For this final episode of the sixth season of In Writing , I sat down with Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession , and writer/co-writer of numerous other brilliant shows and movies including Peep Show , Fresh Meat , The Thick of It , In The Loop and Four Lions. At his London office he told me about some of his projects that didn't work out (and why); the importance of tone, and how you know when you've got it right; the Succession rewrites that drove Brian Cox mad; the experiences of working wi...
Dec 06, 2024•55 min•Season 6Ep. 63
Fresh from judging the Booker Prize, novelist Sara Collins joins us this week. Her debut The Confessions of Frannie Langton won the First Novel prize in the 2019 Costa Book Awards, and having adapted it into a TV series, she's now working on her second book. In this episode, she talks about the careful rhythms of her writing routine; the value of plotting (even in literary fiction); and her perspective on the publishing industry, having spent the first 17 years of her career as a corporate lawye...
Nov 29, 2024•51 min•Season 6Ep. 62
This week I'm talking to Tom Crewe, author of 2023's The New Life , contributing editor of the London Review of Books and winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. I visited Tom in September at his London office, which is really more of a nest of books, and we talked about the strange emotional journey of publication; the wrangling of structure; the role of sex scenes and much more. Buy The New Life here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5954/9781529919714 Listen to Tom reading his LRB...
Nov 22, 2024•58 min•Season 6Ep. 61
This week I'm in the London home of artist and writer Posy Simmonds. From the 1970s onwards, Posy had a regular comic strip in The Guardian, where she wrote Mrs Weber's Diary and later serialised the graphic novel Tamara Drewe. She went on to publish two more graphic novels, Gemma Bovery and Cassandra Darke. Earlier this year, she had a major exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and became the first British artist to win the Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics Festival. ...
Nov 15, 2024•53 min•Season 6Ep. 60
Nathan Silver, director and co-writer of Between the Temples (and many other movies) joins me from New York today to talk about his 'scriptment' approach to screenwriting, in which scripts read more like novellas. Nathan and I have a great chat about how he collaborates with cast and uses improvisation to tell a story; how comedy helps him to 'Trojan horse' experimental work to audiences; and his thoughts on letting an audience feel a little bit lost. Watch the trailer for Between the Temples , ...
Nov 08, 2024•50 min•Season 6Ep. 59
This slightly silly bonus episode marks the launch today of In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation , published in the UK by Granta Books. Friend of the podcast and former guest Sathnam Sanghera came to visit the room where I write, for a conversation about the writing life – touching on elaborate procrastination, the fetishisation of fountain pens, and whether writers are good at a party (or not). Listen back to Sathnam's first appearance on In Writing , ...
Nov 07, 2024•48 min•Season 6Ep. 58
Yomi Adegoke, bestselling author of The List and co-author of Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible , spoke to me in August for this episode. We discussed the stellar career she's established in her twenties and early thirties – from launching a self-made magazine, to producing an acclaimed book on the experience of black British women, to writing a novel that has sold more than 150,000 copies in little over a year. Yomi spilled the beans on the steep learning curve of moving from non-fiction ...
Nov 01, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 57
I had a great chat this week with Craig Brown, parody writer and columnist for Private Eye and the Daily Mail , and author of offbeat biographies including A Voyage Around the Queen ; One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time ; and Ma'am Darling (about Princess Margaret). Craig takes iconic cultural figures and writes around them, exploring how they were seen by their friends, fans and critics, and the strange, humorous and poignant ways that they affected other lives. It's an art form that Craig ...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 56
The very funny and frank Bella Mackie is with me today. We met in August to talk about the writing of her three bestselling books: the nonfiction hit Jog On: How Running Saved My Life , and the witty murder novels How to Kill Your Family and What a Way to Go – a new genre that we dub 'sarcastic crime'. Bella opens up about accepting defeat on a failed manuscript, learning her craft on the job, and battling with structure. And we discuss all of that while her dog Barney wanders around us at her k...
Oct 18, 2024•47 min•Season 6Ep. 55
This week, meet Donal Ryan, who has since 2012 published seven bestselling novels and a collection of short stories. Based in County Limerick, Ireland – where he teaches creative writing at the University of Limerick – he writes heartfelt stories inspired by the kinds of people he's lived among all his life. His latest novel, Heart, Be At Peace , is a sequel to his debut, The Spinning Heart , which won the Guardian First Book Award and Irish Book of the Decade, among other plaudits. We sat down ...
