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In this episode, we speak to author Sheila Heti about her brilliant new book, Alphabetical Diaries, in which she alphabetizes her diaries over a ten-year period, creating parallels and juxtapositions between past and present versions of the self. We speak about the role of formal constraints in her work and her resistance of linear time, progress and the notion of a complete, continuous narrative of selfhood. We think about rhythm and the materiality of language in relation to associative narrative structure. We chat about Heti's body of work, from How Should a Person Be? to Motherhood and Pure Colour, exploring the myriad ways in which she interrogates time and selfhood through hybrid forms, pushing the boundaries of the novel. Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including Alphabetical Diaries, Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. She is the current Alice Munro Chair of Creativity at Western University in London, Ontario. In 2022, she was the Franke Visiting Fellow at Yale, and an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Religious Studies, teaching Fate and Chance in Art and Experience with ⁠Noreen Khawaja⁠. References Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti Pure Colour by Sheila Heti Motherhood by Sheila Heti How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

In this episode, we speak to academic, author and broadcaster Noreen Masud about her memoir, A Flat Place. We discuss the psychological, literary and philosophical histories and connotations of flat landscapes. We talk about Masud's experience growing up in Lahore, Pakistan, then moving to the UK and the complexity of language, culture and the post-colonial experience. We discuss what it means to resist the history of landscape writing, from white male colonial stories of nature as redemption and Romantic notions of landscape as revelation or a text to be interpreted 'correctly.' Instead, our conversation considers what it means to open space for failure, misinterpretation and post-colonial discomfort, without resolution. We discuss memory as place, the importance of sitting with unknowingness, the connection between listening and mutual aid and the limits of empathy. We talk about counteracting the constant strive for meaning in literature with seeking play, sound and irreverance. Noreen Masud was born and raised in Pakistan. She is a literary scholar working on the twentieth century, writing about things which, in one way or another, present variously as absurd, unrevealing, embarrassing or useless. These include aphorisms, flatness, spivs, puppets, nonsense, leftovers, earworms, footnotes, rhymes, hymns, surprises, folk songs, colours and superstition. She is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2020, and a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Hard Language: Stevie Smith and the Aphorism, and A Flat Place. References A Flat Place by Noreen Masud Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein Willa Cather Kangaroo by DH Lawrence Against the Trauma Plot by Parul Sehgal You can now subscribe to our ⁠Patreon ⁠for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to: 10% listener discount on all books at Storysmith, either online or in person Opportunities to submit questions to upcoming guests Free book giveaways each month related to our featured guests Early access to episodes each month Exclusive free tickets each month to live Storysmith events A free Storysmith tote bag after 3 months subscription Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work.

In this episode, we speak to Nathalie Olah about her book Bad Taste: Or The Politics of Ugliness. We discuss notions of taste and the intersection with social class and cultural capital. We think about the ways in which a fear of judgement is intrinsic to working-class survival and the construction of working-class femininities within this. We chat about the ways in which ideas of social mobility force working-class people to assimilate to middle-class ideas of taste, and the loss and displacement caused by this. We highlight the importance of working-class writers amplifying the people, places, objects and events that are significant to them, from Pamela Anderson's hyper-feminized look in the film Barb Wire (1996) to Dolly Parton's embrace of 'trashy' aesthetics. We discuss the role of austerity and scarcity within contemporary notions of 'style' and 'class' and how this links to the wealth and power of dominant taste-makers. We explore the role of culture and beauty in upholding power hierarchies and the way this shapes our lives. Nathalie Olah is a writer currently living and working in London. Her political awakening happened when she was living in the Netherlands in 2014, completing an MA (global political economy, University of Sussex / Utrecht University) and working for research organisations and grassroots protest groups challenging the biases of the international courts and witnessing the distant, passive cruelty of EU bureaucrats subjecting millions of people to misery during the Greek debt crisis. She came back to the UK in 2016 when electoral politics was just starting to get interesting; joined a few organisations, wrote a few things. This all led to the publication of her first book, Steal As Much As You Can in 2019. Her background has always been aesthetics, philosophy and literature. She first studied English Language and Literature, but her professor, Christopher Butler, was a philosopher and art historian. Her main interest is media spectacle and propaganda, and the quaint exceptionalisms of the western psyche and that of the upper/middle class in particular. She is always trying to challenge the assumption — in a visually over-saturated world — that seeing is knowing, and ultimately prevent the slide into what academic Eva Illouz has termed ‘scopic capitalism’. Her new book, Bad Taste: or the politics of ugliness is about the industries of taste (which prospered after 2008), how they aestheticise and valorise scarcity, which is an invention of capitalism, and create a false hierarchy of virtue centred on consumerism. Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published widely in Five Dials, Dazed, AnOther, i-D, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement. References Bad Taste by Nathalie Olah Look Again: Class by Nathalie Olah Steal as Much as You Can by Nathalie Olah

