Literary Friction
A monthly conversation about books and ideas on NTS Radio hosted by friends Carrie Plitt, a literary agent, and Octavia Bright, a writer and academic. Each show features an author interview, book recommendations, lively discussion and a little music too, all built around a related theme - anything from the novella to race to masculinity. Listen live on NTS Radio.
Episodes
Year in Review 2025 (and mother of all catch-ups)
So it turns out, we missed talking to each other about books, and we missed you! And thanks to some vital sponsorship from our friends at Faber Books, we are BACK, baby, for this extra long one-off Year in Review episode.
This show is full of recommendations from the last year (or two), as well as a bit of a catch up. Since we last appeared in your feeds, we've both had babies, Carrie moved to N
Literary Friction - Year (and Decade) in Review 2023
It's time for our usual Year in Review show, but seeing as this is also our last EVER episode (sob!), we're shaking things up a little to bring you a bit of a decade in review as well, so we can look back over our highlights from ten wonderful years of Literary Friction.
This show is stuffed full of recommendations, including our favourite reads from this year and books we're looking forward to
Literary Friction - A Life of One's Own with Xialou Guo
What does it mean, to pursue a life of your own? And what is art and literature's role in figuring out what that might look like? This month we're delighted to be talking to writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo, whose latest book Radical: A Life of My Own is both a personal lexicon and a memoir, which thinks deeply about what it would mean to truly forge a life of one’s own.
As we announced on our la
Minisode Forty-Five: Friendship
Our theme this month was suggested by our patron Maral, who asked us to do an episode about our friendship, because she’s interested in how our (very!) different personalities align. We thought it might be a little self-indulgent to spend a whole episode talking about us specifically, so we’re also going to return to the theme of friendship more broadly, and talk about some of our favourite books
Literary Friction - Desire with K Patrick
How do the people and things we desire shape our identities? And how do you render the physical intensity of desire on the page? Author K Patrick joins us in thinking about desire this month - we spoke to K about their debut novel Mrs. S, which tells the story of a young Australian who arrives at an elite English all-girls boarding school for a job and ends up having a life-changing affair with th
Minisode Forty-four: Parenthood
Last year we made a minisode about mothers, and one about fathers, both of which began an ongoing conversation about parenthood and literature that we wanted to pick up this month. Is fiction a good form for exploring the experience of parenthood? And beyond the ubiquitous parenting manuals, what does non-fiction about parenthood have to offer? Adulthood lasts far longer than childhood, so what ab
Literary Friction - Doppelgangers with Naomi Klein
What is it about doppelgangers that's so endlessly compelling? Who better to answer this question than the one and only Naomi Klein, who joined us to talk about her latest book, Doppelganger. This riveting and intellectually rigorous journey begins with a mix-up: people kept confusing Naomi Klein with another Naomi, author Naomi Wolf (known for The Beauty Myth), who got lost in the world of right
Minisode Forty-Three: Sad Girl Novels
Our theme this month was suggested by our patron Mary, who asked us to talk about so-called 'sad girl novels', and it turns out we have some strong opinions! So, listen in as we get to grips with what the term 'sad girl' really means - is it just reductive and misogynistic, or is it getting at something? Was Madame Bovary the original literary sad girl? Is it simply a marketing term or has it beco
Literary Friction - Short Stories with Arinze Ifeakandu
What makes a brilliant short story? Are they better read as part of a collection or as a sharp shot on their own? How do you render fully formed characters in very few words? We're thrilled that this month, Arinze Ifeakandu joined us to talk about his short story collection Gods Children Are Little Broken Things, a beautiful, artful collection of nine short stories about queer lives and love in Ni
RE-RUN: Author Special with Ocean Vuong
We first aired this episode back in July 2019, and it was recorded in the studio when Ocean was on the international tour for his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It’s a really rich and beautiful conversation, full of the kind of thoughtful insights Ocean is known for, but also a lightness and optimism that feels right for summer. And we also thought it would coincide nicely with the publica
Minisode Forty-Two: Artificial Intelligence
