Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Yvonne Durant: Hello, listeners. Today we're speaking to the author of probably one of the most beautifully written books of 2026. Yes, I said it. I listened to Rachel Eliza Griffiths's memoir, The Flower Bearers, and I had to collect myself when I finished. Eliza, we're going to say Eliza today, not Rachel, welcome, and thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Thank you so much for having me.
YD: I recall that night we met at the gala, I think it was the Writer's Guild. You and your husband were so personable, and I have a very glamorous photo of the three of us to prove it. Little did I know at that moment that you had something going on. How are you feeling these days now that you're past your pub date? It's a whirlwind of activity and wonderfulness to me, it looks like. And you?
REG: I feel really happy to share the story. It feels surreal that the book is now making its journey into other people's lives, in a way, but I feel really proud of getting through writing this book. It feels like a continued part of my healing journey for many aspects of this book. I feel pretty joyous and pretty grateful for all the experiences that I'm having right now through the book.
YD: Is the published book the book you set out to write? Or did it evolve over time?
REG: It completely evolved. I don't know, when I began the journey of writing the book, what I was doing. I just was trying to survive. I was trying to write things down, memories, trying to write down what I was experiencing, which was a lot of trauma at the time. So, I didn't necessarily write it thinking, "This is going to be a book." I actually think The Flower Bearers is a memoir that I almost wrote because I had to, because I was trying to save my life. I didn't think, in a way with poetry or fiction, that this is a project. It was kind of like, "I'm drowning and this writing may be the thing once again to save me."
YD: We're going to talk about that more. I'm curious, what is your writing process? Are you someone who gets up at the crack of dawn and works until lunch and then you start over again? What's your day of writing like?
REG: My day of writing usually depends on what I'm writing about. I think because I'm multi-genre and write poetry, fiction, and now memoir, nonfiction, and I'm also a visual artist, a photographer and painter, I have to make a lot of deadlines, but I kind of need to work across genres almost every day. So, I do get up very early. I've learned to do that in the past year because I just need time in the morning to do meditation. My husband is not allowed to speak to me until about 8:30 AM, but I'm up around 5:30 or 6:00. I need to read every day. I would say that's actually part of my writing practice.
"The Flower Bearers is a memoir that I almost wrote because I had to, because I was trying to save my life."
It depends on what I feel the work wants me to do. Sometimes I'm up early because I'm going out to make photographs. I usually photograph outdoors and landscapes. If I'm working on a collection of poetry, it's a different process. Fiction is a bit more dense, because that's world-building and you have to stay close to the characters. So, I don't know. I think maybe I don't have a standard way. I have to make something every day or place myself near my work in some way, even if I think, "Oh, I'm going to a museum, that doesn't connect to the poetry," but of course it does. Everything is kind of associative for me.
YD: Do you share your pages at the end of the day or at a certain point with your husband? Listeners, Eliza is married to a pretty good writer. He's written a few things. His name is Salman Rushdie.
REG: Not too bad.
YD: Do you ever share your work with him?
REG: I don't share my work with him until it's pretty far along, actually. And he's more of the opposite, where he'll have a few pages or something and he'll say, "You know, I'm working on this thing," and there's a sparkle in his eye, and he might want more feedback or something like that. I'm a little more feral. I need to really get a grip on what I'm doing or where it's going. I need to just have one spoon in the pot, and it's mine. The pot is mine. I don't want any external energy until I feel like I really have a way around what I'm working on. And then I usually will give it to him and give it to my agent to look at. But he asks to see things, and I'll be like, "Not so fast" [laughs]. But it's nice. I can talk to him about things, and he talks to me a lot about what he's working on. I really enjoy just hearing his process of what he might be working through. It's really nice.
YD: It must be nice, writers in conversation like that. I've listened to the book, of course, and it is beautiful. I felt as though I was listening to a poem. I felt just this wonderful, gorgeous prose. Was that an intentional flow? It sounds like poetry to me in places, and I'm not talking about the poems that you cite in the book.
REG: I think because I am a poet, it's kind of organically going to be a bit lyrical. As you know, with the memoir, it's filled with music. And so that presence of music, which is often sound and rhythm in my poems, is then also in my prose. But I am also aware of, sometimes you don't want it to be so musical with prose that you have a lot of beautiful sentences but you really haven't landed with the truth or purpose of what you're trying to say. I think it's a very delicate balance for me, of loving language so much and wanting language to sing, wanting language to cry, wanting language to laugh, and at the same time, craft as a creator, as a writer, is extremely important to me, to be very vigorous about what I'm writing.
I almost always read my work aloud over and over and over. I'll record myself reading it. My greatest editor often is my own ear. If I'm reading something and it's hard for me to breathe, the line is awkward, it's not landing. I can immediately hear it, and that helps me correct my course right away.
YD: That's interesting. Talking about you saying your lines out loud, how did you like the narration process?
REG: It was excruciating, I have to tell you, because even though I had been alone and read the book aloud to myself, that was still very intimate. It was still in my writing room, in my head, in me. But when I went to the recording studio and sat in the little box, and there's someone on the other side of the glass looking at you, the book became really real to me, and very emotional. We had to take a lot of breaks because I was suddenly crying or my stomach was growling, or I would read a paragraph of the book and just think, "How did I survive this? I'm living this. I'm hearing myself read these words and have to recognize that this story is my story."
I think it was clarifying in a way, when you listen to audiobooks, when you hear someone else's voice storytelling. I had to accept the story in a new way when I did the audio recording. And it was hard. I couldn't really talk afterwards. I would just come home and my husband would have some food ready, waiting, and I would just kind of collapse. I have a lot of respect for sound engineers and sound directors and the sound people, because voices are so unique and so special. So, it was hard for me, but when I got through it, I was proud of myself and I thought, "You know, I hope my voice will reach someone in the way that this story is also my voice."
YD: Well, as I listened, I heard those emotions, and your voice is musical. I heard that, too. I thought you did a wonderful job. You do a great job.
REG: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you.
YD: Let's talk about the title, The Flower Bearers. A little story: I'm an identical twin, and when you're little girls and you're twins, you become the flower girls. They gave us these baskets of flowers, and Yvette—her name is Yvette—we just didn't think it made sense to throw the flowers on the floor of the church. So, we started with full baskets of flowers, and we ended with baskets of flowers. I think we have thrown a couple of petals down just to shut people up. They were saying, "Put the flowers on the floor, put the flowers on the floor." But I didn't know about flower girls, once upon a time, in funeral processions, usually Black funerals. Is that right?
REG: Yes. So, I did some research about flower bearers, because when I first heard the term, I thought immediately flower girls for weddings, but when I saw the word "flower bearers," it was on the Celebration of Life program for my friend Aisha. I saw Aisha and I saw pall bearers, and then I saw flower bearers, and I thought, "I've never really seen that before." So, I started to do some research, and maybe for the last 100 years or so, usually in Southern Black churches, there was a role called the flower bearer. Not everywhere, but enough where certain generations know immediately what the flower bearer is. These were young girls, I'm sure there were probably twins [laughs], but young girls who were dressed all in white, and they were kind of these brides or kind of beautifully dressed young girls, to carry flowers for the family of the beloved, of the person who had died.
I found Zora Neale Hurston's funeral program, and she had nine flower bearers, and they were young girls who were students that she taught at a nearby school in Florida. I liked the idea of flower bearers for me because it brought together, in my story, the bridal aspect, the wedding day of my memoir, and then it also, literally, I felt was a gift from my chosen sister, Aisha, to see this word flower bearers. I also think of this phrase that we often use of “giving somebody their flowers,” and that people say, "Thank you for giving me my flowers." We're going to praise somebody or acknowledge them by giving them their flowers, and that they are present in a way to accept the recognition or the positive love or energy or admiration or respect. And so suddenly this word flower bearers for me and my identity, it just came together. I couldn't have found a better title. I don't even feel as though I necessarily thought of it. I feel like I received it. It was a gift, and I was open and aware of how it held all these different spaces for me.
YD: That's been said to me, some of the people who work at Audible, they call me Miss Yvonne. So, I was stepping down from a position, and one lady came with a bunch of flowers, "Miss Yvonne, we want to give you your flowers now." I said, "Damn, do they know something?" [laughs]
REG: [Laughs] I do think it's about that the person is present to receive the praise and the acknowledgement from someone else. I think of myself, even when I was a young girl, bringing flowers to my mother, different people, visiting my grandmother's grave, or family members, and taking flowers.
"When I wrote, I felt less alone about it. I felt like other people survive really difficult things, and I'm one of those people now, and I can help somebody else."