In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Eliza Clark about her novel, Penance. We discuss violence and transgression within fiction, and what this can reveal about wider society. We chat about the satirisation of the true crime genre, and the socio-political context which surrounds violent acts. We examine the role of the internet in writing, publishing and how it effects our experiences of our bodies and desires. We discuss the influence of both mainstream and social media in shaping narratives about people and places, as well as aspects of social class and regional inequality between the north-east and London. We chat about what it means to write difficult female characters and the difference between writing first and second novels. Eliza Clark is from Newcastle. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North's 'Young Writers Talent Fund'. Her debut novel, Boy Parts, was published by Influx Press in July 2020 and was Blackwell's Fiction Book of the Year. In 2022, Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women's Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five, and she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Penance was published by Faber in 2023. References Boy Parts by Eliza Clark Penance by Eliza Clark You can now subscribe to our Patreon for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to: 10% listener discount on all books at Storysmith, either online or in person Opportunities to submit questions to upcoming guests Free book giveaways each month related to our featured guests Early access to episodes each month Exclusive free tickets each month to live Storysmith events A free Storysmith tote bag after 3 months subscription Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work.

In this special live episode, we speak to writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright about her memoir, This Ragged Grace. We discuss the ways in which Octavia's roles as an interviewer, carer and linguist informed her process as an active listener and developed her writing voice. We explore the distinction between the pornographic and the erotic in relation to memoir writing, and discuss the process of revealing and concealment when writing from lived experience. We chat about the importance of images and symbols in articulating trauma, with reference to Louise Bourgeois' 'Spiral Woman' as a symbol which holds contradictions within recovery. We speak about the interweaving of presence, loss, memory and history within writing and discuss the influence of artists and writers such as Louise Bourgeois, Deborah Levy and Marlene Dumas on Octavia's work. Octavia Bright is a writer and broadcaster. She co-hosts Literary Friction, the literary podcast and NTS Radio show, with Carrie Plitt. Recommended by The New York Times, Guardian, BBC Culture, Electric Literature, The Sunday Times and others, it has run for ten years and has listeners worldwide. She also presents programmes for BBC R4 including Open Book, and hosts literary events for bookshops, publishers, and festivals – such as Cheltenham Literature Festival and events for The Southbank Centre. Her writing has been published in a number of magazines including the White Review, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Wasafiri, Somesuch Stories, and The Sunday Times, amongst others. She has a PhD from UCL where she wrote about hysteria and desire in Spanish cinema. References This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright Living Autobiography series by Deborah Levy Louise Bourgeois Marlene Dumas As always, listen for the discount code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Octavia's work.

In this episode, we chat to Isabel Waidner about their new novel, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility. We discuss the notion of 'liberating the canon' and the role of formal innovation in representing marginalised perspectives across gender, sexuality, social class and race. We explore the queering of the Bambi figure in Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, the radical importance of acknowledging references and transdisciplinary approaches to art-making. We discuss the role of football and music as traditional ways for working-class people to access 'social mobility' and consider how literature might fit within this. We explore the queering of time and history within the novel and highlight the necessity of balancing a critique of society with the liberatory potential of queer imaginaries. We dicuss the gatekeeping of the literary establishment, the false promises of meritocracy in awards culture and the commodification of art, exploring the limitations of neoliberalism. Isabel Waidner is a writer based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They won the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. References Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature by Isabel Waidner We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner Sterling Carat Gold by Isabel Waidner Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabael Waidner An Alternative Art History of the 1990s by Isabel Waidner (Frieze) All Us Girls Have Been Dead for So Long by Linda Stupart and Carl Gent Nicole Eisenman, Bambi Gregor, India ink on paper, 1993 John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears, 1978 Loot by Joe Orton As always, listen for the code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Isabel's work

