Get Booked – Thomas Cirotteau, Lady Sapiens 311022

Hello, you are listening to me, Hazel Butterfield, and this is Get Booked, the women's and men's radio station. Welcome to today's show. Now today we are going to be discussing Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women by Thomas Surretto, Jennifer Kerner, and Erik Pincus, translated by Philippa Hurd. It is published by Hero Press and was released on the 12th of September of this year, and you can buy it in paperback for £12.99. Now, what visions do we have today of the prehistoric woman? Tradition has painted her as a helpless child carer in contrast to the male hunter as protector and provider, with little archaeological insight or interest to challenge this cliché— until now. Pioneering new book Lady Sapiens unearths the position of women in prehistory from the androcentric narratives of the past, shedding new light on prehistoric women's roles as a more nuanced balance between domestic duty and her involvement in community survival. Thomas Suratow, Dr. Jennifer Kerner, and Erik Pintès's investigation encompassing the study of skeletons to cave paintings 'Female Figurines to Agricultural Tools and Ornamental Jewelry' offers a groundbreaking archaeological analysis of women in hunter-gatherer societies during the Paleolithic period. As a culmination of archaeological research spanning France, Germany, Central Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, this book unveils a new global and plural view of prehistoric women across the world, illuminating for the very first time ever a new theory of our origins. A little bit about the authors: Dr. Jennifer Kerner teaches prehistory in the anthropology department at Paris Nanterre University and is responsible for multimedia communications at CNRS, the National Center for Scientific Research, and is an Associate Researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the Museum of Humankind, also in Paris. Thomas Sorelto is an author and director. He created and co-wrote the documentary Lady Sapiens. He also directed the documentary Who Killed the Neanderthal?, which he co-wrote with Erik Pintès and Jacques Malaterre. This film received a number of prizes in France and abroad. It is Thomas who we're going to be speaking to on Get Booked today. And the third co-author, Erik Pinkers, is a historian and journalist. He co-wrote the documentary Lady Sapiens, is editor-in-chief at Historia magazine, and has authored Who Killed the Neanderthal? and Prehistory. He also co-wrote the documentary Who Killed the Neanderthal? Right, as promised, today we will be discussing the co-authored book Lady Sapiens by Erik Pincus, Jennifer Koerner, and Thomas Siroto, which I should say in a French accent but I'm too scared to do so, which is breaking down stereotypes about prehistoric women. Now, modern archaeology is trying to catch up with modern techniques and provide us with revised information while debunking male-concocted depictions of Homo sapiens as superior in part of our evolutionary history, of being the main provider. Knowledge that has been formed for popular opinion to suit old tropes and been developed in the media created by and for men. Ideas that we have all adopted as assumed knowledge. But Lady Sapiens provides us with the ethnographic evidence to support different version of events, a richer narrative that doesn't just make male-dominant assumptions. And in cases of where gender roles cannot be accurately assigned due to conflicting evidence, it is realistically stated as such. Open-ended questions are better than assumptions based on biased or lazy information. An enlightening and refreshing approach to looking at our evolutionary history from the prehistoric era Joining me on the show today, as promised, we have one of the authors of Lady Sapiens, Thomas Cirotto, to discuss the book and its findings. Hello Thomas and welcome to the show. Hello Hazel, and, uh, I'm very glad to join you on the show. I'm very glad to have you here. I really enjoyed reading Lady Sapiens. There's a lot of information in there and I've loved finding out about how we've possibly been misinformed in the past, and it's, and it's nice to actually understand our true history. I think it's important for men and women, but for you personally, why do you think it is important that we understand prehistory? Well, the, the main idea is, is because, uh, at the first, uh, started when we, when we started in 2000, in 2018, uh, the, the, this this project on Lady Sapiens, we were just wondering why we always talk about men in prehistory, you know, man the hunter, who goes in the land and hunt these big game, hunt this mammoth, all sorts of animals. And where was the woman, you know? How could it be possible that women didn't play a role inside our evolution? I mean, they carry us for 9 months and after nothing happens? That was just not the right picture for us. So it was just a way of finding things. You said about ethnographical, but it's also science. We made our story about science and what science told us about women. And because science doesn't have always all the answers about a lot of questions, we try to go to the ethnographic records to better understand what those results of science told us, because ethnographic is, is the best way to interpret those, those science findings. Those very real evidence. It makes a way of narrowing the fields of possibilities that can be said about those scientific findings. And the other things also on Lady Sapiens is that we wanted to go on the fields with those scientific, with those archaeologists, sorry, that are working on the ground, digging out some