The bifurcated psyche of a world-class athlete who grew up in a literary household.

Now, that has all the makings of a great novel.

Not coincidentally, these are the circumstances that led world-class athlete Ivy Pochoda to become an excellent novelist, with six titles and counting. But getting those two lives – high-powered athlete and high-powered novelist – working together, well that was the topic of a most entertaining talk by Pochoda on Tuesday as the inaugural headliner of the Art of the Story conference.

Pochoda’s life story fits in quite well with the overall theme of San Miguel de Allende’s newest literary festival. That is – if I may interpolate from the list of fascinating workshops and events scheduled – inspiration is all around us, if you know how to look for it.

In other words, life is a toolkit. You’ve got to find ways to open it up and use the tools inside to tell your own stories. Those tools can be art, dance, movement, Artificial Intelligence, podcasting, zombie walks, poetry, and like Pochoda, sports. These are all subjects of workshops and talks today and tomorrow at the Art of the Story. Find out more by clicking here.

Ivy Pochoda grew up in Brooklyn with a magazine editor mother and a publisher father. She went to the exclusive St. Ann’s School where The Arts are everything. Unless … unless you discover that you are not only an excellent squash player but ultimately the top-ranked player in the U.S.

Art, athletics. Athletics, art. 

It’s not like you have to choose one over the other,  but … let’s put it this way: You grew up in Brooklyn as a lifelong Yankees fan, but have spent the last 20 years in Los Angeles cheering for the Dodgers. Now imagine these two teams ended up in the World Series…

Wait. Oh, yeah.

So who do you cheer for? Depending on how deeply rooted you are in both cultures, this could become an existential crisis. Not so much in Pochoda’s case. She’s rooting for the Dodgers. But you see the difficulty in choosing here.

Potentially.

I think it was sort of like that for Pochoda. She studied classical literature at Harvard while playing squash and after graduation turned professional in Europe where there are actual professional squash leagues.

While on the pro circuit, Pochoda began writing her first novel. She could not reconcile the two in her head.

“In both camps, I was weird, an outsider,” she says.

“But if I had been paying attention, I could have seen that the link was there from the beginning – that these two pursuits were inexorably linked from the get-go.”

Squash is a fast, intense, maybe even claustrophobic, game played inside a box. The ball is careening from wall to wall to racket to floor and back again and your focus has to be laser-sharp. 

You can’t be out there on a squash court thinking “I ought to be a writer.”

Well, you can. In a way. Sort of.

There were writers able to dive deeply into the world of athletics and wrangle some authentically inspiring metaphors into their novels.

She cites Ian McEwan’s “Saturday” in which a squash game is played against the backdrop of the Iraq War and counter-protests. Another is Don DeLillo’s novella “Pafko at the Wall” in which the entirety of the post-World War II experience is encapsulated in Bobby Thomson’s 1951 pennant-winning home run for the New York Giants. And, finally, in David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” players in the game Eschaton are encouraged to incorporate all their outside anxieties – mainly the threat of World War III – onto the playing field.

But Pochoda did not pick up on these writings during her pro-squash career.

She talked about athletes who get into the “zone” – that level of peak performance and concentration in which body takes over from mind and the athlete acts on an almost god-like level of play. Athletes in the zone can anticipate where the ball or puck will be, where to swing before the ball reaches the plate, where to cut before the tackle can be made.

Pochoda could no longer get herself into the zone on the court.

Eventually, Pochoda returned to the United States and began writing in earnest. She got off to a great start with “The Art of Disappearing” and then “Visitation Street.” She found a definite talent in crime and thriller novels that have a literary style.

A retired professional sports figure turned successful novelist. 

That combination drew the attention of another athlete who saw the bigger picture – Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers basketballer wanted Pochoda’s help in creating a fantasy world in literature that would “out-Potter Harry Potter.” Bryant had been visualizing this universe for some time and he recruited Pochoda to “wrangle his oversized imagination into something manageable.”

For Pochoda, here was an athlete who epitomized – no, who owned – the zone. But the world of sports did not own Kobe Bryant. Not his mind, not his imagination.

“He was one of the deepest, most curious, most intelligent people I’ve ever met,” recalls Pochoda.

At the center of the books Bryant envisioned, was a power called Grana. “It is the power that makes you good at whatever you do,” she said. “It was your superpower talent. Kobe believed everyone has a power.”

“The same talent that you’d find in a painter, you’d find in an Olympic gymnast,” she said. “The same talent, but also the same creativity. In other words, Kobe united the talent it takes to play sports with the talent it takes to paint, practice medicine, whatever.”

The revelation for Pochoda was life-changing. 

“If I had been able to pay attention (during her pro career), I might have seen that writing was the medium by which I could have unpacked my own personal struggles and understood the battle that I was fighting,” she said.

Pochoda discovered that her style of playing squash mirrors her writing. On the court, she wasn’t a one-trick player. She used all the tools and techniques to lull an opponent into a false sense of security or complacency.

Then she would go for the kill shot.

“And the kill shot was my favorite,” she recalls fondly.

And so she became a crime writer.

“What does a crime writer do? Keeps you on your back foot  … never lets you jump out in front of the story, never lets you know what is coming and then … goes for the kill. The misdirection that you never saw coming. The trick shot that floors you.”

I do not want to play squash against this woman. But I’ll gladly read her books!

“So there’s the thing Kobe helped me realize,” says Pochoda. “Sports and art aren’t two sides of the same coin. They’re the same side. Just different approaches.”

“They require the same thing – the same combo of dreaming and realists, drive and imagination.”

Bifurcated no more.

No need to check one passion at the door in order to pursue another.

The laser-focus Pochoda learned in sports now fuels her writing. “I am now able to reach the fugue state, the zone of creative excellence in which David Foster Wallace says, ‘ the whole neural net is shut down’ and you feel as coordinated as a god. Writing unaware of the outside world, the things gnawing at you away from your desk.”

In a word, Ivy Pochoda has learned to lose herself.

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Ivy Pochoda will be part of a roundtable discussion today, Oct. 30, at 12:30 –2 p.m. with the two other headliner speakers, actor-audiobook narrator Edoardo Ballerini and former NYC Ballet principal dancer Harrison Ball. Author Danielle Trussoni will lead the conversation.

The event is FREE in the La Casona Convention Center, Josefina Orozco 2 (across the street from Luna de Queso).