Poured Over: Sabrina Imbler on How Far the Light Reaches

By Jenna Seery / January 25, 2024 at 6:00 am

“I really wanted to find connection with these creatures that I’ll never meet…”

Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures is as unique and intriguing as the animals it explores. This book combines personal themes of race, gender, and family with reflections from the natural world in an unforgettable series of essays. Imbler joins us to talk about how they started writing about nature, the incredible and interesting creatures featured in their work, the connection between science and memoir and more with guest host, Jenna Seery.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.         

Featured Books (Episode):
How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler
The Underworld by Susan Casey
Bitch by Lucy Cooke
Vagina Obscura by Rachel E. Gross
The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan

Full Episode Transcript
Jenna Seery
I’m Jenna Seery, a bookseller and associate producer of Poured Over and today I am so excited to be talking about a paperback release of a book that I completely devoured in a sitting. It is How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler. It has everything you could possibly want in a nature book and a memoir in all the weird spaces that they meet in between. This book came out in December of 22. It’s coming out in paperback now. And I can’t wait for this book to find a new audience of people. So Sabrina, thank you so much for being with us.

Sabrina Imbler
Thank you so much for having me, Jenna, and for the kind words about the book.

JS
I always start with wanting to hear a little bit about the book from your perspective, because it’s easy to sort of like read the back and get some of the gist of it. But I feel like it always brings a little bit more to coming from the author themselves. So could you give us a little description of the book?

SI
Yeah, How Far the Light Reaches is, I always imagined it as sort of 10 portraits of sea creatures, where I am also, I suppose, like a portrait alongside them, where each essay or chapter in the book sort of dives into the life of a particular sea creature and sort of explores what resonances I find with my own life in the story at that sea creature. So there’s a deep sea octopus, a whale, a cuttlefish, a goldfish, which I’m always like, you know, the subtitle of the book is a life in 10 sea creatures. And I’m like, it’s a fresh, it’s a freshwater fish, but it lives in estuaries. So I feel like that That’s salty enough to, to count. But I’m always worried that someone will be angry when they read the first essays about a goldfish and they’ve been expecting, you know, some kind of amazing Barracuda or something.

I think if someone is that put off by the goldfish right away, maybe it just isn’t the book from the for them through the entire thing. Because it has a great opening this book, I mean, immediately the idea of you getting kicked out of a Petco is, I was immediately like, I gotta see where this voice is gonna take me because, first of all, solidarity for anyone who’s ever been kicked out of a store, you know, especially when you’re a kid and you feel like, it’s simultaneously like the worst thing that’s happened, but also maybe the coolest thing that’s ever happened to you. So I really felt that.

Have you been kicked out of the store?

Ok hearken back, mother, I’m sure you’re listening to this. So sorry, but I have been kicked out of a few stores in the Northtown mall in Blaine, Minnesota. Sorry about that to everyone for probably just like causing a ruckus. Also, I once got asked to leave a Burberry for touching a coat, which is real rude.

But you’re in the store, like that coats are there to be purchased, they should be touched, that’s rude.

That’s something that’s gonna go in my memory is once I was asked to leave for touching a coat. And I think the idea of starting with science and nature and the natural world and also comparing it to ourselves, and how we fit in this natural world feels like something that I think a lot of people can resonate with. And a lot of people can understand, though, I think you pick some creatures that maybe people aren’t going to be as familiar with. I had to Google a salp. I had never heard of that before. And actually, Microsoft Word doesn’t think it’s a real word.

That was a problem. In a lot of writing of the book, I had to turn off like AutoCorrect, on all of my Word docs.

So I wonder, I think it makes sense. It seems like you’re a person who’s been writing for a long time and has sort of always been someone putting out words as a way to communicate with the world. But I wonder how you sort of got started writing about nature and writing about the natural world in that way.