evidence, or inside the labs, making analysis on the DNA or on the tooth or teeth, on the skulls with the inner ear. So we wanted to be the closest we could get to these people who are the scientists who are researching on women. And that's what we've done with Lady Sapiens. So yes, it's important for us to better understand our history and in extension, our prehistory, because, well, it's our origins in a way. It's not all only to say that we, because it has been done in that way in prehistory, so it's normal that we are now on this track. But it's a way that can be said that, well, you know, nothing is written on rocks and you have to interrogates the past always at the light of the present. And the light of the present told us that it has been a lot of discovery. Science told us lots of new things about women. And it has to be said, it has to be, you know, brought back to the public. It does. And quite rightly also states in the book that you've made some incredible discoveries. And yet in 20 years' time, technology will have moved on and we might make further discoveries, or certain, as I said in the introduction, open-ended questions. Maybe we will be able to find answers to these questions. But well, just to be true, I, I'm not a scientist, I'm just an author and a filmmaker, so I'm not doing these discoveries. I, I make those scientific talks about their discoveries on women. This is— we, we are just messengers on this knowledge that they found and making them like a synthesis of those research and brought them to the public. And in such a kind of relatable way, and some of it was actually quite entertaining. And also it's just what was quite important is actually debunking a lot of the misinformation, especially when we see all these movies and the many movies that were mentioned in Lady Sapiens about, you know, these, these visions of sexualized women going around in bare cloth which barely just kind of covered their breasts and whatnot. And then, and yet the book actually says, well, you know, it would have been freezing. They would have been covered up. And to show that they were actually successful and useful, they would need to be more plump to show that they're good hunter-gatherers. You know, if you were skinny and barely covered, it meant that you were not very good at sourcing what you needed to keep you warm and to keep you sustained in terms of food. So, you know, it's so obvious that certain depictions have been created purely for visual appetites in films. Yeah, I mean, well, every period has his own fantasy. I mean, has his own representation. We have to be aware of that, even for us, you know, us today, we have also our representation of the social intercourse between man and woman, and we are, in a way, our way of thinking things are also based on our contemporary life. So we have to be aware of that. But you must also think about what has been discovered in science. And this is the main point. When archaeology started about more than 150 years from now, they didn't have all those discoveries, all those analysis, and they lived in a very different society as we are living now. So they interpret with the lights of what they knew and with the lights of how they live, and this is why they made those assumptions. So, well, now we have lots of more technological way of finding things, like the DNA, like what I said about the cranium, about the inner ears or the teeth. And so, and even how to do to difference a male fossil from a woman fossil. We know very much better how to do that. And it makes very things changing about how we can feel this, or imagine those prehistoric ways of living. So, we have got to be aware of that, but we cannot change, we cannot do anything about it, you know. It's sure that maybe in 20, 30, 200 years from now, well, we will have a lot more information, a lot more findings that maybe could change what we just say in Lady Sapiens. But some of these findings are scientifically very strong. So I don't think a lot will be changed. But I mean, it's science, you know, science is always a story about interrogating the evidence to see if yes, are they true or not? Are they really true? And it's very interesting to see that all scientists are always discovering new things. They are. And although you said you don't think it's going to change that much, I mean, Get Booked on Women's and Men's Radio Station, it's all about good mental well-being. And I think it's very empowering actually for men and for women to understand their true path and how we have kind of the part we've played in evolution. And, you know, rather than just sit there going, "Oh, we used to be that, that wasn't very inspiring," I think it's great for us all to hear about how we all had a very important part to play and how, you know, life is different for everybody. And we were all— I'm sure there were people in prehistory, I'm sure there were lazy men and lazy women and inspiring men and inspiring women and some that kind of created incredible things and some who were just happy to just kind of plod along and, you know, hang out by the fire and draw pictures. We're not saying in Lady Sapiens that, you know, every woman were capable of, you know, hunting, know all the knowledge about plants, was aware of the cycle of life and how to prevent to be pregnant, you know. No, Lady Sapiens is just a synthesis of all those fields of possibility that a pre-circular woman can have. Okay. So you have to think about Lady Sapiens more than a plural woman that can, you know, the period we're talking about is a very long period. It started minus 45,000 years from now until minus 10,000 years from now. So that's 35,000 years. That's a very long time. And it's all over the world. You know, it started in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, in South America. And so we cannot say that every woman was this Lady Sapiens, this you know, women that can do all those things? For sure not. Well, our climate in modern day has changed drastically in 100 years alone. Imagine the effect of the differences, you know, between 35,000 years. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, time is— time is— I think today, because of the communication and time is going faster and faster, but— and so maybe the changing in society in those prehistorical time didn't change so quickly as in our society today, but in 35,000 years it has to— surely it's not the same picture, and we can see it also inside those— the archaeological site, I mean, We have more or less 3 or 4 periods that archaeologists see in those sites, which have very different culture. And the more they dig the earth, the more they find some difference, tiny difference in terms of geography. So it's sure that all those people in this very wide time has very different way of thinking, culture, cosmogony, that's it, that's the way of representing the world, the life, the surrounding, their environments, also social life, the way men and women deal with each other. But what in a general way, And that's what all those researchers told us is that it has to be a cooperative between men and women to survive. Those group who has the best chance to survive has to have this cooperative way of living between all the members in the group and between men and women. So it's not the man who is the dominant or the woman who is dominant. It's more a non-hierarchical society inside this Upper Paleolithic period, which is the name of that period I've just talked about. And there can be specialists on how to make some tools, or how to deal with, with the, the skin of the animal, or to draw some of those beautiful paintings on the wall. That's sure, but that doesn't mean that there could be inside those groups, these human groups, some kind of hierarchy. It's more than a way of dealing with their— what they were doing the best. And so you're good at that, okay, so you do that, and we take care of the other things because you're good at that. Yeah, and there was definitely a lot in the book about people just appreciating who was good at what, making sure that, you know, they thrived in that kind of area. Now, One of the discoveries in the book that I really did love, or definitely a point of view, was, you know, we've heard about how women are sent to other tribes, they're kind of bartered off, or, you know, whether it's to maintain good relationships between tribes or whatnot. The book explains that, you know, that the actual role of the woman going into another tribe to marry is actually to it's like a peacekeeper, and it's— it's— they're there to help people understand about the tribe she's just come from and building bridges and building appreciation of each other and forming relationships between tribes rather than maintaining harmony. And that's an incredibly important role rather than, oh, she was just married off to somebody else, which is such a simplistic view, a view that many people might have actually believed was very, you know, a singular goal. But in fact, the role was so important to go into a new tribe and forge relationships. Yes. What's interesting about that is that it was not always the case. I mean, what they see in ethnographical records is that, yeah, women left their group to go to another group to build relation between groups of hunter-gatherers. That's right. But what we saw in the DNA evidence is that it's not the case in prehistory. We cannot see a pattern or the same pattern always. It seems that either the man or the woman move from group to group to build their own group or to travel. So what the genealogists named that is either a patrilineal or a matrilineal society. Yeah. So either it's from the woman who gave birth and who stay at the same place or in the same group, Or either it's the men who stay in the group and who make this lineage. But in prehistory, it's not always the woman who is moving from group to group. And we can see also that as an equality system between groups, we know that groups were meeting in some places, like we talk in the book, like Gönnersdorf. Of Andernach, which is just two sites in Germany near the River Rhine, and where archaeologists see that there were lots of groups of people coming from all over Europe. I mean, that's incredible because those objects they found inside Gonesdorf comes either from the Mediterranean Sea, which is more than 1,500 kilometers from Gönesdorf, which is very, very long. I mean, and they made drawings on those rocks that they found in Gönesdorf of seals. And seals are from the west coast of France. So that's also more than 1,000 kilometers from Gönesdorf. And we can see also object in Polish sites that resembles very strongly of some objects found in Skanderesborg. So you have those, this very wide territory where people exchange objects, things, and surely person also to make, you know, social mating or social communication to build this culture that we saw in Ganasol. So it's amazing to see that without highways, without roads, without anything to transport, they, at that period, they were, people were capable of moving all around Europe, even by foot, which will take, I mean, 6 months, 7 months, 8 months. It's incredible. Yeah, absolutely incredible. I really want to know, actually, because obviously you co-wrote Lady Sapiens, but you also directed the