Savannah Sideways by Jessica Leigh Lebos

Credit: Jessica Leigh Lebos

Orlando Montoya: Coming up in this episode. She's in all the cool places, talking to all the cool people. And of course I'm cool.

Peter Biello: Yeah. Of course.

Jessica Leigh Lebos: It's a personality. It's a, you know, a persona that I'm putting out there for sure.

Peter Biello: This book so far resonates with me on two levels, right? Because it's about a someone who transplanted to the South from outside the South. I always love a book like that. And also because my wife refers to herself as a baseball widow during baseball season. This podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting highlights books with Georgia connections, hosted by two of your favorite public radio book nerds, who also happen to be your hosts of All Things Considered on GPB Radio. I'm Peter Biello.

Orlando Montoya: And I'm Orlando Montoya. Thanks for joining us as we introduce you to authors, their writings, and the insights behind their stories, mixed with our own thoughts and ideas on just what gives these works the Narrative Edge.

Peter Biello: Hey, Orlando, I hear you've got something a little different for me today. 

Orlando Montoya: A little different, but not too much.

Peter Biello: Okay, what is it?

Orlando Montoya: Well, instead of one book for you today, I've got two. And instead of a long story, I've got many small stories. So it's a two-book collection of essays, actually.

Peter Biello: Okay. You've done a collection of essays before, yes? Who was it?

Orlando Montoya: Yes, that was Kathy Bradley. And today I've got another one from Southeast Georgia, another columnist. Her name is Jessica Leigh Lebos, and I hope to convince you to pay attention to her.

Peter Biello: Okay, so I know you spent a couple of decades in Savannah. Is — is this someone you know?

Orlando Montoya: Well, I mean, you can't help but run into Jessica around Savannah. She's in all the cool places talking to all the cool people. And of course, I'm cool.

Peter Biello: Yeah, of course. So.

Orlando Montoya: And it just seems like she knows everyone the way she writes about people. She's been writing about Savannah since the late '90s, and she finally got around to putting together a collection of her work, and that was called Savannah Sideways. And then last year she came out with volume two of Savannah Sideways called The Camellia Thief. And so I thought it was time to talk about what I consider to be, and many others would join me in this, one of the finest chroniclers around today of one of Georgia's most eccentric cities.

Peter Biello: Okay, and I'd love to circle back to what the cool spots in Savannah are at some point in this conversation.

Orlando Montoya: They're loud. They're kind of dirty.

Peter Biello: Loud and dirty places. I'm here for it. But when you talk about Savannah, you have to talk about eccentrics, right? So this is, I'm guessing, a lighthearted collection. What does she write about?

Orlando Montoya: Yeah I mean, the titles are Savannah Sideways and Camellia Thief. So it is primarily lighthearted. Very fun. Now, I will say she wrote for a long time — as did I for a short time — for an alternative newsweekly called Connect Savannah. And in that role she produced a lot of journalism, and some of that's in here. One of the ways that I described Jessica in our interview — and I'll, you know, remind our listeners that we also interview our Narrative Edge authors and those interviews go on the radio and at GPB.org. But in the interview, I described her as someone who latches onto lost causes.

Peter Biello: Lost causes, not the Lost Cause. Capital L, capital C.

Orlando Montoya: No. Lost causes like trying to stop developments that are going to go through that she thought were bad, trying to stop environmental damage, political hooey. If you're looking for that kind of stuff there, dear Savannah listeners, you won't find much of that in those two books. There are few stories. There's one about tourism. There's one about the Port of Savannah, a really good one about the Chatham County Jail. But I think those stories are just in there to show you how good of a journalist she can be when she is one. But she's not a journalist. She is a writer.

Jessica Leigh Lebos: I've always consider myself a writer. Some people have tried to characterize me as a journalist, and I'm always careful to correct them, because I do enjoy journalism, you know, but that's it's really hard. It's really it takes, a lot of rigor, it takes a lot of research. And so I really enjoy doing those pieces. I also really like kind of riffing on sort of, you know, social trends and just words themselves, and descriptions and observed observations.

Orlando Montoya: And so we get a lot of stories about Savannah's people, its characters, its social morés. I think if there's a theme running through the two collections, I think it's about how to fit in in a city where there is such a unique sense of place.

Peter Biello: Well, did she not feel like she fit in there in Savannah?

