In this episode we caught up with Canadian writer Sarah Bernstein, author of the novels ‘the Coming Bad Days’ and ‘Study for Obedience’ Recorded back at the beginning of 2024, our chat covers, amongst other things, the relative importance of voice over story, the overlap between academic writing and fiction, including references in fictional work, taking notes while reading (and the stress this can add to reading a book you’ve been looking forward to), reading the audiobook version of something you’ve written…

This month we are speaking with international prize-winning novelist and former Edinburgh Makar / Poet Laureate (2008-2014), Ron Butlin. In 2009 he was made the first-ever Honorary Writing Fellow (together with Ian Rankin) at Edinburgh University. Much of his work — novels, short stories and poetry — has been widely broadcast and translated. In… Read more: Ron Butlin

This month’s episode features our chat with novelist and short story writer Amina Cain, the author of the novel Indelicacy, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and two collections of short stories, Creature and I Go To Some Hollow.

This month’s episode is our chat with the late Christopher Priest, who sadly passed away on 2nd February 2024. In what will have been one of his last interviews, we spoke to Christopher on 3rd November 2023, where he talked us through his development as a writer, his skepticism about using notebooks, dealing with… Read more: Christopher Priest

This month we return to our first in-person recording for way too long, as we sat down with writer, musician and all-round cultural agitator Bill Drummond. 

This month, we are speaking to the Egyptian poet and author Iman Mersal. We talk about the genesis of ideas, structure and form when writing in Arabic, and the importance of urgency in directing your writing.