Kathryn Stockett

Thank you, Matt, for having me.

Wow, that's some company I'm keeping with, isn't it?

Very good question.

I'm asking myself that.

But, you know, I got to admit, I was living life.

I was raising my daughter.

I toured for many years about The Help, you know, hardcover, paperback, movie tie-in, movie set that was, you know, it was...

filmed actually in Mississippi.

And I think probably the best reason I have is that I just had a lot of false starts.

I somehow convinced myself that I was going to write a really short, simple book.

And obviously, I did not turn out with that.

But it took me several attempts to kind of finally admit to myself that I can't play it safe, you know, even though I was so determined not to try to write about all of the things that I wrote about in the help that drew criticism.

But the truth is,

In The Calamity Club, you know, it's set in 1933.

It's based on women.

And you can't write about Mississippi during that time and not write about hypocrisy, sexism, racism and discrimination.

I wouldn't say that.

I mean, I had so many people come forward to me and say, oh, my gosh, this book started conversations.

I had conversations with people that were from parts of America that had no idea what it was like between black and white people.

And let me point out, I'm very aware that this is the white perspective.