Yeah, thank you for that question. I guess when I was a kid, I was one of the many kids who wanted to be marine biologist. When I was still a kid, I realized that that would involve a lot of math and also, even as a kid I was extremely worried about climate change. And I had read in some like Yahoo article that marine biology was one of the most depressing careers to have like because of climate change and grappling with that reality and I was like, my disposition is too tender. Let me pursue some other some other line of work. And I think for some reason, I just kind of forgot that that was my interest. And so I always loved to write and in college, I wrote for the paper and sort of always wanted to be a journalist, I guess I was, you know, a lot of the texts that you read in class are about art or film or literature. And I sort of figured, like, those are the things that are worthy of writing about, and I just figured I would write something in those spheres. But when I was writing my thesis, in college, I decided to write about whales. Because I guess, when I was thinking about the things that inspired me. It was, you know, I loved books, I love movies, I love reality television, but the things that sort of compelled me to write and sort of capture this feeling that I had inside of me, that I didn’t feel like I was seeing on the page, or that I wanted other people to experience alongside with me with always in in the ways that I encountered animals, mostly sea creatures. And with whales, you know, I figured that’s, you know, that’s an animal that’s worthy of a thesis. And so I tried to write this whale thesis, and it ended up being a really wretched sort of piece of writing. There’s so much written about whales, I was reading all of these, you know, old white men who were considering whales and pondering whales and writing about whales, as we’ve written about them before. And I was like, I have nothing to add to this. And I also don’t really feel like I care, you know, about this sort of mythic notion of a whale, I feel like the wonder for me has always been in the close up of encountering, you know, like a strange slug, or, you know, being in a touch pool or seeing something like a scalp that’s washed up on the beach, and being able to hold it in your hands. And you know, I’ve never had like, an up close and personal experience with a whale. So I think the thesis was sort of the first time I started, my gears started worrying of like, oh, maybe, maybe I can write about nature and write about write about the ocean. And that was also the time of my life when I read 52 Blue by Leslie Jamison. And that was very influential and sort of figuring out like, you know, people around the world have connections to sea creatures, and maybe they’re just not being asked about it. Or maybe they don’t think of Yeah, like, the sea is the place to look for connection, inspiration. And so I think after that, I was like, Well, you know, why, why not write about the sea, but maybe not focused on whales as much even though there’s, there’s a whale in the book.

Like, alright, there’s still had to be one way I feel like it’s like a tax you have to pay if you’re going to write about sea creatures, you got to put a whale in there somewhere, otherwise, they don’t let you.

Absolutely yeah, that in the octopus, those are my tax.

I think it’s especially interesting, because, like you were saying, I think when you think about, okay, what could I be as a journalist these days, I think like pop culture writing comes first and foremost, to the mind, especially for people who are queer people who are not white people who do not fit the sort of preconceived notion of what like a science journalist would be, especially now where I feel like the sphere of science journalism seems to be shrinking. And there’s less and less sort of opportunity. Like with popular science and all of these things. There’s just less options to seek out new journalism and new voices in that way, that I feel like a lot of people are sort of turning to publishing books, as opposed to journalism, even though I think there is still a lot of really interesting voices being out there. They’re just a little bit harder to find now.

Absolutely. I mean, when I first started, and sort of trying to be a science journalist, I really felt like I didn’t belong, like I, I interned at a couple of magazines. And I had just come out. And I remember like, just at multiple magazines, having conversations with like, white men, co workers, who would just kind of like, asked me if I was gay, or asked me like, why I was gay, or, you know, telling me that I didn’t seem like someone who would be gay. And at the time, I was like, taking it in stride. I was like, these are just the kinds of conversations that you have in a workplace. And I think, yeah, spending several years like trying to hack it really struggling and really seeing no one who felt like me in those in those workings in those workplaces, I think was part yeah, as you mentioned, like a really, really big push for me to think about, well, maybe I should write a book. Like maybe this is the way where I can sort of be honest and open about my own particular identity and the reasons that it has led me to be interested in science and the natural world. I feel like a lot of us write the books that we would have wanted to see in the world when we were trying to get a job. And so I think that was also part of it.

And I think the way that you combine your own narratives with these scientific passages that have a lot of voice and a lot of passion behind And but are still telling you facts and hoping that they can expand what you know about even a creature you might know about, like an octopus, or something you may have never really thought that much about, especially in the sense that I think a lot of people, you know, if they’re thinking, Okay, I’m going to write a book about myself in comparison to animals, you know, they’re like, alright, lions and wolves, and like, these strong creatures, these, you know, well known creatures, and yet, there are so many people in the world, you know, people of color people of mixed backgrounds, queer people, trans people who they’ve never seen themselves in those, you know, really mainstream and out there things. They’re looking for themselves in those spaces in between.