documentary, which we'll talk about the documentary shortly as well. When, when authoring the book and directing the documentary, what in your opinion was your favorite discovery regarding Lady Sapiens? Well, it's very difficult to say about that because I mean, I love them, every one of them, you know, it's so fascinating to see all what those scientists discovered to do and somewhere so tiny things can tell so much, you know, for example, the tooth, I mean, on those tooth they can tell how much time Did the woman milk the baby? That's just, well, that's fascinating. I mean, they analyze the calcium and the strontium inside the tooth, inside one tooth, and they can say, well, this man or this woman who has that tooth was milked from 2, 3, or 4 4 years with, by her mother. That's, well, that's fascinating for me. You know what I mean? I mean, I was reading that. Yeah. And at some point, yeah, it was unbelievable the amount of detail we could go into just because of the teeth. Yeah. And so, and it tells something that, uh, at first sight we weren't, uh, imagining that it could be possible. You mean it's, it's intimacy in, in very strong way of living. It's the everyday life. A mother who is carrying her child, how much time did she meet them? Well, we know now. We can know now, which is amazing. Another thing is how to tell when you have a cranial skull, how to tell which one is a man and which one is a woman based only on the form of the cochlea. The cochlea is your organ of hearing. It's how you hear the sound. And because woman has a different shape than man, we can tell only by going deep inside the bone with a special tool, which is called a CT scan, that can rebuild in 3D the form of this cochlea. We can say that with 95% of accuracy, so that's very strong accuracy. I mean, that's very strong evidence that it's either a man or a woman. And it works only also on child, which is also a new way of analysis of those false sites that came throughout the time. And it's much more, and it's not invasive, it's not destructive, and it can tell this, and it can tell you this result either on very old population because it has been tested on Homo erectus, on early Homo, which is more than 1.5 million years ago. So it's just Amazing to know that. And another factor that I think also, yeah, I would just another example of what they found, it's on DNA and on the physics on those men and women from the Upper Paleolithic. They found that all around Europe, and that's all during that whole big period of the Upper Paleolithic and also a little bit after in the Neolithic, which is the period where men and women settled inside villages, take care, they start the agriculture, they start dealing with animals. They were black-skinned. And every people in Europe during this Upper Paleolithic period, the last hunter-gatherers who walked through the land were dark-skinned people. We knew that the first one, they came from Africa, they settled in Europe, so they were dark-skinned. That's normal. Before that discovery, scientists thought that because of the latitude, they will change colors because they need a way to better synthesize this vitamin D, which is very important for making our bones strong and our teeth. And, the only way of, in our latitude, which has very less sun, than in Africa, it's to change the color to a lighter to grasp those rays from the sun that built our vitamin D inside our skin. But the thing is, those people eat a lot of fat from the animal, and that fat from the animal contains a lot of vitamin D. And so this is why they still have this dark skin all through the Upper Paleolithic period, and after this period until the 2 millennium in the Neolithic. And they changed, their skin began to get lighter because they changed their way of feeding. They changed their food. They changed from animal fat to cereal, and cereal did not have any vitamin D inside. So they, at that point, they have to find a way of— their biology has to find a way to build this vitamin D, which is very important, as I said. And that's the only way to do it. So that's fascinating. Also, we have to change our point of seeing those people. They have dark skin and they have blue eyes. I think that's really important for everybody to, to kind of understand and appreciate as well. So there are so many different reasons as to why prehistory is important. And, you know, we should know where we've come from and how we have evolved and just how incredible we were so many thousands of years ago. I mean, life on Earth began, what, 3.7 billion years ago, and we're talking about a relatively short time period ago, 45,000 years ago. Yes, yes. Well, you know, in some museums they try to transform this very deep period of time of the birth of the Earth. And where were we inside? If the Earth started on the morning, you know, at midnight, we will be at the last Second, I mean, we're nothing if we grasp the whole picture of the history of Earth. We were just a small species, which, well, we get very good at it. I mean, we now 7 billion on Earth, us humans, so we managed to find our way. But yes, that's fascinating. And those people in prehistory are fascinating also because we have this image of, you know, they were dressed in rags, very dirty and living inside of cave, not so nice. And so, but we found when we interrogate the scientists and the prehistorians, they say, well, they have society, they have culture, they know how to build the very nice houses, I mean, huts and tents. They know how to dress. They have needle to sew all those beautiful pieces of animal skin. They all know how to weave so they could have also underwears or