In this episode, we speak to investigative journalist Siân Norris about her new book, Bodies Under Siege. We discuss the rise of far-right ideology across the world, and the ways in which fascism and the struggle for reproductive rights are inextricably linked. We consider the ways in which global anti-abortion networks are connected to movements which are underpinned by white supremacy and hostile to LGBTQIA+ rights. We think about the influence of these movements across the world, including their access to funding, their co-opting of feminist language and tactics used by the far-right to secure the support of women in their world as mothers, such as tradwifes and gender critical feminists. We discuss the possibilties of reproductive justice for women across the world, and consider the ways in which we might build a better world through the international reproductive justice movements, centered on resistance and solidarity. Siân Norris is a writer and investigative journalist who has covered far-right movements and their relocation to the mainstream for a range of publications, including the UK's Byline Times and openDemocracy. Norris is a leading voice in the UK feminist movement and her writing on issues ranging from men's violence against women, to migrant rights, and poverty and inequality, has been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, the i, and many more publications. In 2012 she set up the Bristol Women's Literature Festival, which she ran for eight years References Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global by Siân Norris Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys Happening by Annie Ernaux As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Siân's work.

In this episode, we speak to Preti Taneja about her brilliant book, Aftermath. We discuss the ways in which individual actions are mapped onto societal, national and global histories and inequalities. We consider the paradoxical limits of language and writing to articulate grief, as well as a return to other radical writers and thinkers. We discuss the oppression of the prison industrial complex system and its relationship to racism within the UK education system. We speak about the use of shame to denigrate marginalised people and the erasure of colonial and imperial history within schools. We discuss the role of fictions, both within literature and within society, and the ways in which particular narratives have the potential to imprison or empancipate people. We consider the gatekeeping within contemporary literary culture and wonder what literature could look like in a more equitable world. Preti Taneja is a writer and activist. Her debut novel We That Are Young (Galley Beggar Press, 2017) won the Desmond Elliott Prize for the finest literary debut novel of the year and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski, Europe's premier award for a work of world literature. Her second book, Aftermath (And Other Stories, 2021) won the Gordon Burn Prize in 2022 and was a New Yorker notable book, a New Yorker best book of the year, a White Review book of the year, New Statesman book of the year in 2021 and in 2022, and shortlisted for British Book of the Year - Discover. Her writing has been published in The White Review, the Guardian, Vogue India, the New Statesman, Granta, INQUE and in anthologies of short stories, essays, literary criticism and prose poetry. She has taught writing in prisons, worked with arts practitioners around the world mediating their own conflict and post conflict zones, and with young people across deprived parts of the UK who want to get published. She is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA). In 2022 Preti was named winner of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in Languages and Literatures 'for her work on combining ethics, politics and aesthetics; developing pioneering hybrid creative forms, including via literary prose to advocate for minority rights.' She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review magazine, and for the multi-award winning independent press And Other Stories, for which she accepts submissions of full manuscripts. References We That Are Young by Preti Taneja Aftermath by Preti Taneja Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin Adrienne Rich Ruth Wilson Gilmore Angela Davis Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Preti's work.