Orlando Montoya: Peter, I think everyone who moves to Savannah for a long time, perhaps for their entire time in Savannah, feels like they don't fit in sometimes. So — so you just have to be that person. And Jessica and I are both two of a kind in this respect, you have to be that person who doesn't give a flip about what people think. I mean, here's a woman who used to drive around Savannah in a vehicle called the Absurdivan.

Peter Biello: The Absurdivan?

Orlando Montoya: Yes it was a minivan. And you know how people put little plastic tchotchkes on their dash?

Peter Biello: Oh, yeah. Like Jeep. Jeep drivers have the rubber ducks.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah, well, Jessica had a thousand of them. I mean, pirates, Smurfs, naked Mardi Gras babies. And the only reason I know those details is because she wrote about them.

Peter Biello: Okay.

Orlando Montoya: But she was not ashamed by this. Most people would not want their cars going into a valet looking like that. But once the Absurdivan finally died, as all vehicles do, there was a funeral for it. I was at the funeral. I don't remember which one I got, but I picked one out.

Peter Biello: Oh, she was giving away the stuff at the funeral. That's perfect. So she's funny.

Orlando Montoya: She's absurdly funny. The way she uses words, the way she strings together thoughts. The way she juxtaposes the sacred and profane. It's good stuff.

Peter Biello:  Okay, like you said, Savannah's a quirky place. I would think something like that would fit in.

Orlando Montoya: Well, she's from California. So there was some culture shock when she started coming to Savannah. She moved to Savannah permanently in 2006, but was married to a Savannah man in 1998. So she started visiting the city and writing about it earlier. And the collection goes through some of what it means to be a transplant to a Southern lifestyle. And one of those transitions involves football.

Peter Biello: And I'm guessing not the kind of football that you like, soccer. This is American-style football, you mean?

Orlando Montoya: Yes, this is the thing that's not a ball and isn't played with the foot. There's a cute story in the collection about how Jessica learned to stop fuming and being mad about football, and really love it. The story is called "Tale of an SEC Widow," and basically talks about those gatherings where the men sit in their little cave watching the game, and the women go out in the garden and talk about quinoa recipes. And she says the fourth down is the best time to have important conversations with your football loving man. Because, quote, "he is usually not listening and will agree to anything."

Peter Biello: This book so far resonates with me on two levels, right? Because it's about a someone who transplanted to the South from outside the South. I always love a book like that, and also because my wife refers to herself as a baseball widow during baseball season. So it sounds like she's not writing about other people all the time. She'll also write about herself and her family.

Orlando Montoya: It's a mix of both, which is part of what makes it so great, in my opinion. I mean, think about some of the writers that you might enjoy who are commenting on society, but they're also putting a lot of themselves in the spotlight. Jessica says the writers that she admired most and wanted to be like, were Hunter S Thompson and Jack Kerouac.

Jessica Leigh Lebos: It is a — it's a personality. It's a, you know, a persona that I'm putting out there for sure. You know, I like to say, you know, I always tell the truth, but — but I do put in embellishments, and my children and husband have always been very patient about the way I characterize them. And, you know, Savannah, it's interesting because I have built something of a national following, but I have always considered my audience to be my neighbors and the kind of writer I've always considered myself to be is someone who writes for and about the people I live with. So I feel like, yes, maybe people feel like they know me through my writing and, you know, they kind of do, because I am writing from a perspective of: this is where I live, this is who I have interacting with. This is how I feel about it. This is what I see.

Peter Biello: So two books about Savannah, nothing but Savannah. Wondering if it will be able to keep someone's attention. You know, you lived in Savannah, you get all the references, so maybe you're a little bit biased, but do you think that the book would hold ... someone's interest if they don't know anything about Savannah? That have no connection to it. 

Orlando Montoya: Absolutely. And I told this to Jessica and I'll say it here. I think every city has characters like the ones in this book: creative, passionate, change-making characters. I think every city has issues like the ones that she tackles in the book, issues like holding on to the past versus moving ahead to the future. And I think everyone feels that pressure. I mean, you felt it, I felt it when I moved here three years ago, trying to fit in when they moved to a new city. And as far as the references are concerned, you and I both this year just read for this podcast books that were set in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan around the time of their independence. And I don't know about you, but I didn't understand the foreign words, but I was able to completely understand the stories. And so you can sort of take those little local references, like little foreign words, in Jessica's book the same way. You don't have to know this street or that church or that restaurant to get the sentiment.