nets or or bags and to carry things. They also have lots of ornaments, beautiful ornaments like pieces of animals or flowers, what we could interpret as flowers or beads. And they put on their faces, on their skin. So they are very developed culture. And so, the image of prehistorical people made of rags and living in dirty area, it's completely false. They have their belief, they have their culture, they have their way of wearing things because they know they are in a group which they carry their identity on them. And identity is a very strong way of existing. So these were strong people and these were strong women. Yeah, undeniable. I'm sure there's many women listening right now going, yeah, we knew we were, we always have been. While doing your research for the documentary, did you find that there were any similar books books regarding the history of women in prehistory and their role in society? There's a few books on women in prehistory written in French, written by Claudine Cohen, for example, who is a researcher, a French researcher, who made a lot of things on women in prehistory, but it's written in French. I don't know if there's any translation in English. You have this book also on the Invisible Sex from Jim Adovasio and Olga Soffer, which is an American book, and it's very interesting because it tells you the role of women inside those groups of humans, and women have an essential role because they made all these perishable crafts that like bags, like nets, like underwear, like all sorts of weaving that have very few fossilized things because when you make things with skin, animal skin, made of wood or— What, plant-based? Fiber plants and fiber plants. They disappear with time. And this is why also maybe the first archaeologists were saying that the evolution depends only on man because all those material have disappeared and they only saw pieces of rocks, pieces of bones, and they thought that, well, traditional activities of women, we cannot see them, so we can't say anything on them. And in this book, The Invisible Sex, researcher Gemma Dovazio and Olga Soffer, they found lots of evidence of activities of these women in prehistory, like we we made a small chapter in Lady Sapiens, like the, these imprints of tissue of weaving in the Dorní Vrstonice site in Czechy. And that's incredible. Also, it is. Right. And I'd really like to now discuss with you the documentary that you directed on Lady Sapiens, which was the starting point of the project. I mean, it's a very funny way of making this book, but normally the book is big before and we make the documentary on the book, but that's the other way around for Lady Sapiens. We had this project of making the documentary at first, and because we made that documentary, we went to an editor and proposed this project to make a book about it. And our French editor said, "Well, that's a good idea. Let's do it." So, we gather all this material I've recorded for the documentary. And Jennifer, the lead writer, takes all this material and we work with her to build the story and she wrote it. So this is how it, how it worked. And the other thing on Lady Sapiens is that we, we would, we wanted to, to offer to the audience a new way of seeing those prehistoric times. And so we used image from a video game, which is called Far Cry Primal, which is a Ubisoft game. You're playing a hunter and you manage to find your group inside a very vast territory, and so it's a very violent game. And so, but we managed to, inside this wonderful environment completely virtual to find all those activities that the artists from Ubisoft brought to life. And it was fascinating, you know, to illustrate the everyday life of those women and men living in such an incredible environment that they recreate completely based on, I mean, based on scientific facts. Based on scientific discoveries also. So yeah, that was a very incredible experience as a filmmaker to match the documentary sources that I filmed on different sites all over Europe, also in Israel. And all those scientists, the words of all those scientists, and these images from that video game Far Cry Primal to build a unique way of telling this story about women in prehistory. And how can people find out about this documentary? Is it— has it been translated into English? Is it something that we can— Yes, there is an English version of the documentary, which is also called Lady Sapiens. It has been broadcast on PBS. So that's the public broadcast of the United States. I don't think that it has been broadcast in UK. But maybe it's on some VOD streaming platforms. That's the— now I think that's the only way to see it, to search it on VOD streaming platforms. I think there might be definitely segments of it on YouTube. So people can just go and search it out there. And I think it's, I think it's a nice way to kind of complement reading the book as well. And I must say, congratulations on the book. I think you probably enjoyed writing it as well. It's a fantastic, in-depth scientific view of our history, or of our prehistory, in fact. Yeah, Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women. I must ask you though, Thomas, are you a fan of reading yourself? Uh, yeah, well, I'm not a very, uh, good reader. I mean, I, I read very, uh, um, I'm not so quick at reading, but I like to read. Yeah. Oh, good. Do you know what, this is the thing though, isn't it? Books are so much— long are the days where you have to love reading to enjoy literature. You can take it in, in documentary form, Audible, uh, there's so many different ways that people can actually consume books these days. I think it's absolutely fantastic and definitely, uh, more open to to everybody. Um, Thomas, thank you so much for joining us here on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you and learning about it. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. And, um, please listeners, go and buy the book Lady Sapiens. You can buy it from all good bookshops. And go and check out the documentary as well. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us here. Thank you so much, Hazel, to invited me. You are very, very welcome. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. That was Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women by Thomas Siroto, Jennifer Kerner, and Erik Pincus. Now it's time for my latest book reviews, which you can find on hazelbutterfield.com. The More That You Read, The More Things That You Will Know. This was published on hazelbutterfield.com on the 19th of October. Of this year. As we know, a well-read woman is a dangerous creature, a fabulous quote from A Wallflower Christmas. First up is recent guest on the show, Can I Stray? by Jenna Adams. Sometimes a book just cuts through you and gets you really assessing everything you know or thought you knew, and more importantly, getting you questioning right and wrong. This book had me deep in nostalgia, reminiscing about first loves, first date, relationship, emotional minefields and the dreaded ambiguity. Exploring the complexities of young love, wanting to be accepted, to be mature and the raging hormones. How the relevance of age differences that 10 years later evaporates are so open to speculation. The difference between right, wrong, grooming, and authenticity. Is our past not what we thought it was? We don't know what we don't know, or at least we didn't. Knowledge can be earth-shattering and completely change our past. Knowledge can make us feel vulnerable, but yet also help us to understand the issues we have bumbling under the surface. A very insightful read that throws our history into speculative oblivion, and rightly so. It explains a lot of issues many women and men are currently dealing with. Was it me, my fault, or my issues? Great book, please do go and check it out. You can also listen to the interview with Jenna on the Get Booked SoundCloud. Next up, there is The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent. Claire wants a new start when she starts university in Edinburgh, where nobody knows her and the constraints of her past will not affect who she can be. To be self-efficient and feel like you belong surely isn't too much to ask for. Then she finds a group that provide excitement, escape from mundanity, and that enigmatic dynamic that makes you want to be accepted, and they do so want her. How intoxicating. But all friendships have unique dynamics, some more complicated than others. I guess a lot of friendships are based on how much that works for us. Do we really know our strengths and our true selves? Fighting against who we naturally are is exhausting. Fighting against who we are told we are is confusingly soul-destroying. A chilling novel that explores many levels of nature versus nurture. An addictive read that could easily produce a sequel, and I hope it does. Then we have A Single Bald Female by Laura Price, another guest on Get Booked. And aside from bawling my way through it, I loved it. A work A work of fiction inspired by the author's real experience of being diagnosed at the way too young age of 29 with breast cancer. The camaraderie of chemo club, navigating other people's uncomfortableness, how it changes your life plan, how you look at life and how your friends become a circle of those who are ill or may probably die soon. It would be trite to say life-affirming, but in the world where we are too busy to focus on the now, Single Bald Female helps us place the present more prominently while, dare I say, schools us entertainingly on being less annoying to our friends with cancer. You can check out Laura Price at laura-price.com. Then finally Finally, we have Before and Laughter by Jimmy Carr, a self-help book by a comedian who is as dry-witted as they come. Brilliant. Via Audible, obviously, for the full effect. Before and Laughter talks about mistakes and owning them, and fears and understanding them, our flaws, and very importantly, finding humour in them. If we can laugh at ourselves with generosity and own it, then what other people do matters less, or it can do with practice. Life can be hard, it can also be hilarious, so why not combine the two? I absolutely loved these books and they were all a mixture of entertaining and enlightening while crucially sharing important knowledge, and that is the joy of Good Books. As ever, if there is a book that you are releasing and you'd like me to read it, please do get in touch with me at hazelbutterfield.com. Or maybe you've read a book recently and you absolutely loved it and you'd love to have a review read out on Get Booked for Women's and Men's radio station. Please do get in touch. Right now we have Helen from Literally PR, an award-winning company that over the last 10 years has worked on over 400 campaigns, helping hundreds of authors over the past decade to just achieve their long-term goals through PR, marketing, and branding. You can find out more at literallypr.com, and I'm not going to delay any further. Helen, hi! Hello! Thanks for joining us on Get Booked. You've put so many fantastic authors my way who have been featured on Get Booked here at Women's and Men's Radio Station, and now we have you. Well, aren't I lucky to be here? I feel like I'm sort of, there's a little bit of imposter syndrome really going on here because usually