MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
She's unraveled an international conspiracy involving a Supreme Court justice who's fallen mysteriously ill. She's investigated a blackmailed federal judge and a secret court -and all that while she was still just a Supreme Court clerk. This time, Avery Keene has finished her clerkship, but her quest for justice continues, this time focused on what could be the deadly side of AI. And yes, Avery Keene is fiction, but her creator is very much real and someone who knows the corridors of power for herself. She's the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and two-time gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Her latest thriller - and it really is a thriller - is called "Coded Justice." The book hits the stands tomorrow, and she's with us now to talk about this latest work. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us once again.
STACEY ABRAMS: I appreciate the invitation and the chance to talk about Avery Keene.
MARTIN: So Avery Keene has starred in two of your previous books. How would you describe the premise of this book?
ABRAMS: So she has moved on from the - being a law clerk. She is now an investigative attorney. And in private firms, it's actually a job. My younger sister did this for a while as an attorney. And you go inside companies, and you sort of help them figure out problems before they balloon or become public. And so she has been doing this for a few months at this law firm, and she gets pulled into this tech company that needs the help of an investigative lawyer. She's prepared for boredom, and that is not what she gets.
MARTIN: (Laughter) So the book touches on health care and artificial intelligence. And one of the things the book does besides kind of take her on this trip is explains complicated things like how AI can be used beneficially, but also how it could potentially be abused. How did this come to you? Like, is this something that's been percolating in your mind? Is there something that kind of set this off for you?
ABRAMS: Yeah. So every Avery Keene novel starts with a question I have. This one really was a combination of, how does AI work in our world? Why are we so bad at healthcare? And as we think about the intersection, I wanted to think about social justice issues.
MARTIN: Is this, in a way, your way of kind of working out what a better world would look like?
ABRAMS: Absolutely. I mean, for me, living is political. Our choices, our challenges, it's all political, and not in the sense that it's all partisan. But the negotiation of our priorities, our sacrifices - that's politics. It's easy to feel isolated or distanced from the headlines to think, AI is just too complicated, and I can't understand it. I want us to believe that we have the right to understand it and the capacity to do so. And so I try to take these complex real-world conversations and bring them into a space where I can terrify you, I can make you hopeful. But at the end of the day, you feel more ownership over your opportunity to do something about it.
MARTIN: So let's go to the rest of your life, because, as I said, you are a real-life person with a real-life life outside of your fiction writing, and a big part of your life is your political activism. Last spring, Georgia's Republican-dominated state Senate moved forward with an ethics investigation of the New Georgia Project, which is a voter registration organization that has worked with you on a number of projects and getting more people registered, getting more people out to the polls. Is there anything you can tell us about that? Is that ending the operations of the project?
ABRAMS: No. I am proud of the work that I did establishing New Georgia Project. However, I've had no involvement in the group's leadership since I stepped away in 2017. However, what's happening with the GOP is that I'm being attacked because I believe voting rights matter, and they are using this as a proxy for a larger attack on the work that I do. The attacks that we're seeing are not grounded in any actual harm. It's that they're angry because I continue to do the work, even without a title. And instead of matching that energy, they've chosen to launch attacks, and I think that just says more about their priorities than mine.
MARTIN: What do you see as your role right now? If I were to write a sentence that said Stacey Abrams is or Stacey Abrams does, how would you end that sentence?
ABRAMS: Stacey Abrams does her best to engage people. So I have a podcast. I have a Substack. I write fiction. I was recently, you know, doing an interview where I talk about how to understand this political moment in terms of the rise of autocracy. My job is to help people believe that they have the power of citizenship and that they have the right to make this country what they believe it should be. That's the work I do.
MARTIN: Do you think we'll ever see you back in politics as a candidate?
ABRAMS: It's entirely possible. I mean, look, politics is a tool, and it's a tool that I have used before. It's a tool that I think is important. And I have used it in my world to help fight back. I try to pick the right tool at the right time to get the work done. So I know I'm not done fighting, and I know I'm focused on finding the most effective place I can be in the fight right now. And that's going to be the way I make decisions. It has been, and it will continue to be.
MARTIN: You've also written romances. You know, there was a point at which you were in the conversation as vice president for former President Joe Biden. And I know that some people kind of wanted to throw some shade at your fiction. And clearly, you don't care, but I was just wondering...
ABRAMS: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...Did that ever give you pause? Did you ever think, oh, you know - I don't know. I was just wondering, did any of that bother you?
ABRAMS: Yeah.
MARTIN: Or you just don't care?
ABRAMS: I've written 17 books. My first eight were romance. And I used a pseudonym in part because I was also publishing articles on the operational dissonance of the income tax exemption. And you can publish romance under a pen name. You can't publish tax articles under a pen name, and it was at the time that no one knew who I was. So no one was going to pick up a romance novel by Alan Greenspan.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ABRAMS: That said, I've never been uncomfortable with what I do. I write children's books. I write nonfiction. I write legal thrillers. I write romance - because they're tools. They're ways I can help create positive change and engage people. And anyone who would look down on a means of engaging should investigate themselves. I've never questioned who I am and how I write and why I write because I love the power of storytelling, and it helps me do the work that I think needs to be done.
MARTIN: Stacey Abrams is the author most recently of "Coded Justice." It's out tomorrow. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for talking with us.
ABRAMS: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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