Jessica Leigh Lebos: I think anybody from anywhere could read this and hopefully be inspired to be curious about wherever it is they live and what stories are buried there and what's happening now and how it all relates to each other and most importantly, where where they belong within their community. I think that what inspires me to write is the idea of we're all in this together. We're all living in this city at the same time. And I think it's very important to honor the elders that came before us, and also highlight the voices that are rising up now. And together, putting that all together is a snapshot of — of a place in time.

Orlando Montoya: You know, Savannah, it's its own special place. And it's also sort of everywhere, all at once. So I'm really glad Jessica is still capturing it in print — or, online now; I have to say, she's not writing her column in print anymore. She's survived nearly two decades of change in Savannah's media landscape now by joining Substack.

Peter Biello: Hmm!

Orlando Montoya: You have Substack people you pay attention to?

Peter Biello: I have some Substack people. Yes.

Orlando Montoya: Well Savannahsideways.com will get you to her Substack. She's also on Facebook and Instagram: @SavannahSideways.

Peter Biello: So are there any stories in this book that really resonated with you?

Orlando Montoya: I have to say, honestly, she tells a story in The Camellia Thief about sitting at a booth selling tourist trinkets at a marketplace on River Street, the city's main tourism corridor, and she goes through half the story without saying why she's sitting at this booth selling tourist products. And I'm wondering, Jessica, why are you here? And then she gets to her answer in a fleeting line — it's either COVID or just post-COVID, and she's, quote, "filling the gaps in a freelance writing career." And I thought to myself, "oh my God, I've been there." There was a time, a year during Covid when I had no job and I, too, turned to Savannah's No. 1 industry to get me through tough times. I became a hotel concierge, sitting at a hotel desk, a short elevator ride up from River Street, and it was my job to sell, among other things, trolley tickets and riverboat cruises. So I appreciate her honesty about the realities of the writing life. I appreciate how she took that experience and wrote a beautiful story about listening to people, learning from people, observing people from a place of love and non-judgment. I mean, I prefer being in radio, but I love life and I love every job I've had, and I wish I could write about it like Jessica.

Peter Biello: Okay, so what gives Jessica Leigh Lebos the Narrative Edge?

Orlando Montoya: All writers are local somewhere, and in Savannah, no one exemplifies that more than Jessica. She unapologetically loves the city. She can take it to task as well. She's also unapologetically herself in her columns. There is no mistaking when you read the books that she's progressive. She's Jewish, and she's a mother and she's a wife. And it all just comes out flying like that. She is irreverent and funny. You know, she calls it a persona, but I've seen her in real life. She is genuinely funny, and it's just a pleasure to lift up a writer like that. You know, I used to sit in my bar stool, at my karaoke bar in Savannah, and every Friday night I would drive to the nearest box where I could get a Connect Savannah, open it up and the first page I turned to was Jessica's column, and people in the bar would be like, you know, how can you read at a bar? Why are you reading at a bar? And I'm like, I have to get my dose of Jessica, okay? To find out what's going on. So, pleased to talk about it.

Peter Biello: And before we go, cool spots in Savannah.

Orlando Montoya: Cool spots in Savannah. Well, they've all changed. Umm —

Peter Biello: It's been a few years. What were the cool spots two years ago?

Orlando Montoya: Cool spots were The Jinx, right? The Jinx.

Peter Biello: That's a bar?

Orlando Montoya: That's a bar with live music. And around there, there'd be a late-night pizza joint with a guy sitting out front, you know, breaking up fights and making sure all the drunks and the weirdos got to home safely. And I can't remember his name. But anyways, yeah, people — people would hang out downtown around City Market. And I believe that area is changing now, becoming more tourist-oriented.

Peter Biello: If that's even possible.

Orlando Montoya: Mmm-hmm. I think the cool spots now are in, Midtown.

Peter Biello: Midtown Savannah. Okay. All right. Well, the books are Savannah Sideways and Camellia Thief by Jessica Leigh Lebos. Whom you can also find at Savannahsideways.com. Orlando, thanks so much for telling me about her.

Orlando Montoya: It's been wonderful. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Narrative Edge. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand-new episode. This podcast is a production of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Find us online at GPB.org/NarrativeEdge.

Peter Biello: You can also catch us on the daily GPB News podcast Georgia Today for a concise update on the latest news in Georgia. For more on that and all of our podcasts, go to GPB.org/Podcasts.