oh, we were so heroic, the tragic dead, etc, etc. The plague, again, just looms very large, particularly the plague as it was in London. I grew up in London. We still have kind of architectural legacy of the plague here. For the other two again, the English Civil War was quite a profound moment in the way that the the religious structure of the UK was set up. And the French Revolution, again, the UK did not be had the royalty. So it's a very different it's a kind of way of distinguishing ourselves from parts of Europe. But the point I was hoping to make with these characters is they all come from the past. They all come with 21st century preconceived ideas of how they might be, and then they're not like that. They're not like that. They're all individuals. They're all their own person. And I really hope that Arthur, for example, resists what we might imagine from a stiff upper lipid Wardian man, that Margaret resists what we might think of as a kind of traditional Jacobean woman. So I wanted, again, this tension between the received narrative of history and the actual fact of living people

Traci Thomas 23:18

interesting. And how did you name these people. You know, they they are completely

Kaliane Bradley 23:23

made up notes. And each time I thought this name feels appropriate for the era like Reginald Smythe, I think I actually got them from a Monty Python sketch Smith, um, but I have subsequent very stupid. I didn't Google the names, and I was just like, making them up. There is a Margaret Campbell, Reginald Smythe. I'm pretty sure there's an Anne Spencer. I don't know if there's a Thomas cardigan, but it definitely like it's a name that was around at the time. So these the names existed, regrettably.

Traci Thomas 23:52

Oh my gosh, that's so funny in the same time periods, like approximately the same time periods. So interesting. That's so interesting. Will you talk a little bit? I mean, I'm American, so, you know, I see history through different lens, obviously, but I'm curious about how the First World War and the Second World War loom in the British sort of historical record. Because when I went to London, like I did the whole the Churchill war rooms, like, I was up in there, because that's really World War Two is really my sweet spot of history. Like, I really love, I'll read a lot about World War Two. World War One is not for me. But I'm curious about, I just, I know, like, the poppies come from the World War One, right? That's right. So I'd love if you would, and I've been to that statue that's from World War One. I like, you know, I've done, I'll do any war stuff anywhere I go to so I'm just curious if you could talk about that, because I'd never really thought about those two wars and how they loom in the culture.

Kaliane Bradley 24:46

So World War One played a great role. I don't really go into this that much in the book, but it kind of shattered the class system, because working men be drafted into the wars, and they often had. Rise to positions of command just because people were dying in droves and absolute droves, the idea of British heroism and the British soldier, I think, has been shaped and reshaped by trench warfare and by what we know of what people suffered in the trenches. So there is a and there's we've now memorialized it with poppies. I don't know how much you know about like the politics of the poppy. It's so now in in the UK, during around Armistice Day, you wear the poppy to remember the the fallen soldiers, but it's become quite a intense political thing. So if you are a politician, for example, and you're on TV and you're not wearing a poppy around the time, it's considered very disrespectful, and it will impact the way the public sees you. You can wear a red poppy. There's also the option of wearing a white Poppy, which is a way of indicating that you feel that you want to mourn the dead, but you also don't believe in just kind of lionizing of the military. So it's a kind of hobby. And again, that's that can be very provocative. People get very funny about seeing people wearing white poppies. There's like a whole it's really very intense. It's

Traci Thomas 26:09

my next rabbit hole. Yeah, look out world. I've got a novel on the white Poppy coming your way.

Kaliane Bradley 26:16

It's almost become a kind of not going to get to trouble for saying this, almost like a nationalist symbol. I think the sense of like the flower of British youth being cut down before its time, the great tragedy of the war has become this very politicized thing. If you don't show that you're grateful you're somehow not being properly British. And then there's an equivalent thing with the Second World War, as you probably know, quite a lot of the Blitz and the idea of spirit, and the idea that you you sometimes hear in rhetorically, in newspapers, people saying almost as jokes. You know, back when we back in the old days, we won a war on Blitz, spirit, on, pulling together, on, you know, not feeling like we needed to be pandered to. It's these stupid talking points that mean nothing, because everyone, at every point in history has complained and wish things were better, right? But again, it's this idea of, like the stiff upper lip British stoicism. They were dropping bombs on us, and we were fine. They weren't fine. You can, you can read accounts at the time. They weren't fine. They were having a horrible time in the book, because all these people come from the First World War or earlier. They just discovering that there was a second world war just really shocks them. You know, first World War, that's that's a bad phrase. Why did you have to come back for seconds? That is wild,

Traci Thomas 27:38

right? Right? Did you when you were picking the travelers, did you consider at all having any travelers that weren't white?

Kaliane Bradley 27:46

No, and actually, it was important to me that they that that was like, nakedly, what the ministry was doing was only bringing back white people, only bringing back white people who could, who could, quote, unquote, be British, that there would never be any. I put this, the institution of the ministry has certain ideas about who will assimilate more easily to 21st century British culture, and the idea that there is a single unbroken lineage from the the England. In fact, it would have been of Thomas cardigans time to the United Kingdom of the bridges, time carries with it this preconceived idea of whiteness. So when so only two of the expats are assigned bridges. Who are people of color? They are both the two most recent bridges, the two most recent expats. They are Graham Gore, Victorian, Arthur, Reginald, Smyth and Edwardian. And again, there's a kind of a racist supposition that the closer to the present day these people are, the easier they will handle talking to a person of color, as if people of color were only just invented. Like again, this is like an issue that you get when people stage period dramas and there's a person of color in the period drama, and they say, What's this woke nonsense? What's this person of color doing on my screen? Like they existed. They were in the UK. It's like, it's right, it's not

Traci Thomas 29:14

right. So interesting. One of the things that our narrator deals with is, as you mentioned, she is British Cambodian, and she sort of is grappling, and I don't believe this is a spoiler, but she's grappling with, you know, her own family's legacy from Cambodia, and also, like this, time travel and you know these, I mean, quite literally, Graham is an explorer, colonizer type person, and so she's sort of dealing with these two things. What was interesting for you about bringing that aspect into the book? What was, what was that doing for you as a writer or as a storyteller? I think more so I was.

Kaliane Bradley 29:56

The thing I was most interested in the bridge was the. The the person who believes that they can join a position of power from a position of perceived weakness, that they perceive what the the the inheritance of of their life is a position of weakness, and that they can conform enough with power to get into power. Functionally, again, I try not to do too many spoilers here, but at the very beginning of the book, our narrator is a translator in the Ministry of Defense. She has made her heritage language a speciality for the ministry of defense, but she has repeatedly just plateaued. She's not getting promoted at all. And so there's a sense that maybe she has made the wrong choice, and she has exploited her talents in a in a way that has not been useful for her, because she just, she just can't get promoted. So when this job comes up, she really jumps up a chance to it, partly because it's it's much more highly paid than what she's doing, but also because she wants to be closer to this kind of nexus of power, this mysterious ministry seems like it's going to be, you know, a step upwards. And I'm interested in when you're actually faced with someone who was at the nexus of power, who wasn't the head of, you know, very old fashioned supremacist ideology. Like, how do you handle the fact that you don't conform to that as much as you thought you would, no matter how much she wants to be promoted through the ranks of the ministry, and no matter how much she wants to be in a position of power of a Graham Gore, she's still a woman of color. She's still a woman a of color B in front of this Victorian man. And so for her, I was trying to explore what it would be like to I sometimes describe the bridges narrative arc as being a continued failure of solidarity. So she has offered numerous points in the book to show solidarity with someone else and to think of the journey she's on and the way she relates to people, not just as a way of making herself feel safe and trying to get to this place of control, but of being vulnerable, of being vulnerable to someone else, of being vulnerable to the world around her, which might put her in a more precarious position, but also enables her to be in a position where she is showing solidarity to someone else, but she repeatedly turns her back on that option and repeatedly moves towards what she perceives As greater safety.

Traci Thomas 32:20

Okay, we started, started here, genre. How do you think about genre? What do you make of people saying that you're a genre breaking do you care? Were you using any tropes of genre on purpose or not? Like what? What is your relationship to genre in writing this book?