Yeah, no, that’s a beautiful way to put it. And I think, you know, when I was first, because I have been working in science journalism, like since before I published the book, and I still work as a science journalist. And I was initially really scared of sort of trying to make these connections between myself and these animals and the science that surrounds them. And that helps us understand them. Because, you know, anthropomorphism is very much frowned upon in a lot of spaces. And it is, it’s always been a hot topic in science journalism, where I think over time, people have become much more comfortable with it and much more open about acknowledging the fact that we’ve just been doing it for like, a really long time, but maybe not like acknowledging it as anthropomorphism. And, you know, I think it really helped me when I would see, you know, examples of anthropomorphism in science journalism that I was reading that I would really hate, you know, examples of, like, you know, this cuttlefish is like, devious, because it’s in drag, or, you know, this cuttlefish is a transvestite or even like, do these cockroaches remind you of your, like ex-boyfriend and sort of these examples of like these universalizing claims of like, well, this animal is like these groups of people or, you know, in this way that we find strange or uncomfortable. And I think, what helped me, like sort of validate the project that I wanted to do in this book was to think, you know, I’m not trying to speak for all people, I’m not even trying to speak for our group of people, like, I’m just trying to speak for myself and my own particular experience. And I think giving myself permission to say, you know, maybe this will resonate with some people, maybe it will resonate with no one, but I, I believe in these connections, and I believe in, in sort of the relationship that I feel it the animals, and yeah, was, was really, I think, powerful in helping me find the characters in my book and also write my life alongside theirs.

And obviously, in a work like this, there’s so much more vulnerability that comes with publishing it, then, you know, a, if you had just written about the animals themselves, and not included your own connections in your own life, I guess, right along with it. But I think that there is now this audience of people who are clamoring for these stories that they need, and want the stories to reflect back on themselves. And I think even people who maybe have not ever lived any of the things that you have in your book that might say, I just need an insight into someone else’s life. And I think the community aspect of how you write, not in the sense of, like you said, saying, Okay, this is these people are this animal, but the fact that you say, this is the communities that I have found my family, my chosen family, I think there’s a lot to sort of unpack and to go deeper there for readers who are looking for something beyond just a science text.

Yeah. I mean, I really hope that the book would both reach, you know, queer audiences, mixed audiences, Asian audiences, and also reach people who maybe are just interested in learning about whales, or, you know, octopuses or something. Yeah. So I wanted to, I guess, help queer people if they didn’t already find themselves interested in like strange creatures, which I feel like, every gay person I know is like, oh, a strange bug. That does a crazy thing with its body. Like, tell me more. I people, gay people love crabs. You know, like any piece of nonfiction. I wrote a lot of it years ago now. And so it’s funny to you know, even when the hardcover launch happened, a lot of the stories felt very much like that was a thing in my past that I think about very tenderly, but you know, I don’t think about as much in my current body and my current self, but one of the essays that still feels so fresh in my mind is the last essay of the book, which is about this creature called the immortal jellyfish, which can age in reverse, where you know, it starts off life as an egg and then it grows into this kind of like palm tree polyp, and from this polyp stage, adult Medusas, which are the umbrella stage of jellyfish sort of like, bud off and live freely, and when the adult Medusas are injured, they can basically age back and become a polyp again and sort of revert to a more juvenile state. And when I was writing this book, I it felt like a perfect metaphor for the sort of second adolescence that a lot of queer and trans people experience and sort of the questions that a lot of us have of, you know, what if I could relive my childhood? What if I could be more open or what if I was in a safe that was space were for me to be open, you know, as I wanted to be in my identity, or my gender. And it was a really special experience. Because, you know, in early drafts of this essay, I just sort of reimagined my own childhood. But it was like the last essay that I worked on the book, and I was so tired, writing about myself. And I was like, I can’t be the only, like, I can’t be the only person in this essay. And so I sort of made a call to queer and trans writers who I knew and queer and trans friends and also just some strangers on Twitter who were very kind to respond and sort of reimagine their own childhoods, and it was really special to weave those together. since the book came out and doing, you know, events and, and festivals, and visiting colleges, especially, it’s been really special to hear people sort of share some of their own, like reimaginings, or things that the essay sparked in them, and it’s felt really special to sort of see, yeah, I guess how people have connected with the book. And I, you know, I feel like if I were to do like a revised edition, like it would be so special to include new or different stories, just this this sort of constant project of reimagining.