But also, as a writer, because in the memoir, I kind of give flowers to particularly Black women writers, who are in my village of literary ancestors. My dear sister Aisha and I, we went to the grave of James Baldwin and we left flowers there, and we went to Malcolm X's grave and left flowers there, and Paul Robeson. But also, in a way, by us writing our stories, writing our poems, I remember once going to the 92nd Street Y, and Miss Toni Morrison was there for a children's book with her son, and I stopped on my way and got this huge—it was like half the size of my body—cone of flowers. And my joy in giving them to her and her face lighting up in receiving them, that was the gift, you know? By continuing the practice, by showing up for yourself and allowing yourself to receive flowers, is also really beautiful. So, I think this title, I really like it.
YD: It's very nice. And I love the cover. Listeners, Eliza also created the cover, and the photograph is yours, right?
REG: Yes, it's actually me.
YD: It's you.
REG: It's me. I did this self-portrait in my studio. There was a different self-portrait of me at first in a different-color dress, but still with the flowers around my head. I will tell you a funny story. It is very difficult to wrap your head in flowers. And in my hand, which is not visible, I have a remote, getting the lighting right. It took me a long time to have the emotional resonance and the technical challenges aligned so that it just seems seamless. It's almost like a painting and how it feels both bridal but also elegiac. For memoirs, sometimes you see people will have their own face or image of themselves, maybe as a baby or something, on the memoir. I wanted myself on the memoir, but something to reflect how I felt trying to get through the book and this almost strange, surreal figure that's filled with a lot of emotion.
YD: Speaking of emotion, your wedding day, a day that should have been, and I believe it was, filled with unimaginable love and joy, took a turn when you learned that your dear best friend, chosen sister, is it Kamilah?
REG: Kamilah Aisha.
YD: Kamilah Aisha Moon. I love her name—
REG: Beautiful.
YD: —had passed that day. You wrote, "This was the kind of grief that answered before your name was called. This is the kind of grief that left you nameless and skinless." I know there's a lot of pain in those words, but they're beautiful. Sorry.
REG: Thank you.
YD: I know that you've done a lot of healing, and maybe considered your soul and heart healed. And then came the near-fatal stabbing of your husband. Was the book a healing tool for you at the end of the day?
REG: I think it was in certain ways, because writing the story down helped me accept it. It helped certain parts of me, I think, unconsciously in the way that writing can, come toward the truth of what had happened and the tragedy of it. It also allowed me to, by writing, return to the love, the love and the relationships with both people, with Kamilah Aisha and, of course, the love for my husband.
I think a different kind of healing also was required, because these two events left me with kind of a complex post-traumatic stress disorder that I have to continually manage almost every day. I have to do things. I think, creatively, writing the book allowed me to place a lot of questions, a lot of memories, a lot of things that I will never have the answer to or know, into a conversation, into a place of discovery and transformation. But also, when I wrote, I felt less alone about it. I felt like other people survive really difficult things, and I'm one of those people now, and I can help somebody else. And that felt really crucial to me, because if I just focused on myself, I probably wouldn't even have finished the book. But when I kept thinking about other people, in awe of surviving things.
Also, we walk through our days brushing shoulders with people, we don't know their stories. We don't know what kind of day they're having, what they're going through. And so there's a beautiful thing over and over with listening to stories, reading stories, being open to stories that can help save you by not being isolated.
Part of my healing was also just, I had to reclaim my physical body, which really had shut down because of all the trauma, anxiety. I write in the memoir, I had a kind of pharmacy of pills just to sleep. I had nightmares, I wasn't eating. I had so much anxiety, brain fog, everything. I kind of had to start from ground zero with my entire self and start all over, which is terrifying to do, but especially terrifying when you don't really have a choice. So, it is part of my healing journey to have written this book, and the healing journey keeps going as I evolve. I know now how important it is for self-care. It's really important as an artist to take care of yourself as you're doing this work.
YD: Right. We don't realize how many people are walking around in pain. I've just started to appreciate that when someone's kind of rude, or even when I'm having a bad day or I have a moment, that's pain. That is not joy, for sure. That is pain.
REG: There's a lot of pain right now. People are really struggling, and you can see it on their faces and their body posture. So, I tend to be aggressively kind, just smile at somebody. They may not return the smile, but I feel better smiling, and not to overdo it where it's not genuine, but you catch their eye and just smile, like, "I see you." It's just that one little thing. Or someone's struggling with some bags and you just stop and try to help them, or just ask somebody if they're okay. It's good for you. It's good for everyone. And because of everything going on around us, we need to care for each other. It's really important.
YD: Exactly. Definitely those little moments are win-wins. By the way, did you tell your mother you wanted to be a storyteller, but in her eyes, storyteller was close to lying or not telling the truth? What was that bit about?