Kaliane Bradley 32:39

So because I wrote this for my friends, just the fun, no sense of what genre it was at all. Wasn't writing for a genre market. Wasn't writing with a particular genre in mind. Just having a lot of fun, flailing around, enjoying myself as I was refining the book, I kept on picking up threads of different genres. So there's, you know, we sometimes talk about it as, like a romance, spite, sci fi, spy thriller, workplace comedy. It's like, it's like a whole bunch of things. But I think the important thing for me was the use of genre as a kind of snug screen. So I like the Roman I like the romance. I think it is a romantic comedy. I think it is a romance. But I also think if you are only reading it as a romance, and you're following all those tropes, you will be seduced. A reader will be seduced into missing the parts of the book that are maybe sinister, the sinister spice thriller stuff, or if you're if you come to it as a sci fi reader, and you're interested in the government experiment, then the kind of the crunchy difficulty of all these characters who I try to make as psychologically realistic as a Victorian poet explorer in the 21st century could be sure, will maybe be quite surprising, because I also was thinking about the way the trauma impacts people's decisions and the ways they relate to each other, which impacts some of the decisions they make in the end game of the book, especially. So I love the idea of like genre as a kind of seduction, a way to seduce the reader into following one thing when you're trying to hide something else. But of course, you know, readers are intelligent. They're able to pick different things,

Traci Thomas 34:21

right? Okay, I have sort of a higher level question for you, and I hope you have an answer. It's not higher level, it's just like broader than the book. But you are British, I am American. This book is out in Britain and American or in America. Have you noticed a difference in reception from these audiences.

Kaliane Bradley 34:42

Oh, that's such a that's such a good question. I haven't had as much of a chance to meet the American audience because, you know, I didn't have long to tour there, and I I have a full time job, but I taught. I told the UK quite a bit what a good question isis. Respect. Is this even true? I feel like, though I've I got a lot of support from maybe romance readers in the UK, in the US, and every time I spoke to someone who came from the romance genre, they've been so generous and so intelligent about the book and the way they responded to it, and I've really, really enjoyed it. Gosh, what is the main difference? I'm not sure. Sorry, that's not

Traci Thomas 35:27

No, it's okay. I just was curious if you had had time to connect with readers in both places. I mean, famously, one of the most famous Americans read your book, Barack Obama, and put you on one of his reading lists. And I thought that after I hadn't read the book, when that happened, and then after reading the book, I was like, you know, sort of a weird choice for, like, president of the empire, right? Like, I was like,

Kaliane Bradley 35:51

Yeah, Did he enjoy it?

Traci Thomas 35:56

And I'm like, and he's also not a romance reader. We know that because he never puts romances on his list, or anything like that. I definitely, like, after I finished the book was I was like, I wish I knew him, because I'd love to talk to him about what, what it was for him particularly, but I'm just so, you know, like, did you, did you feel that too, when you saw it on the list? Are you like, why am I here?

Kaliane Bradley 36:18

Yeah, why? Does this like, it's about a, sorry, no, that's this point.

Traci Thomas 36:23

Well, it's about the government. Like, government, I'm like, What

Kaliane Bradley 36:27

are they up to? Are they up to anything good? Let's find out. That was, yeah, that was quite, um, that was quite strange. I kept on thinking, did he think Graham Gore was sexy? Barack Obama? Did you find Graham Gore sexy, baffling. Question mark. Question Mark, did you talk to Michelle about Graham gore? Who can say

Traci Thomas 36:45

no? Do you think Michelle read it or like the girls, I'm so I've I this is another fan fiction novel we could write. I

Kaliane Bradley 36:53

really, really want to know they also don't warn you that you're going to be on that list. About it was, I got a text from a friend, like, Oh my God. Have you seen what Barack Obama has done? And I thought, surely not running for president, surely illegal. I was like, oh my god, what am I That's crazy. What am I doing there? That's crazy doing there? Gobbly. Barack Obama's read my book. I think he has an independent book store that he trusts. Because I noted there were a couple of other very good debuts on that, that list. So there was caveat. Basmata Headshot by,

Traci Thomas 37:27

yeah, read a

Kaliane Bradley 37:28

Bullwinkle. Bullwinkle, right? And I thought that was like, I was impressed and surprised that he was reading these, like, what I think are great literary debuts. But yeah, not, not what I would have thought the obvious choice for him. Maybe that's something.

