Linda Drattell Interview: Everybody Is the Dragon

Linda Drattell wrote her first poem at sixteen and started her novel thirty years ago — long before she lost her hearing in her thirties, and long before she survived the 2016 Bastille Day truck attack in Nice. She talks with Jo about the dragon that turned out to be everybody, the two women who carry her poem "The Torrent and the Tree" into chemotherapy, and the therapist who refused to discuss the attack and wanted to talk football instead. Four books in, the through-line isn't trauma — it's writing things vague enough that strangers can climb inside them.Key Moments• 01:12 — A Spanish teacher's homework assignment turns into a children's book about a dragon• 02:07 — "That dragon is me." Three creators, three reasons, same answer• 02:45 — Inside a poetry critique group: "I know more about them than my own family"• 04:11 — A LinkedIn post becomes an invitation from the Korean Haiku Federation• 08:37 — Going deaf in her 30s, and being the last person in the house to figure it out• 10:02 — "The Torrent and the Tree," written at 16, and the two women who take it to chemo• 13:22 — Bastille Day 2016 in Nice: the slow waitress who may have saved her life• 19:07 — The second arrow: how reliving trauma paves a gravel road into a freeway• 20:00 — Ten years on, the question that's still hard: why me, why still hereTakeawayLeave the door open. Linda writes the tree, the dragon, and Filamena vague enough that anyone can walk in and find themselves already standing there — which is why a stranger at a book signing shoved a copy at her to sign while she went and bought a second one.Find Linda Drattell• Website: https://lindadrattell.com• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLindaDrattell/As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Buying through these links costs you nothing extra and helps keep the show running.Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell