In her latest semi-autobiographical novel Playboy (Tuskar Rock, translated by Holly James), leading French writer Constance Debré describes how a woman, at the age of 43, abandons her apartment, her marriage and her successful legal career to lead a new life as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes the narrator describes a series ... Show More
Aug 26
Colin Grant & Michael Rosen: What We Leave We Carry
Historian Colin Grant and WritersMosaic writers have travelled the length and breadth of the country to gather the voices and experiences of immigrants living in Britain. In What We Leave We Carry we meet, amongst others, a Czech-Roma lawyer in Reading, an Iranian taxi driver in ... Show More
54m 44s
Aug 24
Erin Maglaque & Hannah Dawson: Presence
Erin Maglaque’s first book, Presence, explores the hidden history of the female body through deep archival research: fragments in medical texts, trial transcripts, legal treatises, prayerbooks, letters, and diaries come together to make tangible a vanished past, unfamiliar becaus ... Show More
55m 36s
Aug 19
Eli Davies & Rebecca May Johnson: The Spinster Cookbook
The kitchen has always been a complex space for women: a place of labour and gendered expectations, as well as a site of nourishment, care and company. But how does this change when you’re alone, not cooking for family or friends, but simply for yourself? In The Spinster Cookbook ... Show More
53m 31s
Nov 2019
#227 Dawn O'Porter: Is Anyone's Life As Perfect As It Looks?
It's been a Dawn O'Porter themed week! I hosted Q&A event with Dawn at Foyles which was so fun, we then recorded the podcast, and then her launch party!Dawn is the author of 6 books including the award-winning YA books Paper Aeroplanes and Goose, her first adult novel The Cows wa ... Show More
29m 58s
Nov 2024
Harriet Constable in “les Rencontres” — CHANEL Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon
Listen to author and critic Erica Wagner in conversation with Harriet Constable, writer of “The Instrumentalist”, her first novel published by Bloomsbury in 2024, in which she retraces the story of musical prodigy Anna Maria della Pietà, student of Antonio Vivaldi. Through this c ... Show More
39m 45s