Oct 11, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 54
We're back! And I'm sitting down with influential Canadian writer and thinker Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger , No Logo , The Shock Doctrine and many more. Naomi studies and writes about corporate globalisation and the climate emergency, but today we're talking about the challenges of hiding from a child in order to get some work done, and not being able to read one's own handwriting, among other writerly challenges like structure and tone. She's really interesting on honing her voice as a w...
Oct 04, 2024•55 min•Season 6Ep. 53
In this final episode of the season, recorded in February 2023, I'm joined by the beloved poet and author Michael Rosen. Known equally for humorous children's verse and his poetry and prose for adults, Michael's books for kids include We're Going on a Bear Hunt , Chocolate Cake , Michael Rosen's Sad Book and Jelly Boots, Smelly Boots . He's also written a number of more grown-up books, including Many Different Kinds of Love and the memoir Getting Better , about healing and recovery. In recent ye...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 5Ep. 52
This week's guest is the beloved novelist Barbara Trapido, who I met at her home in Oxford in March 2023. Barbara's first novel was 1982's Brother of the More Famous Jack , which was published when she was 41; she followed it with Noah's Ark ( 1984) , Temples of Delight (1990), Juggling (1994), The Travelling Hornplayer (1998), Frankie & Stankie (2003) and Sex & Stravinsky (2010). She's now in her early eighties, and talked to me about finding the energy to write in later life; her playf...
Apr 21, 2023•43 min•Season 5Ep. 51
A little detour into death this week – or life, depending on how you look at it. Nigel Williamson, obituary writer for The Times newspaper, joins me to talk about the art of summing up a person one final time, over 1600 words or so, for the permanent record. I met Nigel in March at the News Building in London to talk about researching a biography, interviewing the bereaved, and trying to get the essence of a whole human life into a couple of pages. You can buy the latest Times anthology of obitu...
Apr 14, 2023•50 min•Season 5Ep. 50
This week's guest is my friend Tor Freeman, who writes and illustrates comics and children's picture books. Tor is a hugely imaginative person, a smart observer of human nature, and a very funny writer. Her comics include Sister Clawdetta: Murder at the Monastery and Welcome to Oddleigh , while her children's books include The Toucan Brothers and Olive and the Bad Mood . In November 2017 she was the winner of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize (you can read her entry here ). We s...
Apr 07, 2023•40 min•Season 5Ep. 49
Geoff 'genre-defying' Dyer, whose career moves between fiction, non-fiction and a grey area in between, joins me this week from California. Geoff published his first book in 1986 and is highly prolific. Some of his best-known works include Out of Sheer Rage ; Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi ; and Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It . Last year he published his most recent book, The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings – a meditation on getting older and how a career can be ...
Mar 31, 2023•59 min•Season 5Ep. 48
This week, the Guardian journalist Zoe Williams joins me on In Writing . I recorded with Zoe at her home in London just before Christmas. She's well-known in the UK as a prolific writer of features, confessional columns and political opinion, and she was as outspoken and entertaining in person as she is in print. She talked me through her ability to write 1000 words in 20 minutes, but then take six months to file one feature; the pros and cons of writing about her personal life; and the most use...
Mar 17, 2023•49 min•Season 5Ep. 47
Hallå! My guest this week is Swedish screenwriter and director Ruben Östlund, who I met in London in December. Ruben's feature films include 2014's Force Majeure , 2017's The Square , and 2022's Triangle of Sadness , which is nominated for three Oscars including Best Original Screenplay. He has a unique way of writing, doing a lot of talking before he even gets close to typing out the script; he tells me about that, plus how making ski movies influenced his sense of dramatic excitement, and why ...
Mar 10, 2023•53 min•Season 5Ep. 46
This week's guest is Sophie Mackintosh, author of books including the Booker Prize-longlisted The Water Cure , and new novel Cursed Bread . Sophie talks to me about the optimum balance of social life and writing life; how playlists help her get into the worlds of her novels; and how she powers her work with 'little treats'. Browse Sophie's books in the In Writing bookshop to support this podcast and independent booksellers: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing This season of In Writing is spo...
Mar 03, 2023•40 min•Season 5Ep. 45
The fifth season of In Writing continues with Vogue columnist Raven Smith, who's known for his witty takes on pop culture, modern life and masculinity. Raven is the author of two collections of personal essays: Raven Smith's Trivial Pursuits and Raven Smith's Men , which has just come out in paperback (buy it here https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing ). He talks to me about how gaining confidence as a writer helped him gravitate towards more honesty; life as a columnist and Instagram wit; and...