Are you a techno-optimist or a techno-pessimist? Or even a total Luddite? Does Chat GPT excite you or completely freak you out? Our theme this month was suggested by our patron Elisse, who asked us to talk about Chat GPT in particular. We thought this was a great jumping off point for a bigger conversation about the relationship between art and technology, the moral panic that always accompanies d
Literary Friction - Dark Comedy with Lorrie Moore
Dark humour - do you love it or hate it? Do you find it cathartic or macho? Can humour ever be too dark, and is it a useful political tool? This month our guest is the one and only Lorrie Moore, who joined us to talk about her latest novel, I Am Homeless if This is Not My Home, a story about grief and ghosts and history that is equally funny as it is philosophical. It follows Finn, who in 2016 is
RE-RUN - Minisode Three: Red Flags
Octavia has been away on her book tour, so today we’re bringing you a re-run of one of our earliest minisodes from April 2019. It was a fun one, inspired by a viral tweet about literary red flags, in which we got into books as cultural capital, literary snobbery, and whether it’s ever ok to judge a person by there reading habits. Plus, the usual cultural recommendations, which are all still access
Literary Friction - Romantic Comedy with Curtis Sittenfeld
From Pride and Prejudice to Detransition, Baby, the romcom can be an enduring source of great pleasure, fun and comfort. This month we’re thrilled to welcome the American writer Curtis Sittenfeld to talk about her latest novel Romantic Comedy, a smart and funny story about how love can upend all kinds of preconceptions and expectations. It also gave us the perfect opportunity to think about the po
Minisode Forty: Author Special with Octavia Bright
Today’s show is an author special, and in the hot seat is our very own Octavia Bright. You probably know by now that Octavia’s first book This Ragged Grace is coming out - and is published today in fact! So Carrie couldn’t resist the chance to grill her about it. This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia's journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father's d
Literary Friction - Writing about Writers with Tan Twan Eng
Do you like reading about writers? What does good writing about the act of writing do? And what happens when you write a real writer into a novel? Our guest this month is Tan Twan Eng, who joined us to talk about his third novel The House of Doors. Based around the writer W. Somerset Maugham’s stay on the Island of Penang, in what was then Malaya, in 1921, it's also about the stories he learns fro
Minisode Thirty-nine: Cities
How do you feel about cities? Do you love the thrust and thrum of them, or are you more interested in escaping it? Do you like to read urban histories, or stories set in the heady metropolis? Our theme this month was suggested by our patron Alycia, who asked us to talk about cities in literature, so listen in for our favourite literary cities, captivating cities we've only encountered in the pages
Literary Friction - Feminism with Sara Ahmed
What's the relationship between feminist writing and feminist activism? What does it mean to be a feminist killjoy, and what can we learn from her? This month, we're joined by scholar and writer Sara Ahmed to answer these questions and more, as we talk about her brilliant latest book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. In it, Sara shows how although the label ‘killjoy’ has often been used to dismiss f
Minisode Thirty-Eight: Book covers
Today our theme is… kinda judgy! Everyone says you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we all know everyone does. So, this month we thought we'd get into it - we partly covered (lol) this topic in our Rediscovery episode for Picador with Jamaica Kincaid and cover designer Stu Wilson, but we wanted to come back to it because there was so much more to say. What makes a book cover good or bad? H
Literary Friction - Dancing Time with Jacqueline Crooks
Dancing can be about escape, about pleasure, but it can also be about protest. It can be a powerful means of expression, but how does writing capture all that movement and rhythm? And what does good writing about dancing do? With us this month is Jaqueline Crooks to talk about her dynamic first novel, Fire Rush, an intoxicating story about the dub reggae scene in 70s and 80s London. Told from the
Minisode Thirty-Seven: Etiquette
Our theme this month was inspired by a recent story in New York magazine about, as they described it, “How to text, tip, ghost, host, and generally exist in polite society today.” The idea behind this list of 140 rules is that the last three years have completely changed the way that we live and work, and also that everyone seems to have forgotten how to be in society, so we need a new code of con
Literary Friction - Journalism with Tania Branigan
When journalists write books, how do they balance the potentially tricky relationship between weaving a compelling narrative and sticking to the facts? What's the role of storytelling in reportage? And what are the ethics of reporting on other peoples' lived experiences? This month our guest is Tania Branigan, foreign leader writer at The Guardian and author of Red Memory: Living, Remembering and
Minisode Thirty-six: Money
Money makes the world go round: it's an inescapable presence in our lives, and yet in a lot of cultures it's still a pretty big conversational taboo. Here in the UK right now there’s a serious cost of living crisis after years of terrible Conservative rule, the newspapers are full of often extremely patronising articles about how to ‘tighten your belt’, and it feels like everyone is talking about
Literary Friction - The Lives of Others with Kathryn Scanlan
Portraits of real people abound in books. There are novels that use transcribed conversations, like Sheila Heti’s How Should A Person Be, or fiction based on historical or even living people, like Curtis Sittenfield’s Rodham. Our guest this month is the writer Kathryn Scanlan who joined us from the States to talk about her riveting new novel, Kick the Latch, which is based upon a series of convers
Minisode Thirty-Five: Food and Feasting
Our January theme is heavily influenced by this time of year. Because the winter months are full of different feast days and celebrations, and because generally in the northern hemisphere it's a time where you just want to cocoon inside and feel warm, cosy and nurtured, we thought we’d talk about food and feasting in all kinds of literature. Whether in fiction or non-fiction, does reading about fo
Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Abstract Romanticism with Chris Kraus
We're on our end of year break, but didn't want to leave you without some LF to keep you company while you cook up your leftovers and potter around in your new socks. So, inspired by one of our new listeners, Charlotte, who tweeted to tell us how much she enjoyed an old episode, we’re re-running one of our favourite conversations from way back: in 2016 we met with Chris Kraus to talk about her boo
Literary Friction - Year in Review 2022
Somehow it's already our last Literary Friction of 2022, which means as usual it's time for our year in review show, packed full of recommendations just in time for your holiday shopping. We've got you - and your Uncle Joe - covered, so listen in for some of our favourite reads from the last year, the usual gentle check in on how our reading revolutions from 2021 went (clue: still patchy), plus bo
Literary Friction - Deception with Yiyun Li
When it comes to fiction, why are people so obsessed with authenticity and so appalled by literary deception? Does it matter who tells a story? And what do novels that confront these ideas have to tell us? Our guest this month is the writer Yiyun Li, whose latest novel The Book of Goose is about an intense friendship between two girls in rural postwar France. When Agnes and Fabienne write a book o
Literary Friction - Graphic Novels with Lizzy Stewart
In this show we're getting to grips with graphic novels. What's the history of this kind of storytelling? What narrative possibilities does the form open up? We first explored this theme with the artist Nick Hayes all the way back in 2014 before this show was even a podcast, and we're returning to it now because our guest this month is the writer and artist Lizzy Stewart, whose debut graphic novel
Literary Friction - Playing Games with Gabrielle Zevin
This month we’re delighted to welcome Gabrielle Zevin to Literary Friction. Gabrielle’s latest novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is an engrossing and moving story of a multi-decade creative partnership between two video game designers, so we thought it only appropriate to make our theme today ‘playing games’. Listen in as we explore how games function in books like The Queen’s Gambit or M
Rediscovery with Jamaica Kincaid and Stu Wilson (Picador Sponsored Episode)
For this minisode we’re doing something a little different - this episode is sponsored by publisher Picador, who this year have launched a new list of contemporary classics, called The Picador Collection, to coincide with their 50th anniversary year. With the aim of bringing seminal titles to a new generation of readers, the Picador Collection combines the gravitas of a modern classics list with t
Minisode Thirty-Three: Correspondence
It's autumn in the UK and we're full of that back to school feeling - fresh pencils, new pens and notebooks - so what better time for a minisode about correspondence. This theme was suggested by our patron Liza and we got really into it, not just because it's such a rich topic in literature (epistolary novels! fictional instant messenger chats! meaningful emails sent between friends!), but also be
Literary Friction - RE-RUN: a Spoonful of Sugar with Leïla Slimani