Traci Thomas 37:42

Well, he does these lists every year, usually two a year, like a summer, kind of like halfway, whatever, and then he does, like, the end of the year, and usually the end of the year and the like, he carries over. But this year he did totally separate lists, very controversial. But I people talk about this all the time. They're like, he must have people who do this for him. But here's my thing, if I was Barack Obama and I was no longer the president, and this is super not a thing that is on the job description of the President. It's not like the President of the United States is like, okay, it's June 10. Like, gotta put out my my reading list for the summer. So I just can't imagine saying that you read and liked something so publicly that you didn't read and like because people probably come up to him and are like, Oh my god, I saw the ministry of time on your list. Like, what did you think of x, y, z? And it just feels like a really big unforced error, if it's not true to him in some way. I do think people put books in front of him and are like, I think you would like this. But I have to believe he actually reads the books and actually likes them, because why would you stake your reputation in any way on a thing that, like just someone was like, put this on your list. I was thinking

Kaliane Bradley 38:52

about this with them, with Marta especially coming out boss book, because that's about the United States Navy shooting down a yes. I was like, you might, you must have read that, because otherwise, people, if someone came up to you, was like, All right, you know what this is about, you'd be so embarrassed.

Traci Thomas 39:08

That's what I think. I mean, I just can't. People always are like, I don't think he reads the books. I'm like, I just can't imagine setting yourself up for that situation. You know, like, I don't know it seems. It doesn't seem as well that idea doesn't seem well thought out to me in the way that the Obamas are usually like so prepared for every little thing. So I believe that he read it. I believe that he probably thought Graham Gore was sexy a little bit. And I believe that Malia probably read it with him. I feel like, I feel like it was like father daughter, Ty my own fan fiction, something that I always talk to authors about is how they like to write, how many hours a day, how often music or no in your home, out of your home, snacks or beverages, rituals. Tell us about it. I.

Kaliane Bradley 39:59

So I have to be in my house. I have to be in this room, actually, that I'm in right now

Traci Thomas 40:04

with the photo of Graham, with the photo Graham watching over you.

Kaliane Bradley 40:10

I have such like I'm so easily distracted that a room has to be very tidy. It also has to be very plain. So I moved into this house in April with my now husband, and while I was away in America, actually, on tour, this room used to be purple, like a hideous purple, okay? And my husband and two of my friends painted it white before I got back so that I could come back and work, which was just like one of the loveliest things that anyone's ever done for me. I have to have no distractions whatsoever. So, like really silly things, like, I have to have to have gone to the toilet first because I don't want to be interrupted mid flow, because I need a wee to toilet. Have to have a full glass of water next to me because I can't go downstairs to get a glass of water. Music only if it has no lyrics, unless it's opera. I did. I've been writing a lot of Book Two to Wagner as one does, like I can't do anything else because I get too distracted and I write in the so sort of 50 minutes to an hour, take a break. 50 minutes to an hour, take a break, unless I am really intensely in the zone, which does happen. I normally can't write for more than two hours. But, you know, sometimes a day in the day, well, no, actually, late at night I have a full time job, so, oh no. But I

Traci Thomas 41:23

mean, like, more, no more than two hours in a given day, in a given day, unless you're really doing your thing

Kaliane Bradley 41:29

at some point. Like there were times when I was writing ministry, which is why I remember so much this joy that I, you know, I'd look up and I my shoulders would hurt, and it had been four hours and I hadn't moved, and, like, my husband had kind of tried to leave some food outside the door.

Traci Thomas 41:45

I really miss those states. Great times, yes. So no snacks and beverages besides just the water.