I think it something that strikes me so often when I was reading is how alive and changeable, so much of the language feels, even though you know, it is your voice telling us everything the entire time, there’s this sort of current not to, you know, go with it, that runs through it that, and I think you even say, you know, this is true, as I’m writing this, but this will not always be true. This has not always, this hasn’t always been true. You know, there is the sense I think, in memoir so often that there has to be this like ultimate truth, you cannot write a memoir until you have the ultimate truth about yourself. Or you cannot write about yourself, you know, and what if it’s not how you feel in 10 years, or one year or five minutes. So I think that having that sort of sense in in writing about the self and the journey. It’s like reassuring and sort of a relief to read like someone’s like, no, like, this is what I’m writing right now. But I can’t guarantee you that this is how I will always be.

Absolutely and no, that’s such a, that’s such a crucial part of the book when I sort of realized that which it seems obvious now. But I think I never would have been able to publish the book, if I were like, well, I need to figure everything out, because then I would be dead. That my advance was not big enough for me to just coast on that. But I think it was really helpful to just know, you know, every memoir that we encounter is sort of the stamp and time of the author’s life. And they’ve you know, grown and evolved beyond it. But that doesn’t make those memories or that memoir in that in that point of time any less true. And so I really wanted each essay in the book, because they really do span, like my life from my childhood to my, I guess, mid 20s When I was writing this book, and being very strict with myself about needing to know everything, which is so silly, in retrospect, but each I wanted each essay to feel true in as true to the self that was inhabiting that, that essay or living that experience as possible. And so even now, you know, I do feel a lot of distance between some of the essays, but when I, when I read them, I’m sort of transported to that time where it’s like, no, that’s actually that is what, those were my biggest fears, if you know, being dumped by my ex and this whaling museum or not really knowing, you know, my gender, which I guess is the question that I’ll be answering for the rest of my life, but to know Yeah, that it’s I think it’s interesting and important for writers to write through those experiences, because, you know, sometimes resolution never comes. But you want to be able to track the journey.

Especially like if we’re thinking about science writing, we are ready to accept when science tells us — we learned more, we discovered more what we thought it wasn’t quite that no, we know more now and it’s actually this, but yet we’re so reluctant to do that with ourselves. We think we have to there has to be one answer. And as soon as I find it, I’ll just know even though we don’t think about the rest of the world like that we’re ready to accept change, just not always with ourselves.

Yeah, I mean, I think if if the pandemic has taught anyone anything, hopefully it’s taught people something but you know, I really I think shed light on how messy science can be and how it is this constant like process of revision and clarification and you know, our will we tried this and we need to go back to this and, you know, I think that is also just as you said, like how we live our lives like it’s very messy. It is chaotic. Sometimes we change and sometimes we, you know, go back to something that we that we believed earlier. And yeah, we should be more generous with ourselves and letting ourselves change.

To hit on the science a little bit, I just have to know because I’m always I mean, I found myself googling so many things as I was reading, because I mean, I think anyone who is interested in the ocean and the many creatures that inhabit it, some of it just seems like it can’t possibly be true. Like, I mean, when I was reading about the cuttlefish, and you learn all these things that this one creature can do with its physical form, and you’re like, that just can’t possibly all be true, and I was watching YouTube videos. But I wonder how the research process works for you, as you write? Do you have you know, people that you reach out to fact checking all that kind of stuff? I’m always kind of wondering how all that comes together.