We're on our summer break, which means we can re-run this excellent conversation we had with the French-Moroccan author Leïla Slimani in 2018. Leïla came in to talk to us about her second novel Lullaby (or Chanson Douce in French) which is about a middle-class couple in Paris and the nanny they hire to care for their children, who at first seems like the perfect caretaker. Inspired by the book, ou
Fandom with Sheena Patel
When does fandom tip over into unhealthy obsession? What are the power dynamics of being someone's fan, and how do they get exploited? This month author Sheena Patel joins Carrie to talk about her debut, I'm A Fan, a novel that gets to grips with power and relationships and what it means to be a fan. Octavia came back for the show chat to continue the conversations about fans and fandom - are we l
Minisode Thirty-Two: A Short History of Literary Friction (Patreon Sneak Peek)
For this month's minisode, we thought we'd give our listeners a preview of some of the bonus minisodes that we're creating for our patreon subscribers. This is one we recorded in May 2021, and it's all about the history of Literary Friction. We had a lot of fun thinking back to when we were baby interviewers, so listen in for the fruits of Carrie's archival digging, our memories of the night we fi
Literary Friction Special - Elif Batuman
This month we're bringing you an author special with Elif Batuman, who joined Carrie in cyberspace to talk about her hilarious and original second novel Either/Or. In this extended interview, they discussed what makes a novel political, snobberies about structure and storytelling, learning to be funny on Twitter, the allure of the '90s, and much more. Plus the usual book recommendations. We hope y
Minisode Thirty-One: Parties
Spring is finally really happening here in the UK: the roses are out, we’ve swapped our coats for jackets, we even had dinner together outside the other night and watching the city come to life made us think about parties. Remember them? Parties! Outfits! Strangers in close proximity! The agony and the ecstasy of all that might happen... So, listen in for an ode to parties good, bad, imaginary and
Minisode Thirty: Libraries
This minisode is a sister to our last one about bookshops - this month, we're talking about libraries. We love libraries! Those other places where you can go to get your hands on the books you want, the books you don’t yet know you want, the books that want you, and everything in between. Listen in for stories of the libraries and librarians that shaped us, our favourite libraries around the world
The Instant with Amy Liptrot
Whether it’s a single action that reverberates around a community, or the rupture of a break-up, literature is filled with memorable instants after which everything changes. Our guest this month is Amy Liptrot, who joined us from Orkney to talk about her second book The Instant, a memoir of Amy’s move from Scotland to Berlin, where she searches for racoons, tracks the moon, goes to techno clubs, l
Minisode Twenty-Nine: Bookshops
The theme for this minisode was suggested by our patron Maria and it's a subject very close to our hearts: bookshops. We love bookshops - those magical places where you can get your hands on the books you want, the books you don’t yet know you want, the books that want you, and everything in between. Listen in for this ode to everything we love about bookshops and booksellers, including our earlie
Satire with Pola Oloixarac
We love a good satire here at LF, so we're thrilled this month to bring you a show dedicated to the form. Argentine writer and novelist Pola Oloixarac joined us from Barcelona to talk about her latest novel Mona, which has been translated from Spanish by Adam Morris. It's the story of a young Peruvian novelist invited to Sweden, where she's in the running for one of the most prestigious literary a
Minisode Twenty-Eight: Fathers
Our last minisode was about mothers, so in the name of equity (and riffing on Octavia’s statement that she’d rather be a dad) we’re extending the conversation to fathers in literature. The figure of the father has its own heavy symbolism, wrapped up with masculinity and the need to provide, and literature is filled with fathers from the admirable to the monstrous. We ask whether we expect as much
East Side Voices with Helena Lee and Will Harris
This month's show is about East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain. We spoke to journalist Helena Lee about East Side Voices, the anthology of writing she edited that celebrates the diversity of these voices in the UK. We also spoke to poet and writer Will Harris about the poem he contributed and some of the other pieces from the collection, which features writers including Mary Jean Chan, S
Minisode Twenty-Seven: Mothers
In honour of the fact that a lot of our friends are suddenly becoming parents, this minisode is dedicated to mothers in literature. The figure of the mother is seriously heavy with symbolism - whether she’s the perfect mother or the monstrous mother, the mother we’re supposed to long for or the mother we’re supposed to fear. Then there's motherhood as an experience in all its complexity, with all