Kaliane Bradley 41:51

No, no. No distractions whatsoever. It's really, I know it sounds punishing, so devastating

Traci Thomas 41:55

to me, because I'm obsessed with snacks and beverages. And there's so much tea in the book, which I am a tea drinker. And once I went to a tea shop, and they asked me what I liked, and I was like, I like black teas. Like, you know, really, whatever, that's it. I don't like anything else. And they were like, Oh, you like colonizer tea. And I was like, Okay, relax, pal. Like, fucking back off. I was so offended by it. I was like, Yeah, I guess that is what I like. But also, can you not insult me before I spend like, a million dollars on black, different black tea? Wow, incredible. You know,

Kaliane Bradley 42:31

you're drinking it, you're decolonizing it. That's, that's how

Traci Thomas 42:35

I'm like, if I'm drinking it, I'm not a colonizer. So in your face. No, but I do. I mean I like, I take it like a British person with like, milk and sugar, the whole thing, which I learned. I have no idea where I learned it from, but when I went to England, I was like, now I've fucking made it. I'm in the place where this is normal, because here it's like, copy, copy, copy, copy. So I was thrilled by all the drinking

Kaliane Bradley 42:56

of tea. In the book tea and whiskey, they drink a little whiskey, a lot

Traci Thomas 42:59

of whiskey, which I don't drink. But, you know, you find I also don't smoke cigarettes, which they do a lot of, too, a lot of, did you think of the smell at all when you were writing the book?

Kaliane Bradley 43:10

I was mainly thinking that I really wanted a cigarette, which is why there's so much cigarette smoking. Desperately I wanted a cigarette the entire time. Could I also, you know, I, if my mother is listening, I don't smoke.

Traci Thomas 43:22

But Hi, Mom,

Kaliane Bradley 43:26

you I obviously couldn't smoke during the pandemic because I was terrified of what it was going to do to my lungs. Yeah, I wanted to smoke the entire time. You're absolutely right. It stinks to be in a house where someone has been smoking

Traci Thomas 43:36

a lot. Yes, I mean, Graham smokes a lot. He smokes a lot, and he smokes like in every room. He smokes in his the bathroom. I was like, this is, I was like, I this was, that was the part. I was sort of like, with Graham, but the smoking, I was like, Babe, we need to air it out. Not for me. The tea, yes, the smoking, no, um, you've mentioned your full time job. Will you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do full time?

Kaliane Bradley 44:05

Sure. So I'm an editorial director at Penguin Classics, which is great. I really, really like it. You can probably see over the shoulder. Yes, I can

Traci Thomas 44:16

just a full shelf of the perfect, perfect black with a little bit of white penguin classic books. If you, if you've seen a penguin classic, you know what I'm talking

Kaliane Bradley 44:23

about. So my job is divided into looking after the enormous penguin classic backlist, along with my colleagues who also work on Penguin Classics, commissioning new titles, some of which are, many of which are in translation, actually. So I was originally hired because I used to work on contemporary fiction and translation, and to have a truly international classics list, you can't just have a load of old English, white guys. That's non so that's one of the things I do, and I also acquire a bit of non fiction for an imprint called Alan lane. But yeah, it's been kind of great to every single day be around. People who care about writing, who care about books, who care about what books are doing and what they mean and the impact they have in the world. A lot of my colleagues are also writers. So, you know, they were there. They're just not at all flummoxed by the fact that I'm a writer. They're not at all flummoxed by the the delight to do both. And also encourages me to think of myself as part of a link in a very long chain, rather than just someone. I know that we often talk about writing being a very lonely business, but actually it wasn't for me. I had a really good writing for friends, and then I also feel like I'm I'm in conversation with writers who are my contemporaries and writers who are my predecessors.

Traci Thomas 45:39

How was it for you as an editor, then turning around and sort of being edited and working with editors and sort of being on the other side of that table,

Kaliane Bradley 45:49

it was amazing. It was so also like my editors, it's Margot Shipman to in the US and Federica Juan de Nino in the UK. And the experience of being edited by them made me think I need to be a better editor, because these guys are incredible. It

Traci Thomas 46:04

was, did they work take like, was it all three of you together all the time? Because sometimes it's like, a book comes out in the UK, you do with your u Canada, and then when it comes out in the US, there might be changes, but it was like a trio. It was

Kaliane Bradley 46:14

all three of us, and it was so much fun. It was like, again, it was, I didn't feel lonely during the edits, because, it's like a really collaborative joy, and they, both of them, really pushed me to think about not just the plot holes that didn't work, but also like the characters and their motivations and the ways that their past, their trauma, their history, impacts on them, and how it might realistically play out. And it was just really good to have somewhat, have two people for whom that is their job talking about that book, and my Asian as well, who, like talked about it with me, endlessly, endlessly, just a real privilege. It was, it was really, really fun. I really enjoy being edited. Actually.