REG: That was about, growing up, the generations of people around me, my mother never wanted us to say the word lie, or say that someone was lying.
YD: Right. We weren't allowed to. We were not allowed to.
REG: No, we were never allowed. So, she would say, "That person is telling stories" or "Are you telling me a story?" if she thought I was lying about something. I knew when I was like five or six, “I want to be an artist, I want to be a writer, I'm going to be a painter, I want to be an actress.” I wanted to do all these art things. And then the dissonance of, “Wait, my mother calls storytellers, that's the word for people who lie. I don't want to be a liar. I want to tell stories. I want to make art.” But as a child, you don't have a way to clarify that. So, there was this feeling of just, “I'm a storyteller, and I've grown up hearing that people who tell stories are not honest people.”
"There's a lot of pain right now. People are really struggling, and you can see it on their faces and their body posture. So, I tend to be aggressively kind."
Now, I can kind of chuckle about it, but it really haunted me when I was younger, and it made me have a little shame, I have to say, of “I'm doing this thing that the word is also someone who lies.” Now I know it's not like that, but this is the kind of thing kids will get into their heads, and then it festers and starts to live in you.
YD: Well, in fact, I grew up with my twin sister and our younger brother, and when one of us told a story, we would accuse that person by saying, "You're storying." We actually said the word “storying,” because we couldn't say lie.
REG: That's amazing. You could not say lie. We could not. We would get in trouble, to say the L word.
YD: It was a bad word. So, you were storying—well, you're storying very well. You were warned once by another writer, and I so want to punch her in the face, to "Be careful with your career, people might give you things because of the way you look." Do you remember that? I don't know who the writer was. I hope she wasn't terribly famous, but this is someone you admired greatly.
REG: And still do.
YD: Why would she say that to you? Was she projecting? Was she threatened by you? Was she talking about herself?
REG: I don't know. I gave so many years of speculating and looping on what I'd done wrong that I now, as part of my healing, I don't know why that happened. I'm very sorry for my younger self who stopped writing and was devastated, destroyed by this comment, because I'm someone who, at that point when that happened, had survived a lot, violence from people, and being a sexual assault survivor. So, for someone to look at me and project that I would think my appearance was some kind of pass over doing the work of creating, was so shocking to me. It was so cruel. And what I do remember thinking is, "I will never be a teacher who does that. I will never have someone leave a room and I've made them feel this way."
I felt sorry for her because I came toward her with love and, I don't know, maybe it just wasn't a good day for her, but I left heartbroken. It broke my heart, and yet I still love this person very much and admire them and give grace, just have grace about it because it was beyond my control and I don't have a context for it and I never will.
But I'm more now like, “Thank goodness you didn't listen to her. Thank goodness you kept going.” And that's something I'm proud about with myself, was that it definitely knocked me down, but I got up and kept going. I just feel what a sad moment between an elder and someone coming towards them saying, "Can you help me? Or can you just spend some time with me?" And trying to make something nice, and for someone to basically just spit on everything. That's sad when people do that to each other. It's sad that it happens all the time. And it's sad when it happens with artists and writers and music people and things. We could be better. That's how I feel when I want to be in a room with my students. My students still reach out to me because I care about their life and who they are and their dreams and what they want to do. I'm also just someone, making comments about people's appearance or bodies, I don't think that is a good idea. I think that's destructive.
YD: So, have you started working on anything else yet? Don't mean to pressure you.
REG: I'm always working on things. I've been doing a lot of visual work. I think getting through The Flower Bearers, I needed to take a break, maybe a departure from language. So, I've been out and about with my camera, and my paints are out, which make me really happy to just be with color, and the sound of the brush and the quiet, and you've got your music on and the sun is coming in on the canvas. That's a really beautiful meditation space for me. And it's some poems from time to time. I will write down lines or different things, or drafts of poems, but I really want to savor being present for The Flower Bearers. I've slowed down and just, you know, I'm returning to life in a way, kind of coming back from a dead place. My days are just filled with a lot of creativity, but not necessarily sitting at my desk and trying to make the next thing. Take some deep breaths.
YD: Well, Eliza, we're wishing you the best. I'm so glad that we met.
REG: Me too.
YD: So happy that I listened to this book with great joy, pain, every emotion.
REG: Thank you so much.
YD: That, to me, that's a sign of a great story. It just touches you in different parts. It's just terrific. Great narrator. Maybe you have another future [laughs]. Listeners, find The Flower Bearers on Audible now.