Literary Friction - Year in Review 2021
It’s our last Literary Friction of 2021, so as usual it's time for our year in review show, packed full of recommendations just in time for your holiday shopping. 2021 may have been a bad year for going out, but it was a great year for books, and the voices that lifted us out of our lockdown torpor are particularly special to us now. Listen in for some of our favourite reads from the last year, a
Literary Friction - Books About Books with Ruth Ozeki
Regular listeners will know that we love to get a little meta here on LF, and this month author Ruth Ozeki gave us the perfect excuse to indulge ourselves as we slide into the holiday season. Ruth's latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, is about a boy named Benny who loses his father and shortly thereafter begins to hear the voices of inanimate objects, including the voice of the novel its
Minisode Twenty-six: Twilight Knowing
In the wake of the COP26 summit in Glasgow we are thinking a lot about climate crisis and the role literature can play in galvanising people to take action. We want to think about how fiction, poetry, and non-fiction writing can approach climate crisis beyond showing how terrible it will be in the future - is there a way to write about the subject that's not only disaster fiction? How do we move o
Literary Friction - Climbing the Ladder with Natasha Brown
Social hierarchies and the metrics of status and success are a part of life accepted by some and rejected by others, but whatever your position, they are hard to escape. There are lots of novels about characters climbing proverbial ladders, from Patrick Bateman rising through the ranks in the workplace in American Psycho to Becky Sharpe social climbing in Vanity Fair. Our guest this month is Natas
Minisode Twenty-Five: The Campus Novel
This minisode we are leaning even further into our autumnal and back to school-ish vibe to talk about The Campus Novel, a genre that includes some beloved books and some much less beloved books, but remains enduring nevertheless. Why is there such an appetite for novels about university life? Are these stories mostly wish fulfilment narratives for older men who fear irrelevance? Is it always an el
Literary Friction - Constraint with Maggie Nelson
Can you have freedom without constraint? What role does it play in creativity, and can it be productive as well as limiting? This month our guest is the thinker and writer Maggie Nelson, whose latest book, On Freedom, explores the concept of freedom via four wide-ranging essays about art, sex, drugs and climate. Its subtitle is Four Songs of Care and Constraint, so we thought we’d make this month’
Minisode Twenty-Four: Back to School
School is a loooong way in our past, but the imprint of that new start in September cycle runs deep, so in this minisode we are leaning into that back-to-school feeling. It also feels like there are more brilliant books on the horizon than ever this autumn, and we want to pay homage to our big and exciting to-read piles by telling you about some of the books we’re most jazzed to read in the coming
Literary Friction - Writing For Change With Shon Faye
It's September, the leaves are starting to turn, and we're kicking off our Autumn season with a vital conversation about the power of writing for change. Our guest is the author Shon Faye, who joined us to discuss her hotly anticipated first book, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. It's a necessary and inspiring text in which she argues that we're having the wrong conversation about t
Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Memoir with Viv Albertine
We're on our summer break, which gives us a chance to re-run this brilliant conversation we had with punk superstar Viv Albertine when she dropped by the studio a few years ago to talk about her memoir, To Throw Away Unopened. Nothing grants insight into lived experience quite like a memoir, but the form can accommodate so much more than that, and Viv's book takes in many things alongside its desc
Minisode Twenty-Three: The Sea, the Sea!
It’s hot here, the sky is blue, the air smells sweet, and we are about to take our summer break, so we wanted this last minisode of the season to be a little ode to one of our very favourite things about this time of year: the ocean. Of course, the sea is for all seasons, but there is something magical about it in the summer - swimming in it, gazing at it, dreaming of it... that shimmery, glittery
Literary Friction - Grandparents with Anuk Arudpragasam
Many of us have significant relationships with our grandparents, but is this reflected in literature? From Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Olive Kitteridge, which fictional grandparents have stayed with you? This month, we’re really excited to welcome the author Anuk Arudpragasam to talk about his second novel, A Passage North. It's a beautiful, meditative book about a young ma