Traci Thomas 46:53

I love that. Okay, one of the things I always talk to people about is audience, and you very clearly had a very specific audience. When you started writing this book, it was your group of Arctic explorer loving friends that you met during COVID That is about as specific as an audience as I think anyone has ever stated. However, you then decided to turn this specific piece of work for this specific audience into a thing that is broadly consumed by a broad audience. I mean, it is marketed to sci fi and romance and time travel and literary fiction and contemporary fiction and, like, this whole huge thing. So how did that at like, did it at all impact you when you decided, Okay, I'm going to make this book? How did you change from this is for me and my friends to this is for people who don't know who the fuck Graham Gore is, and, like, frankly, don't care, right? Some some of us.

Kaliane Bradley 47:50

So there are between, like, draft one and draft nine, which is what ministry. There were quite a lot of changes. And the first six drafts were just with my agent, Chris Wilder, love, and a lot of that was, there's also an extra 30,000 words between draft one

Traci Thomas 48:06

and draft nine. Wait, there's 30,000 that are gone. More. No, there's

Kaliane Bradley 48:10

more. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. Because there was just so much information missing, basically, because I was writing for a group of people about whom I, you know, I talked about graingle with them already, and they knew all about Franklin Expedition. So there were just things that I expected them to just fill in by themselves, also just the workings of the ministry. I wasn't that interested in it. I was interested in the career Explorer. So I ended up having to put that out. Um, do you know I I am so grateful that it has reached so many people. I don't think I would have expected it as the book. I mean, no one ever expects any kind of success really. When I was redrafting it with my agent, I thought, this is never going to be picked up. That no one cares about these characters except me. I care about them immensely. But that doesn't mean anybody deeply, really, like dementedly care about the whole time. Some of the some of the revisions were quite difficult, because I just kept thinking, I'm putting myself through all this work, but I just can't imagine that anyone is going to care. And then when it was picked up, I was amazed. I was delighted, but I also maybe every, every writer has this. I thought, no one's going to read this, because what, what is this? No one's going to know what to make of it. No one's going to know someone's going to want to hang out with this dead guy as much as I mean, right? I'm really glad that it did find and I'm always very surprised when I meet people, readers at events, who I wouldn't have expected to have picked up the book at all. Specifically, whenever I meet a much older man. And I think, did you think this was going to be a polar exploration book? If so. Really sorry. But then they're just really nice about it. They quite often tell me, I had one man tell me very sweetly about his wife, who'd very recently passed away. They'd been together for 40 years when he was reading the book and the like, the romance and the chemistry and he made and the joy he's like, it just reminded me of my wife. I know you're nothing like her. Hmm, the two characters in the book are nothing like us, but that sense of joy in this relationship really reminded me of

Traci Thomas 50:07

her. I love that for people who read the ministry of time and love it, what are a few other books you might recommend to them that are in conversation with your work?

