![]() ![]() Halimah Marcus: You signed up for the Derby, as you describe it, on a whim. We spoke in Electric Literature’s Brooklyn office when Lara Prior-Palmer was in town for her New York book launch. It’s about committing fully to what’s in front of you and the emotional, physical, and spiritual requirements of going all in. But the purpose of Prior-Palmer’s journey is less about the weight of the past then it is about the challenge of the present. ![]() Worthy projects, certainly, in memoir and in life. The most popular adventure stories, to which Rough Magic has been compared, are often structured around emotional obstacles-to grieve, to overcome, to escape. ![]() “Accidentally-or rather, fully intentionally,” she writes, phrasing that embodies the texture of Prior-Palmer’s storytelling: engaged, yet passive present, yet dreamy fierce, yet congenial. But the thrill of the story comes not from the fact that she won but how she did it. Six years have passed since her victory, secured at the audacious age of 19, during which she was able to write and publish a truly remarkable book. ![]() But it was turns of phrases like that, I quickly realized-surprising, playful, unexpected-that were going to make me love it. Prior-Palmer describes the Mongol Derby as “a perfect hodgepodge of Snakes and Ladders and the Tour de France on unknown bicycles.” As a former horseback rider with and adventurous streak (who also happens to appreciate the Tour de France), I was predisposed to enjoy this book. ![]()
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