Minisode Twenty-Two: Pets
Inspired by Deborah Levy's recommendation of The Friend by Sigrid Nunez - about the surprising friendship between a woman and a Great Dane named Apollo - this show is dedicated to: pets! Furry best friends or unfairly subjugated creatures? Is it ever possible to love animals ethically? Which pets from the pages of literature have stuck in our minds, and why? Tune in for odes to the animals in our
Literary Friction - Real Estate with Deborah Levy
This month, our guest is the inimitable author Deborah Levy, whose latest book, Real Estate, is the third instalment in her acclaimed living autobiography trilogy. It's a book about a lot of things - being a writer, being a woman, how we make and remake a life, and what we ultimately leave behind. But it's also about real estate, which got us thinking about the importance of buildings, houses and
Minisode Twenty-One: Book Criticism
Book criticism - it’s a divisive topic, and one people feel very strongly about. Do you secretly relish a hatchet job, or think there's only space for glowing reviews?What actually is the function of criticism, and what makes it good or bad? Can it ever be truly impartial? This month's theme was recommended by our patron Angelique, and it's one we really enjoyed digging into. Tune in for Carrie's
Literary Friction - Hard Crowds with Rachel Kushner
Our guest this month is the novelist Rachel Kushner, who we have been huge fans of ever since we read her novel The Flamethrowers. Rachel’s latest book is a collection of essays, The Hard Crowd. Though it covers a lot of ground, the collection returns often to the rebels and misfits and outsiders living on the edge of society - a theme in her fiction too. Inspired by Rachel's work, for this show w
Minisode Twenty: Books as Objects
Some people treat books like they are sacred objects, others scribble all over them (or even cut them in half). Of course, books are objects, but they're also portals to other universes, new ways of thinking, adventures, romances, and more. The suggestion for this theme was sent to us on Patreon by a patron called Agnes - who asked if we’d talk about how we relate to books as things, as well as ve
Literary Friction - Magical Realism with Leone Ross
Everyone needs a little magic from time to time, and this episode is brimming with it. We spoke to Leone Ross about her sensuous, absorbing new novel, This One Sky Day, which is set in the fictional Carribean archipelago of Popisho, where everyone is born with a certain magical gift, or cors. It's a story about many things, but mainly of two lovers trying to find their way back to one another over
Literary Friction - Vulnerability with Katherine Angel
This month, as spring begins to spring, we're thinking about vulnerability, about the perils and pleasures of opening up. Joining us is author and academic Katherine Angel, whose latest book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again is a nuanced and thought-provoking examination of women’s desire in the age of consent, exploring the shortcomings of our current discussions around things like sex, power and v
Literary Friction - Inside Publishing with Hannah Westland from Serpent's Tail (Sponsored Episode)
For Minisode Nineteen we’re doing something a little different - this episode is sponsored by publisher Serpent’s Tail, who are celebrating their thirty-fifth birthday this year (just like both of us!). We’ve had many of their authors on the show over the years, including Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Mary Gaitskill, Esi Edugyan and Sarah Perry. So in honour of their birthday, we talked to Se
Literary Friction - Adaptation with Niven Govinden
Building on our show in 2017 with Dana Spiotta that looked at books about film, this month we want to explore what happens when books turn into films. We’ll be asking why literature is often a source for cinema, thinking about what the best adaptations get right, and remembering some of our favourite movies inspired by books. Our guest is author Niven Govinden, whose sixth novel, Diary of a Film,
Literary Friction - Minisode Eighteen: Winter Reads
Minisode Eighteen is dedicated to winter reads. Summer reading seems to get all the attention, but as we hunker down into our second month of winter lockdown in the UK, we’ve been thinking about the kinds of books we turn to in the colder months of the year (and at peak pandemic exhaustion). We’re going to discuss what makes a good read in bleak weather, and some of the best books set in the bleak
Literary Friction Special - Raven Leilani
For our first show of 2021, we bring you this author special with Raven Leilani, who joined Carrie in cyberspace to talk about her smash hit debut novel, Luster. In this extended interview, they discussed making art in precarity, writing so the reader can’t look away, good and bad sex, what it means to write Black characters who unapologetically deny respectability, nerd culture, and so much more.