I'm sort of putting authors to you and now I'm here chatting. I feel a bit like the tables have turned a little bit, Hazel. Hasn't it just? But if we want to talk to people about a love of writing and publishing and all the incredible books out there, who better than the person that's getting the books out there? Well, thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, basically every part of my job involves books, so I spent a lot of time reading, but as well as Literally PR, I'm the co-founder of Hashtag Press, which is a publishing house, and we have an imprint for underrepresented writers called Hashtag Black, and then I'm also the co-founder of The Author School, which helps to educate and empower authors so that they make the right decisions about how to get published, and once they are published, what they should next do. And then I'm also the co-founder of the Diverse Book Awards, which is in its third year now, and I'm doing those side of the business. With a prize-winning author called Abiola Bello. So I have— all roads basically lead to books, so I kind of have all things covered when it comes to publishing now. Oh, you definitely have a fantastic client list. I must say, I've kept up quite a few friendships with some of the authors that you've put my way. Ah, that's nice. And it is, it is. And do you know what? Some of the authors are following my dog, and they have an ongoing relationship with my dog too. Amazing. I've got to say, I am so lucky because every time we take on a new client, literally where we're, you know, we're building a relationship with them to help them do what they want to do, and because they're so passionate about their book and we are passionate about our books, then it sort of becomes this really nice— it sounds a bit cheesy, but like a family, like a big extended family of people who just love talking about books. And So many people, we are the same, we still stay in touch with them long after the campaign's ended. And then there was a lady the other day called Abi Oliver who we did a campaign for her back in, I want to say like 2017, maybe even '16, and she's come back with her latest book saying, "Oh, can you help?" And that makes my heart go all fizzy because it's like, that's so nice that she's come back to us all these years later, that she's still writing, that she's, you know, she's still doing exactly what she wanted to do. And she wants us to be part of it again. It's really lovely actually. Well, it's confirmation, isn't it? It doesn't matter how many campaigns you do, it's that confirmation that somebody is happy with what you do and they want to work with you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's really lovely. I mean, the whole point of us doing this, whole reason why I set this up in the first place is because I could— I used to be a journalist and then I moved into food and drink PR and I could see there was this big kind of growing, really exciting market around books that was so fast changing, you know, with self-publishing was coming in much more and there was lots more indie publishing and stuff. And I was like, wow, I want to be a part of that. Like, that's like the cool kids in the playground. Like, I want to be in that gang. And I kind of just threw myself into it really and learned about publishing. I'd never worked in a publishing house. I didn't really know how it really worked. And one of the things that I've learned really quickly was that people do need other people in when they're a writer. And even though actually writing is such a can be such an isolating thing to do, you know, you spend a lot of time on your own when you're a writer. When you then start taking the book out into the world, if you don't have a team of people around you, it's really quite scary because you've spent all this time on this book and then you just kind of are left and you don't really know what to do with it. And so I realized that people needed that kind of community feeling as much as they needed the PR and the marketing, social media, and, you know, so we try and make people feel welcome and warmly welcomed when they join. And I think that's probably what makes people come back because, you know, we are a friendly bunch, which is nice to have. I have noticed that the writing community is incredibly supportive. I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter. I like Twitter, especially for the aforementioned writing community. And a lot of my friends say, "Hey, you're on Twitter, don't you hate it? It's just people constantly bitching at each other and really dodgy opinions." And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm more involved in the kind of publishing side and the writing community where everybody just kind of is nice to each other, they share each other's books, they write reviews for each other and make recommendations, and it's actually really sweet. It is, I totally agree, and one of the first things I say to our authors when they join is you should get on Twitter because it is basically the publishing social media, isn't it? It's like the platform where people, if you like books, then you will get book recommendations, like you say, you'll get to connect with authors. I mean, I still get really geeky and fangirly if like a really big named author who I've read sort of all of their books responds to one of my tweets. I'm like, "Oh my god, yeah!" It's such a good feeling. And I work with authors all the time, so like I can't imagine how even more exciting that must be just as like a reader who's not quite as in the world, in the publishing world, to get a response. I'm like, you know, it