Feb 24, 2023•43 min•Season 5Ep. 44
I'm back! And very happy about it. This week, Nigerian novelist Ayobami Adebayo speaks to me from her home in Lagos. Ayobami is the author of 2017's Stay With Me, and A Spell of Good Things, which was published in the UK last week. Stay With Me was a hugely successful debut; it won the 9mobile Prize for Literature, and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize. It’s now been translated into 20 languages, and the French translation won the Prix Les Afri...
Feb 17, 2023•56 min•Season 5Ep. 43
Introducing the In Writing newsletter, a life raft for writers at sea. Sign up at https://inwriting.substack.com
May 07, 2022•4 min
For the last episode of the fourth series of In Writing , Rumaan Alam joins me remotely from his house in Brooklyn, New York. Rumaan is the author of Rich and Pretty , That Kind of Mother , and most recently Leave the World Behind – a literary thriller about a family holiday that takes a sinister twist. ( Leave the World Behind is set to become a Netflix movie, with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali reportedly in lead roles.) Rumaan talks to me about the lengthy preparation that allows him to wri...
Dec 10, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 42
Georgia Pritchett is my very funny guest this week. She's been writing for TV since the early Nineties and has worked on Smack the Pony , The Thick of It , Veep , Succession and, importantly, Spice World . She's also the creator of the new Apple TV series The Shrink Next Door , starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn – and she has recently published a wonderful memoir about anxiety, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life . Georgia spoke to me in early November about the grain of honesty in every g...
Dec 03, 2021•49 min•Season 4Ep. 41
The 40th episode of In Writing focuses on the art of letter-writing. Shaun Usher, who spoke to me last week from his home in Manchester, is the founder of Letters of Note , a blog that led to several very successful books and a star-studded live event (Letters Live). He has dedicated his career to finding the most brilliant, funny, insightful or poignant letters from all over the world and bringing them to a wider audience – whether that's a young Tom Hanks trying to charm the director George Ro...
Nov 26, 2021•59 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Australian writer Liane Moriarty joins me this week from her family home in Sydney. Liane has written nine novels, including her latest mystery Apples Never Fall , and has sold over 20 million books worldwide. She is perhaps best known as the author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers , which were adapted into glossy TV series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Melissa McCarthy. Liane talks to me about the dark turn that took her fiction from successful to stratospherically ...
Nov 19, 2021•48 min•Season 4Ep. 39
Today's interview is with the writer and editor Craig Taylor, who dials in from an island shack off the coast of western Canada. Once a Guardian contributor, with his column One Million Tiny Plays About Britain (which became a book and a play), Craig has since become known for oral histories including 2006's Return to Akenfield and 2011's Londoners. For his latest book New Yorkers , he collected and edited over a million words of interviews with residents of the Big Apple; this week it won a Bro...
Nov 12, 2021•48 min•Season 4Ep. 38
It's wonderful to have novelist Meg Mason on the podcast this week. On holiday in June, I got more hooked on her novel Sorrow and Bliss than I have been on perhaps any other book of this year. Speaking to me from Sydney in August, Meg talked about her complicated feelings about the memoir she published in 2012 and the unpublished novel she completed just before Sorrow and Bliss . She gave some useful advice on characterisation, and shared the daily exercise she used to boost her confidence when ...
Nov 05, 2021•51 min•Season 4Ep. 37
Not a normal In Writing episode today, but a wholehearted recommendation for something new . This is a guest episode of the excellent podcast The Offcuts Drawer with Laura Shavin, on which successful writers share the contents of their bottom drawer – the bits of writing they never finished, had rejected or just like to hold on to for nostalgic reasons. Actors perform these pieces and the writer chats to host Laura Shavin about the stories behind them. In this episode, Laura meets Chris Lang, wr...
Nov 02, 2021•49 min
This week's guest is The Guardian 's John Crace, writer of satirical parliamentary sketches, as well as a personal diary column. For a long time John also wrote the paper's Digested Read , in which each week, he summed up a new book in a few funny paragraphs. He's published several books himself, on topics as varied as football, cricket and Shakespeare, as well as collections of his columns, including the new A Farewell to Calm , which is out on 4 November. I visit John at his home in south Lond...
Oct 29, 2021•47 min•Season 4Ep. 36
