{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpage-one.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fep-65-open-the-flood-gates-nina-schuyler-jDr_6xjb","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"EP 65: OPEN THE FLOOD GATES_NINA SCHUYLER","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/8583da00-42e9-4897-ab16-2a2d61be8a44/0ddbd913-ca68-4940-82fc-84dad1dc96f3/cropped_1790209491213.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/64ebf71f-9bd9-4a55-8c89-52d652ceffb5\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"EP 65: OPEN THE FLOOD GATES_NINA SCHUYLER\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"In EP. 65, host Holly Lynn Payne welcomes award-winning Bay Area author Nina Schuyler back to The Page One podcast to discuss Schuyler’s fifth novel, Open the Floodgates, inspired by real-world laws granting personhood to rivers. Schuyler discusses her choice to make the river a point-of-view character and to visually shape the text so it sways across the page to mimic water’s movement and the river’s disorientation with “clock time” and court. They explore the legal and psychological shift from treating nature as property to personhood, the book’s multiple viewpoints (humans, animals, trees, the river), and Schuyler’s craft approach—building connective tissue between perspectives, varying register, prioritizing rhythm and sentence music, revising pacing, and sustaining tension through the court case. Schuyler frames her recent work as climate-focused literary activism, cites influences including Virginia Woolf and Max Porter and  praises independent presses like Reverberation Books for supporting experimentation in literature. "}