Yeah, so a lot of the creatures that exist in the book I learned about when I was just trying to be a science journalist. And I had this like, part time job on top of my other science internship where I was just writing kind of clickbait about the ocean. And I was writing like five aggregator stories a week, just but different creatures. And so I learned about a lot of animals that are in the book. Now, through that job, like I learned about the octopus, the crab, a lot of the, they’re always coming out like every other year with a new study that’s like a cuttlefish can also do this incredible thing, you know, like I learned about their abilities to, you know, change the texture of their skin, and sort of how they have these muscles back so that they can tense and then just have like, bumps in their skin for like an hour. And just, it’s not like an act of clenching, and just kind of like, they just changed their texture. And that’s just how it is for a while like it really, it really is incredible. So I you know, I had this cast of characters, but I’m really grateful that, you know, it took me a while to imagine and pitch and sell the book. And in that process, I also grew as a journalist, I think, gained a lot of skills of just being able to actually investigate these, these animals. So I read a lot of scientific papers. You know, I think a lot of I really owe so much to other science journalists who are writing about these animals. And I would sort of use their stories as a starting point and read the paper that they were about, or they were citing. And in some cases, I reached out to the scientists themselves to say like, Hey, I don’t really understand this section, or, you know, do you think this is an apt comparison to make, and I also in some of the essays, like went into history books, I, you know, it’s, it’s funny, science books are not really a good way to study science, because as you mentioned, like it’s always changing. And you if you come out with a book about DNA, one year, like next year, there’s just going to be so much more that you weren’t able to capture. So I really tried to focus on papers and focus on, you know, scientists who are still working in this field who I could sort of check things by. And in this process, I realized this sort of horrifying fact that most books aren’t fact checked, which I don’t think I knew going in and then realized, like, this onus will be upon me of finding a fact checker or funding a fact checker. So I was lucky enough to apply to grants and hire the science journalist, Hannah Seo, who’s also a wonderful poet. And they fact checked my book, sort of in the final stages where I would send them drafts, and they fact checked also my own personal life, which like, Thank God, they did, because there was a lot that I miss remembered or just kind of, you know, filled in the gaps. And it was interesting, where I was like, Well, I’m an objective investigator of the, you know, the cuttlefish, but I am not an objective investigator of my own life. And it was really helpful, not just for the truth of the book, but I think also just my understanding of myself, and, you know, analyzing myself sometimes as a creature if like, why is my instinct always to respond like this? You know, when I’m confronted with this gap in my memory, or why, you know, as a child that I always have this tendency of like, filling in Yeah, just filling in the gaps. So it was a really instructive process that made the book so much better.

It is like nerve wracking to hear you say that fact checking is not you know, like the norm. But then I also think about, like, a lot of the books out there and I’m like, yeah, that tracks, things slipped through the cracks. I also have to say that among, like, the things that I love about this book so much are the title and the jacket, I think that they work so well with everything, especially the title, which is about, you know, this idea of how far down the light reaches among the sort of zones or layers of the ocean. And it reminded me so much of reading Susan Casey’s book, The Underworld, and how she talks about the sort of life that happens, where the light can’t reach and how we, you know, I think spent so long thinking in science and in the world, like, okay, the only things in the ocean have to be where the light is because we can’t possibly know Imagine that there is a whole ecosystem beyond where the sun can reach. And then you apply that back on yourself. And you think about all the things living where the sun or the light may not reach. And I was like, Oh, I’m floored, I have to just sit down for a second. Think about it.

Thank you so much. I know, I really appreciate that they changed the title in the UK. And I also did have to fight a little bit for the title, because it crucially does not say sea creatures. The idea first came to me when I was on the Wikipedia for like, ocean, like back in the earliest, earliest stages of the project, where I was like, well, my book be called. And, you know, it’s just the sentence like the ocean is divided according to how far like light reaches. And I was like, that is so beautiful. And I mean, I think I think a lot of I think about the book is the love letter almost to the deep sea, you know, a lot of the creatures I write about are in coral reefs, or, you know, goldfish bowls, and ponds. But so many of my favorite creatures, and the most memorable ones in the book do live in the deep sea and are so far removed from any stretch of ocean that we know or are able to visit. And I think, you know, I found so many parallels with the ways that we fear the strangeness of the deep sea with the way that I think people fear the strangeness of queer communities, or trans communities, or any experience that is unlike their own. And I really wanted to find connection with these creatures that you know, I’ll never meet like, I would never be able to exist in this biome that is their home. And they also would like explode if they were brought up to my desk. But you know, we’re all perfectly adapted to our corners of the world. And, you know, I find the strange and often unsettling nature of their existence, like so fascinating, and like this really reverent point of connection between us. So I was very interested in thinking about, like, where there is no light, and where you know, those parts of our story, whether it’s the ocean or my own life that are the most inaccessible, like, what would happen if I tried to see it, and try to understand it on its own terms.

