Zibby Books Hosts ‘Fierce Women Retreat’ at Canoe Place Inn

An eight-year-old girl knocks on the door of an East Hampton home with nothing but some bookmarks and her brother as a chaperone. Zibby Owens wanted to buy a record, so in order to raise the necessary funds, she started designing bookmarks and went door-to-door selling them for 25 cents each.

“Why are you selling bookmarks?” the potential customer asked rudely. “Why don’t you just go home and ask your parents to buy you the record?”

That person didn’t buy a bookmark, but Owens was not deterred. This was just one of her early business ventures. Owens, who lives in Water Mill, is now an author, award-winning podcaster, entrepreneur, CEO and mother of four, proving that women truly are the fiercest creatures.

In 2018, Owens founded Zibby Media with her award-winning podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books,” where she interviews authors of all kinds including bestselling authors, memoirists, athletes and chefs. Since then, the media company has grown to include the literary magazine Zibby Mag, a podcast network called Zibby Audio, an education platform called Zibby Classes and a bookshop in Santa Monica, California.

More recently, Owens added Zibby Books, a publishing house, to Zibby Media’s roster. The publishing house was started in July 2021, but the venture’s first book “My What If Year,” by Alisha Fernandez, was published in February 2023.

In honor of Andrea Dunlop’s book “Women are the Fiercest Creatures,” the second title to be published by Zibby Books which came out on March 7, a “Fierce Women Retreat” will be held at the Canoe Place Inn and Cottages in Hampton Bays from March 10 to 12.

“We’re going to have amazing conversations among a whole range of different women authors and also a writing seminar,” Owens explained in a recent interview. “It’s not only going to be interesting to hear the conversations, but there will be a lot of opportunities for connection, and ultimately, that’s what excites me about everything related to books — their ability to connect us in so many ways.”

Besides Dunlop, four additional authors were also invited to take part in the “Fierce Women Retreat” because Owens believes they are a good fit when talking about women empowerment. They include: Paulina Porizkova (model and wife of Ric O Ric Ocasek, the late, lead singer of the band The Cars) who is the author of “No Filter”; Katie Sise, author of “The Break”; Ann Garvin, author of “I thought You Said This Would Work”; and Leigh Abramson, author of “A Likely Story.” Throughout the weekend, the authors will speak on panels and give various talks. Massages and yoga classes will also be available to participants as part of the retreat.

In Dunlop’s new book “Women Are the Fiercest Creatures,” readers delve into the lives of three women who have been overlooked and manipulated by tech CEO Jake Sarnoff, a man with whom they have each had a romantic (and in some cases a business) relationship and who subsequently wrote them out of his successful company’s history.

“Readers should be looking forward to a fast-paced family drama,” said Dunlop in an interview. “The thing that I most want to give readers as an experience is just to be totally immersed and not be able to put it down. There are some big themes in the book that are important to me about gender and equity, and motherhood and the way that our culture treats mothers. But moreover, for readers, I always just want them to enjoy the story and be immersed in it and feel like the characters are real, and just feel like they’re excited to get back to the book.”

Dunlop added that she was attracted to Zibby Books as a publisher because motherhood plays such a prominent role in Owen’s brand.

“That was definitely part of the brand cohesion. I will say, with this book and her brand, it’s all about mothers,” said Dunlop. “So I think that audience that she’s done such a great job of cultivating with the podcast — and now with Zibby Mag and all of these other arms that have come out — this is somebody who really is connected with my audience and can understand all of the challenges of mothers.”

Graça Tito, the executive assistant to Owens, helped plan the retreat at Canoe Place Inn and she admires all the work she and the authors have done while taking care of their children.

“Zibby is a mother of four and Andrea just had a baby recently,” said Tito. “I’m sure a lot of the women who are going to be at the retreat are mothers. What’s really cool about this is that Zibby is the most incredible mother. She is doing a million things, she is running so many businesses and somehow she makes time to go pick up her kids from school every day. My mom was a stay at home mom and sometimes she didn’t even do that.

“These women are multitasking. They’re prioritizing work and family and pursuing the things that they’ve always wanted to do,” she added. “To me, it’s inspiring as someone who will one day have children, I hope, and it’s an inspiration to see how the women around me that I work with are able to do it so gracefully.”

Supporting women has long been Owens’s goal. Through interviewing female authors on her podcast, Owens heard their qualms with the publishing industry and sought to change it for the better with the creation of Zibby Books.

“I think the number one thing I heard was that authors just didn’t feel appreciated, or special, or respected. They were so disappointed that their one moment in the sun when their book came out was so short lived — and they often didn’t get support afterwards,” said Owens who adds that many of the authors she’s spoken with have had previous books published by large companies with lots of titles.

That was the case for Dunlop, who had three books published through Simon and Schuster before taking “Women Are the Fiercest Creatures” to Zibby Books. Her experiences at the two publishing houses seem to differ immensely.

“I definitely have not had other publishers set up stuff like [the retreat] for the book, and so it just feels very VIP for the authors,” Dunlop explained. “It’s been a really special experience. At a bigger publisher, they publish so many books that you might get a chance to talk to one or two other authors that are like your editors or other authors, but you don’t really get a chance to build community in the way that we have within the Zibby Books world.”

For years, Owens said she moved through jobs that didn’t seem to come together in any way. She wondered why she couldn’t stay on one path like her friend who worked at the same advertising agency for 20 years. But she has since come to realize that every skill she utilized at each of her previous jobs comes into play while running Zibby Media.

“I really feel like I was put on this Earth to do what I’m doing now. I feel like it is so right, that I am uniquely positioned to do this because of my love of reading, my love of writing, my love of starting businesses, my ability to connect,” Owens said. “I just feel like every skill set I have makes what I’m doing now make sense.”

Zibby Owens’s “Fierce Women Retreat” runs Friday, March 10, through Sunday, March 12, at Canoe Place Inn and Cottages, 239 East Montauk Highway, Hampton Bays. Event passes are available at eventbrite.com.