In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking to the very brilliant Bhanu Kapil about the UK publication of her collection Incubation: a space for monsters. We discuss what it means to return to earlier work in new contexts, and why the figure of the monster or cyborg is so crucial to her work, in relation to migration and border politics. We chat about the role of the body within her work, and the language of flesh and bones. We discuss the relationship between performance, writing and memory and what it means to make work which refuses categorisation. Bhanu Kapil is the author of six full-length poetry collections and a recipient of a Windham- Campbell Prize and a Cholmondeley Award. Her most recent book, How To Wash A Heart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. For twenty years, she taught creative writing, performance art and contemplative practice at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She is currently based in Cambridge as a Fellow of Churchill College. She also teaches for the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, as part of a practice- based Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability. References Incubation: a space for monsters by Bhanu Kapil Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil How to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil Plot by Claudia Rankine Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics As always, listen for a discount code for 10% discount on Bhanu Kapil's work at Storysmith.

In this week's episode, we chat to writer and Japanese translator Polly Barton about her new book Porn: An Oral History. We discuss the necessity of sitting with discomfort and ambivalence and the role of unknowingness within a divided contemporary society. We speak about he nature of oral histories and the links between translation and transcription. We consider the importance of intergenerational conversation, as well as the role of nuance, contradiction and sensitivity within non-fiction. We consider what it means to leave space for desire and pleasure within discourse on sex and gender and think about Pamela Paul's notion of the pornification of society under capitalism. Polly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and her debut book, Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021. In 2022, Fifty Sounds was shortlisted for the 2022 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders and her full length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury). Her new book, Porn: An Oral History, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and is forthcoming from La Nave di Teseo in Italy. References Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families by Pamela Paul

In this episode, we speak to author and essayist Ellena Savage.  We discuss hierarchies of power within the arts and the precarity of writing for a living, as well as what it means to work both within and in opposition to literary and academic institutions. We address ideas of consumption and capitalism, as well as the dream of a classless society which makes space for beauty and pleasure. We explore the experimental essay form as a means of capturing the fractured nature of memory and time, and the subversion of catalogues and archives as a feminist tool. We discuss what it means to write 'memoir' or 'anti-memoir' and the intersection of these ideas with gender and social class. We also chat about complex notions of home and belonging, amidst gentification and colonial histories. Ellena Savage's debut essay collection, Blueberries, was published by Text Publishing and Scribe UK in 2020. It was shortlisted for the 2021 VPLA and long-listed for the Stella Prize. She has written essays, stories and poems for Sydney Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, Meanjin, Overland, Cordite, Mirror Lamp Press, Kill Your Darlings,The Big Issue Fiction Edition and The Lifted Brow (where she was an editor). She has also written for periodicals such asThe Age, Guardian Weekend and Eureka Street, where she wrote a monthly cultural politics column between 2011-2016, and in the anthologies Open Secrets (2021), The Cambridge History of the American Essay (forthcoming), Choice Words (2019), The Best of the Lifted Brow: Volume Two (2017), Poetic Justice (2014), and The Emerging Writer (2013). She has written for gallery and performance contexts via Darebin City Council, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, and  ArtsHouse. She also published a chapbook, Yellow City with The Atlas Review in 2019.   References Blueberries by Ellena Savage Little Throbs (newsletter) by Ellena Savage Memnoir by Joan Retellack (Chain #7: Memoir/Anti-Memoir edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr) Bhanu Kapil Crabcakes: A Memoir by James Alan McPherson Poetry is not a Luxury by Audre Lorde As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ellena's work.

In this episode, we speak to Nuar Alsadir about her essay, Animal Joy. We discuss the radical possibilities of laughter, the connections between writing and psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic notion of our 'true' and 'false' selves. We chat about living 'hotter' and being 'more' in the face of a society which often asks us to diminish ourselves in order to conform to social scripts. We talk about the role of the clown within this society and the disruptive nature of poetry. We think about what it means to put unconscious and bodily experiences into writing, through the lens of Nuar's second poetry collection, Fourth Person Singular. Nuar Alsadir writes poetry and nonfiction. She is the author of the nonfiction book, Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation, and two poetry collections, most recently Fourth Person Singular, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and  the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She lives in New York where she  works as a psychoanalyst in private practice. References Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir Fourth Person Singular by Nuar Alsadir More Shadow than Bird by Nuar Alsadir Winnicott's theory of true and false selves L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq Tune into the episode for a 10% discount on Nuar Alsadir's work at Storysmith.