I think there’s something so poetic about loving something so much and like having so much connection with a creature that you could never be near, and it can never be near you. I think that really, that really hits somewhere like, yeah, that tracks. Yeah. I wonder to going back a little bit to the science, since so much of your work, and of this specific book, in general is about your connections with the queer community with gender with your own gender, is it ever a challenge working in the world of science where things are so heavily gendered with, like, the biological sex of creatures, and I feel like there’s a lot of language and sort of emphasis put on, you know, the male blank, does this the female blank? Making those sorts of connections and drawing parallels, how does that work for you in the sense of reconciling those things?

I mean, yeah, you know, science is historically very male centric, in terms of who is able to participate in it, who is celebrating it? Which animals you know, we study, like, so much of our understanding of species like and non-human animals is based in the male as sort of the prototype of the animal, but I was really lucky to, I guess, be working on this book, during sort of this golden age of feminist science, I think about Lucy Cooke, whose book, Bitch is about like the female of the species. And she talks about these amazing biological adaptations that many female animals have some of which are, you know, traditionally masculine, some of which are just crazy and strange and their own way. And you know, as I was also just working as a science journalist, like reporting, for my job, I, you know, I would write stories about a lot of, there’s kind of this like, renaissance of studying animal clitoris is right now. Just very cool. Um, a lot of that work is led by Patricia Brennan, who’s this amazing researcher who does, you know, basically a lot of the argument of like, well, it’s just easier to study the penis because it sticks out so you can draw it and she will make these amazing like silicone molds of vaginas. And clitoris is by like, filling the vaginal canal with silicone and then removing it like a lollipop. And just like seeing like, Oh, this is how, you know, a duck vagina is like swirly, you know, to accommodate the duck penis. And, you know, I wrote this story about like, how the clitoris of the death adder is shaped like a heart which is like very beautiful. And I was like, that’s a wild, I didn’t even know that they had a clitoris and you know, it’s capable of sensation and I was reaching out to all these researchers, you know, saying like, Have you heard of this? And a lot of people who study snakes were like, oh, yeah, like we’ve always known about this clitoris because it’s just there and it’s like hard to ignore, but we just haven’t been like, writing about it. And so I’m really grateful to like Lucy Cooke and also Rachel Gross, who’s book, Vagina Obscura is also about you know, female anatomy mostly in humans, but has some animals in it, who are sort of spreading the good word of like feminist science and an understanding of a female animals which also like, in, in this greater understanding of female anatomy in animals can also just comes the existence or the acknowledgement and celebration of intersex animals, because there are so many intersex animals, there are also so many in particular intersex snakes that are just like, oh, yeah, like, that’s just common, like many like, I’m not gonna put any numbers because I’m gonna get them wrong, but like, animals have immense amounts of biological variation. And it’s amazing to learn more about them, and also just know, like, how common it is. And I think it’s been very special for lots of people to sort of be able to see themselves in just that very direct parallels like, well, you know, there are intersex snakes, or, you know, there are animals that do, like, we’re their own anatomy, or biological sex and really interesting views.

I am excited for the idea and the notion that, that science and those different things are actually going to be recorded and reported upon and of interests, because I think there’s so much of this, you know, of this idea that, well, sure, we’ve, we’ve always known that, but we just didn’t think it mattered, we just didn’t think anyone would care. You know, it didn’t fit in what was already, you know, being reported being written about. And so now, hopefully, there are actually so many people that are interested, I think now, I mean, I know so many more people that are like, avid readers of nature books, because they’re interested in this world, I think, especially post pandemic, so many people are like, I need to understand the natural world better, and looking for ways to go beyond what I think is just already been out there and find these new and interesting ways to connect with the world around us.

