Emily Hill is journalist and author of Bad Romance. In 2016, she was the commissioning editor at The Spectator. Last August, she was responsible for the magazine’s first ever all-female cover. She has written comment for The Guardian, books reviews for the New Statesman and features for the Mail on Sunday, as well as gathering gossip for the Evening Standard and profiling cult figures for Dazed & Confused. Emily is also a collage artist and she gave me a beautiful collage when we met to record the podcast!
This is going live around Valentine's Day and I wanted to dedicate it to talking about being single and what that means right now. Bridget Jones seems outdated and a bit patronising at times, and she ends up with the man in the end, like most literature and film.
Emily's book Bad Romance is dark, funny and feminist debut short story collection and I totally loved it. They tell of defiant single women in all shapes and sizes - of career girls, sisters, mothers and lovers, battling through sleepless nights, never-ending parties, grotesque flat shares and office nightmares.
These are super-short stories, ideal for anyone on the run who wants to be distracted from the daily commute by plunging into a vivid fictional world. This is a collection made for snatched moments – to be flicked through between deadlines, scrolled through in the bus queue on the screen of a smartphone, devoured along with lunch. Or, like a classic bedtime story, finished in that precious time between putting on pyjamas and collapsing into sleep. Each comic vignette may be read fast but will linger long in the mind.
This is a book for fans of Roald Dahl, Saki, Fleabag and Sex in the City.
We talk about writing, getting your confidence back (Emily was rejected by lots of literary agents at the beginning) and why getting married or getting engaged aren't necessarily the only big achievements that need celebrating, lots of other parts of our lives deserve parties too.
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