Then she became the first woman and youngest person ever to win it.
It’s taken Prior-Palmer, now 24, years to process this.
How did it change you?"
Credit: Richard Dunwoody
As soon as I got off the horse, I wanted to put ink to paper.
I was trying to find the words.
I was writing it to myself.
I wasn’t awriteror anything.
So it ebbed and flowed.
I was at university, so I put it away.
I took some classes in the creative writing department and worked on the manuscript occasionally with a lecturer.
At first I wanted to get down the narrative.
I’m a very episodic person.
I don’t think in narrative; it’s unusual I wrote down that narrative.
But I thought if I put it down, I was somehow near truth.
I would understand what had happened.
I had no idea what was happening!
I didn’t understand.
It made no sense to me that I would end up winning.
Why did you takeThe Tempestwith you?
Who were you in the beginning of the race?
How did it change you?"
All these reflective questions that I’m more interested in now than the actual narrative.
I’m amused people might enjoy reading about a plodding pony when they could be reading about existential questions.
But that’s the change within me.
I’m no longer interested in fact, really.
A certain kind of fact no longer interests me.
And if I wrote the book now, it would be utterly different.
It would not be chronological.
It’s almost lucky.
It’d be too experimental, probably!
I’d be all over the place and hardly mention the race.
It’d probably be fiction if I wrote it again.
A happy medium, then?I hope so.
I have no idea!
I was always trying to run away from my family.
The race was the apex of that.
you’re free to’t not write about your upbringing when you do something as a 19-year-old.
I was trying to extract it and keep it as pure as I felt it was.
It’s almost worse that I’m writing about them in a language that isn’t theirs.
What would it be like, and how much of it was othered?
It’s a sensitive subject.
But then, the most difficult part was what we just touched on: writing about myself.
I could not come to terms with the fact that I’d written a book about my own story.
[Laughs]
You mentioned reading a lot of memoirs.
But I fell in love with Annie Dillard and Anne Carson and their way of using language.
I rememberHoly the Firm, which is one of Annie Dillard’s lesser-known, very-short books.
So I don’t think they stuck out.
That’s anecdotal, but pretty intense!
Have you heard similar sentiments?
How do you feel about that?
I’d be very touched if she was able to shed some energy.
We have alotinside us already.
[Laughs] When people like you make me really think about it.
I usually can just talk about it without opening my heart to it, but it was such…
I don’t even think I managed to convey this in the book.
But it was so powerful.
It didn’t do anything obvious.
But as I think of it, I feel like I’ve been to another planet and back.
The sensation of being in that zone of extremity.
A lot of people ask me, “What’s going to be your next race?”
What will it be?
Maybe I should just fall in love!"
You realize your fallibility.
We can all inhabit each other’s angles, but are looking at the same thing.
I like inhabiting other people’s bodies.
It made me self-reflective.
It makes you less inclined to assume your anger as someone else’s fault.
What did the writing do to me?
[Sighs] It just takes you to another level, doesn’t it?
This interview has been edited and condensed.