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, and for anyone who’s interested, I really recommend Bitch by Lucy Cooke. It’s like such a fun and wild book.

Was there anything that really surprised you while you were writing or in the time that has elapsed since the hardcover has published that you like, wouldn’t have pictured when you first sat down to write it?

I guess something that’s been really special is when I’ve been, you know, visiting colleges and like talking to students, and sometimes teachers will sort of assign them their own project of like, if you like, you know, find an animal in the sea, or on land, or in the sky, or wherever. And, you know, find a point of connection with them. And it’s been so special, but also sometimes, like, jealous making to see the connections that students are making between animals that I’ve never heard of, or animals that I’ve always dismissed as being you know, oh, whatever, it’s a pigeon. And then like, someone will come out with this amazing connection to, you know, their, their homing, or the crop milk that pigeons produce. And I feel like, I guess I, you know, I worried, you know, when this book came out, I was like, like, I can’t do something like this again, because like, that’ll be so boring, like me making connections with animals, but just seeing the ways that other people have been making these connections and finding, you know, creatures that I am biased against, or, in my own way, it has just been so special and inspiring to my own project and sort of my ongoing reconsideration and search for connection with the animals that are around me. And I think that my heart will always be in the sea. But I have been thinking a lot about bugs. Because when I was writing this book, you know, I wrote it a lot during the pandemic, and it came out, you know, in 20, in late 2022, which was a time you know, where there was another COVID wave, and I was just kind of inside a lot and like always masking, and I just realized, you know, like, I’m not going to get a chance necessarily to see an octopus or a whale in which maybe that’s not related to COVID. But I was just spending a lot of time in my apartment and realizing that the creatures that I spend most of my time with are bugs, are the house centipedes that live in my apartment are the mosquitoes that I loathe. You know, the spotted lantern fly is that, you know, I’m smashing and stomping on around New York City. And I think it’s been really generative to sort of have gone through this exercise with animals that I already love, and I already am so fascinated by and to try to pose that challenge to myself, how can I build connection with creatures that I’m a little bit scared of, or I find a little bit gross? And I think, yeah, writing this book, I wanted people to sort of engage in this empathetic act of finding connection with creatures but it was also sort of like you know, oh, I still have all these biases myself all these creatures that mean me no harm or art and you know, so fascinating and their own biology but I, I should be becoming closer with so I think my current thought project is like, how can I become closer with the bugs around me and that’s not one that I anticipated I would ever try.

The house centipedes. might be the most challenging for me, they really are wild.

They certainly have a lot of legs. Yeah.

And then there’s just like so little of like substance to them that it baffles me. But I think my thing that comes to mind when you talk about that is, and anyone who knows me listening will laugh because I’m terrified of birds. And yet in my life, in my life, I keep, like encountering these instances where I need to either be near them or talk about them. And I’m like, I historically have just always been terrified of birds, but I’m like, maybe I need to try and loosen that up and let some of that go.

You know, what helped with house centipedes is I looked up a lot of like, macroscopic photography just of their faces, right? Because like, if you normally see this creature, which kind of looks like two false eyelashes, like stuck together, like skittering on your ceiling, like that is not a great way to meet. But if I’m like, you know, I was thinking like, as a human, where do I find connection, it’s like the faces of other people. Like I look at their eyes and look at, you know, their mouths, I look at their, what everything that makes their face and I was looking at these spaces that house centipedes like I was like, actually, they’re very cute, like, they have these really big eyes. And something that I love about arthropods, is there basically all leg and different arthropods have just modified their legs to do different things. And so like, how centipedes have these mandibles that helped them bite, but they’re, they’re actually just legs. And then they have these antennae that are also just legs that are like really skinny, and just like more sensory. And I was like, that’s so cool. They’re just like this little pocket knife of like, all these different modifications. And, you know, if I just think about the fact that they, you know, I yeah, I think it was just helpful to sort of be like, what, where can I find common ground with this creature? So I don’t know what that would look like for you and birds. I’m also like, not like a big bird person. But yeah, I know a lot of people are.