Kaliane Bradley 50:18

One I would recommend is Beauty Land by Marie Helen Bettino, which I think, like it was one of my all time favorite books that I read last year. It was, it's a really magnificent book, and it's about a girl who it's never clear from the book whether it's true or whether she simply believes it herself, but she has to fax all through her life reports about life on Earth to aliens. She is one of the aliens she's been put on the she's been born onto this planet in order to report on the earth. And so she's got to fax them all through her life. And I think it is such a good book about in the same way that the Ministry of time is, you know, our society kind of viewed from the outside by people who have fallen into it. It's got that same kind of thing of society view from the outside by someone who feels as if she's fallen into it, but also so much about what it means to belong in a community, to belong in a group of friends, and how you make belonging when you feel like you maybe don't skip properly. It's just so such a beautiful book and so funny and so brilliant. I'm terrified of flying, and I forgot that I was on a plane when I was finishing off because I was crying so much. It's a wonderful book. Oh, I love that. I would also this is, this is quite a specific one, but British fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who is my all time favorite writer, died 10 years ago this coming March. He wrote a very famous series called the Discworld series, which is set on this world called the Discworld, which is kind of satirical parody of our world. And still, Traci is kind of satirical parody of fantasy worlds. But he wrote a book called Night Watch, which I'm actually re issuing as a penguin classic. I really feel very strongly about this book, a book called Night Watch, which is about one of the main characters of the discord series, who was thrown back in time to his own past, and kind of has to watch the histories that made him play out, not knowing whether he should change it, or what kind of difference that will make to him as a as a growing person, what kind of difference will make to the world that he grew up in? Like, what does what history needs to take its course, and at what point does his like other people around him interfere? So there's like, I feel like there's a quite a strong sense of Night Watch in the ministry of time.

Traci Thomas 52:34

I love those recommendations. Okay, just two quick last questions. One is, because this is our book club pick, and people are listening to this, some of them who have not read the book yet. What do you hope people will keep in mind as they read the ministry of time? I

Kaliane Bradley 52:50

wanted this to fundamentally be a hopeful book. I know it sometimes goes to some dark places, and I think people have reacted differently to the ending. But I hope that they, they think about time travel as something that also works the other way, right? Everything that we do can impact the future, and that's a really hopeful thing, not necessarily a negative thing. And I hope they, I hope they do think about, you know, the possible seduction of genre, and which genre they are feeling seduced by and what it might be hiding and what might happen pull it off and you look below the surface. And I also hope to keep in mind that Graham Gore is really hot, very

Traci Thomas 53:31

and the last question, if you could have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it

Kaliane Bradley 53:36

to be? I thought if I could have one person dead,

Traci Thomas 53:39

people always think that I have to figure out how to deliver that question better. I ask it every week, and people are always like, Who do I want dead? Like, well, not everybody, but Tommy orange famously was like, I thought you were asking me who

Kaliane Bradley 53:53

to kill? Well, I don't want Graham Gore to read I can tell you that. No, I don't think he'd like it not this

Traci Thomas 53:58

could be a bridge between the two of you.

Kaliane Bradley 54:03

I Do you know what? I'd quite like to give it to Michael Palin, partly because so he was part of this British comedy troupe who was very influential called Monty Python. Oh, okay, they were like a huge deal for the Brits. He is a writer himself. He wrote a book called Erebus, which is about the ship Erebus, which Graham sailed on. So I partly, I hope he'll like it. Partly, I hope that it's funny because, you know, he's one of the great British comedians and the great British comic actress. I hope it finds funny. But also, because he one of the sources he used, meant that he got graingle Age wrong in Erebus, and I would like for him to read it and then maybe issue a correction.

Traci Thomas 54:46

I love that so many layers to the reasoning. Well, Kellyanne, thank you so much for being here. And yeah, thank you for doing this and talking with us. And everybody be sure to listen on january 29 Where Jay Wortham and I are going to talk about the ministry of time, we're going to give all the spoilers. So all the things that Kellyanne and I were sort of like list, kind of toeing around, you'll get to be able to hear that in full and be able to think back on this conversation, or re listen to this and sort of see what we were alluding to, hopefully not too obviously. But Kellyanne, thank you so much for being

Kaliane Bradley 55:21

here. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure, and

Traci Thomas 55:25

everyone else, we will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to Kaliane Bradley for joining the show. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Alexandra primiani and Ava Karens for helping to make this conversation possible. Don't forget the stacks. Book club pick for January is the ministry of time by Kaliane Bradley, and we will discuss that book on Wednesday, January 29 with J Wortham. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and check out my substack at tracithomas.substack.com. Make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, please, please, please leave us a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media @thestackspod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok, and @thestackspod_ on Twitter, and you can check out our website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight, and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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