Literary Friction - Year in Review 2020
It’s our last Literary Friction of 2020, and as usual it's time for our year in review show, packed full of recommendations just in time for your holiday shopping. We'll be looking back over some of the books that got us through this wildly challenging year, and gently revisiting the reading resolutions we made in 2019, when we were still so innocent and full of optimism. We'll also give some reso
Literary Friction - The Political Essay with Otegha Uwagba
Does the written word really have the power to change things? How do you make a good argument in writing? Does the form of the essay lend itself particularly well to politics? Join us as we talk to the writer Otegha Uwagba about her brilliant essay Whites, a clear sighted, powerful comment on race in our society which examines her feelings in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the failures of
Minisode Seventeen: Optimism
What with the news of a viable Covid vaccine in the works and a Biden Harris administration on the horizon, you may be having an unusual feeling, one that you vaguely recognise but can’t quite put your finger on... Well, friends, it might just be Optimism. We're a few weeks into lockdown two in the UK, and seeing as we talked about joy at the start of the first one, it feels like good symmetry to
Literary Friction - Complicated Love with Mary Gaitskill
What does it mean to love too much, or in a way that society doesn’t see as appropriate? Is loving an inherently complicated experience? Helping us consider these questions is our guest, the author Mary Gaitskill, who joined us to talk about her masterful long essay Lost Cat, which has just been published in the UK for the first time. It’s the story of her lost cat, Gattino, and also a clear-eyed
Literary Friction - Sisters with Daisy Johnson
What is it about sisters? Loving, competitive, sometimes incredibly sinister... this month, we're thinking about sisterhood, and all those memorable sisters that fill the pages of literature with their rivalries and alliances, adoration and rebellion. From Little Women to My Sister the Serial Killer, we're getting into why this familial bond is so potent in storytelling. With the days drawing in a
Minisode Sixteen: Audiobooks
Before we were hit with this recent heatwave, there was starting to be a chill in the air, and soon it will be the perfect climate for taking brisk walks in parks, or just round the block for your government mandated hour of exercise should we find ourselves in another lockdown. Either way, the perfect conditions for… listening to books! The first of our autumnal minisodes is dedicated to the cosy
Literary Friction - The Joy of Words with Eley Williams
Why is there so much delight in discovering a juicy new word? Do you ever read the dictionary for fun? Is it annoying when people use obscure words too often? This month’s show is dedicated to the building blocks of all books: words. Joining us is the author Eley Williams, whose first novel The Liar’s Dictionary is both about words and delights in them. In the novel, Peter Winceworth, a disgruntle
Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Masculinity with Thomas Page McBee
We're still on our summer break, so we wanted to use this chance to bring you a re-run of one of our favourite shows from our archive. In 2018, we spoke to Thomas Page McBee about his book Amateur, which tells the true story of his quest to become the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The theme of the show is Masculinity: what makes a man? Why do men fight? Is there
Minisode Fifteen: Joy
Don't know about you, but we've really felt the need for a little more joy around here lately. We miss it, and as the world continues to turn upside down, we’re learning how to find it in new ways and in new places. So, Minisode Fifteen is dedicated to JOY, and the best thing about joy is that once you have a little of it you can find ways to pass it on, like a paper chain of joy spreading out acr
Literary Friction - Luxury With Shola Von Reinhold
What does it mean to write luxuriously? How can books be rich and generous? This month we’re talking about luxury in literature - and no, we don’t mean books about the 1% having spa days or flying first class. Instead, we’re talking about writing that explores the aesthetic, opulent, baroque and decadent. Through writers including Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath, we’ll be thinkin
Literary Friction - Behind Closed Doors With Carmen Maria Machado
This month, we're going behind closed doors with Carmen Maria Machado, who dialled in from the States to talk to us. Her innovative memoir, In The Dream House, is about her experience of domestic abuse, something that is so often hidden from view, and even more so when it happens in a queer relationship. What does it mean to write into archival silence? How do we tell the most difficult stories? A
Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge and Kishani Widyaratna
We're in the midst of an international protest movement, sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a member of the Minneapolis police. As a result, it didn’t feel right to put out a new show, so instead we wanted to re-run a show from 2017 during which we talked about race with Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Kishani Widyaratna, an editor at P
Minisode Fourteen: More Intimacy
We're still stuck on the theme of intimacy, because we haven't been able to stop thinking about it. The demands of this crisis are forcing us to rethink so much that used to be instinctive, including how we connect with other people - physical contact has never been more loaded, and we're having to rely on other ways to bridge the gaps between us. In our last show with Garth Greenwell we were thin
Literary Friction - Intimacy With Garth Greenwell
Like a lot of people, lockdown has made us think about intimacy. As separation from our loved ones drags on, we're all having to find different ways to connect, and in this socially distant reality, intimacy feels more necessary than ever - however we can get it (hot tip: books are good!). Writing and reading can be intimate acts, so for this episode we'll be discussing what intimacy means in lite
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