I am just always just like, I don’t want to get in anyone’s business. But I mean, maybe thinking about the centipede as like Swiss Army legs, makes them a little bit more like palatable to me. But as long as they just don’t come like too close to my physical person. And then we’re fine. I always think to, especially for authors that have had their books out for a little bit in hardcover, and now sort of with a paperback release, a lot of times that can help really reach a whole new crowd of people. So who are you hoping finds this book?

Yeah, I mean, I think like, you know, a lot of the people who I sort of pitched us like, these are people who are going to really be interested in the book, you know, like science journalists. You know, people who love the ocean, whatever. I think that a lot of those people have found the book. And I’m really grateful, I think I would really hope that this book, finds like, I guess younger readers, I think a lot of the college kids who I’ve met over the past year, like it’s been really special to see them connect with, especially essays that I wrote when I was going through that experience. And I was, you know, I feel like so starving for self discovery and some kind of identity that would be helpful and figuring out how I navigate the world. But I also think I would love for this book to find a lot of older readers, I would love for some Boomers to read this book, I think, you know, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the work of Hugh Ryan, who is this wonderful queer historian whose book, The Women’s House of Detention was like one of my favorite reads this past year, and he’s been writing a lot about sort of a lot of the fear that people have about, you know, why are so many people trans now, why are so many kids trans? Like, what are all these gender identities? And I mean, I really appreciate how he sort of breaks down, you know, it’s like, these are all related to the time and place that we find them that we find ourselves in like, these labels are going to change. They were different 100 years ago, they will be different in 100 years. They’re just the tools that we have right now. I I’m really proud of how in the book, I do write about a lot of sort of my own quest for finding my racial identity, finding my gender identity finding my queerness. And I hope that it you know, if it were if it were to be reach older readers, maybe who have had these questions, but buried them a long time ago, or trying to understand their own kids or the kids around them. I think that would be a wonderful use of the book.

I think that’s great. I think there’s so much community. I know I mentioned that before. But there is this sense when you read this, that there is a great way to understand someone who may not be like yourself, but also, I think when we’re all comparing or looking at these sea creatures, there’s just something there that we’re looking for. I think there’s so many people searching and looking to understand now. And I think there’s no better way to then through words through literature through memoir through fiction through all these things. There’s something so connective about looking for someone’s experience that may not be your own, or someone’s experience that might be like half a step ahead of you or a step ahead of you, or three years ahead of you, that you’re like, oh, okay, I’m gonna see what that’s going to be. So I think that there’s a lot of people who can come at the book in different ways and still find a home in the pages.

Just as you said, like, I you know, I feel like a lot of people. Like, it’s so great to see your someone like you represented on screen or in a book. But if, if you’re not finding that, like, no better way to look them in the ocean, which is like, you know, I guess the most creative space to find connection?

Yes, I think anyone, if they really sat down and just like, googled sea creatures, there’s going to be something for them, because there is the wildest things anyone could imagine living there. Yeah. So I have to ask, because I’m nosy. And I have to know. Is there anything coming up for you next? Is there anything on the horizon we can look forward to?

Well, I spent this past year, I think, recovering from the act of writing that book, and also just focusing on some personal things, but I think I really just have been thinking a lot about bugs. And I am excited to in the new year, start working on a second book about bugs. And when I say bugs, just in case there are any scientists out there I’m not talking about the order Hemiptera which refers to true bugs, but just arthropods, the sort of larger class of invertebrates that have exoskeletons crawling around in various places them in the sea, a lot of them on land, but I think I while How Far the Light Reaches felt for me like a an exploration into finding connection and better understanding, survival and adaptation and trauma, I’m hoping that this bug book can be an exploration of possibility and joy and community so I’m excited to write it I maybe there will be some sad things but I yeah, bugs is what’s next.

I can’t wait. I’ll have to I’m going to start preparing now. So that by the time it’s out, I’ll be ready and not too frightened to read it. So thank you so much for joining us today. How Far the Light Reaches is out in paperback. I hope everyone gets their copy because they it’s something really special.

Thank you so much for having me. Jenna, this has been an absolute delight.