Entry 44: JO PIAZZA

Tell us about yourself?
"I like to say that my primary job is story teller because I do that in a bunch of different mediums, novels, podcasts and newsletters. I'm the author of 14 books, the most recent of which is the delicious summer read The Parisian Heist. It's a mystery novel about an all woman art heist in Paris and also the untold story of Jo van Gogh, the woman who made Vincent famous. I live in Philly with my husband and three wild children who are 9, 6 and 3."

Show, tell about all of your books…
"People always think my books are wildly different because I've written nonfiction, memoir, and fiction, but they're all chasing the same question: What stories do we tell ourselves, and what happens when those stories fall apart?
My early books were nonfiction. I wrote about everything from celebrity culture and motherhood to politics and the lives of women around the world. As a journalist, I was always trying to understand why people make the choices they do.
Then I started writing novels, and I realized I could ask those same questions through suspense."

Q: How did you go from freelancer, to podcaster, to best selling novelist?

Jo: "I evolved as the media evolved. Honestly when I started out after graduating from University of Pennsylvania I thought I would work at a newspaper in New York for a couple decades and maybe transition to a magazine. I'd write a couple of books, perhaps. But suddenly the media began changing every single year. And suddenly I was blogging and doing all the different forms of social media and then making podcasts. It was all moving so fast and I had to keep up if I wanted to do what I loved the most, telling wonderful stories. I started out as a gossip columnist for the New York Daily News. It was the best job to have as a twenty something in New York City. I then began covering politics which was honestly a lot like gossip. I switched over to magazines for a bit and then I helped build a travel website for Yahoo. I got to visit 32 countries in three years and I met my husband Nick in the Galapagos which sounds fake but it's true. So I think all of those jobs combined really informed the kind of novels I write. I do a ton of research for the fiction and I always try to make the location (Sicily, Paris, Wyoming) a character in the book to make it a true escape for the reader."

Q: How do you view the relationship between beauty, glamour, intelligence, and power? In what ways do you think these concepts are connected?
Jo: "I've spent my career reporting on and writing about women, and one thing I've learned is that beauty, glamour, intelligence, and power are rarely separate. They're all forms of currency, but they're valued differently depending on who's holding them.
Beauty and glamour open doors. They can be a source of real influence. But they're also the forms of power society is most comfortable giving women because they're seen as temporary and non-threatening. Intelligence is harder to package, and women are often encouraged to soften it, joke about it, or make it less intimidating. I've always been interested in women who refuse to do that.
Real power comes from understanding how all of these forces work together.  The women I admire know how to command a room, whether that's through the way they look, the way they think, or the way they tell a story."

Q: If your skincare routine were a story, which Danucera face product would be the main character?
Jo: "Hahahaha absolutely the Cerabalm. It has the most main character energy of anything in my routine because I use it for everything when I am on the road. I use it as a face mask, a cleanser and also a moisturizer before I get on a plane. I love it so much. "