is such a cool place to be. But yeah, I mean, Twitter's got its bad side, don't get me wrong. I've seen plenty of like dodgy stuff on there, but as a whole, the writing community in particular does seem to be, and the book blogging community does seem to be really friendly and very inclusive, which is really lovely, isn't it? That was the exact word that I was going to use. I must say that I just, I love it that you send all these incredibly fantastic and very personable authors my way, and as I'm reading the book, I love my job because I get to to actually write questions that I'm going to be able to ask the author for GetBooked, which is just, it is brilliant. Yeah, that's very cool, that's very cool. We actually do something similar, so when we first take on a book and an author, we will read the book obviously, and then we actually come up with a list of questions, and then there's a few sort of standard ones, you know, like why did you write the book, and what's the inspiration, you know, sort of standard ones, but that's our chance to kind of really get a bit of a sneak peek into why they wrote the book, or the themes behind it, or kind of dig around a bit more, or get that question answered, like, why did that character do that? Or, you know, it's really great to be able to get that before anyone else. It's quite fun, isn't it? Oh yeah, completely. However, now this is a bit like asking you which is your favourite child. Is there a particular book book that's on your books at the moment that you're just loving? I'm sure you're excited about every single campaign, but is there one that just— you're going, if you had one book to recommend right now? I mean, are you allowed to do that? I don't know. I feel like if I said— if I said, then it's, you know, and I didn't say that a certain person or certain people, they'd be like, oh, I do— I have to say, I do— I do read every book that comes through and we get about 40 to 50 submissions a month, and we only do about 40 to 50 books a year, um, so I do have to read a lot of books. And so if a book comes through and I've— and we're doing a sort of a full campaign on it, I have read that book and I have liked it enough, stroke loved it, you know, to support it and get behind it. So I kind of love all of the books, but I am a massive foodie, so when we worked on the Curry Compendium I love that because that was just— that is basically ticking all the boxes for me. It's like the food and the books and the guy was— Richard Sayers, the guy who wrote it, was lovely. And so that was really good because I would, you know, in the interests of obviously, you know, making sure that it was all decent, decent book, I had to cook lots of lovely food. Of course you would. It's your job. Exactly. That was a hard position. But what— but also what I would say is when I get a book that my kids can enjoy, I love that. So, um, so my eldest, who is now 13, when she first read Abiola Bello's Emily Knight series, she was just like, oh my God, this is amazing. And so she's now done the 3 books, and Ellie has read all 3 books. And I love, I love the Emily Knight series. It's like fantasy fiction for, um, young kids, well, young teenagers. And then we've just done a book called A Head Full of Magic over at Hashtag Best by Sarah Morell. And my youngest daughter, who is not a big reader at all, have to force her to read, like literally bribe her to read. She read this book in 2 days off her own back and absolutely loved it. And I was like, oh my God, that makes me feel so good that she's actually getting on with a book that I've worked on. You know, it's— that's a really good feeling. So I think when the kids like the books, that makes me even prouder and makes me like the books even more, basically, because it's kind of like somebody else who's really important to me also likes books. My husband doesn't read any book, any of the books I work on, ever. He absolutely hates them. Not a reader, and I hate him very much for that. But that's good, so you have to do a lot of reading, which means if he doesn't like reading, he can just get on with the housework. That's how it should be, right? Next time I'm sitting in the garden reading for work with my wine in one hand and the book in the other, I'll be like, "You do know you need to be doing the cleaning, right?" I'm working. This wine and this reading is working. Thank you, dear. I do feel like it's really taken the mickey there. So I remember when I did English Literature at A-level, and I remember my teacher saying to me, "What do you want to do for a job?" And I basically went, "Well, what jobs involve just being able to read, getting paid to read?" And I've just worked— like, it took me a while, don't get me wrong, but I finally worked out the job where you get to read, you know, and you get paid to read. It's amazing. It's brilliant, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I was actually going to ask you, what's your perfect scenario for reading a book, what's your favourite environment, but I think you just kind of said it. And it's interesting because I've got a really ridiculously busy household and I've got to read quite a lot, I mean it's at least a couple of books a week for my work, and I sometimes find it hard in the house because either the dog wants something or the kids want something or the washing machine's just finished and blah blah blah. So I'm a huge fan of going to a café or a nice little winery somewhere and just kind of sitting there and people kind of go, "Oh, are your friends not turning up?" I'm like, "I didn't invite anybody." I've got all the friends I need right here in this book.