Lauren Groff is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels – Fates and Furies (named by Barack Obama as his favourite book of 2015), The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia – as well as the story collection Delicate Edible Birds. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Groff’s fiction has won the Pushcart Prize and the PEN/O. Henry Award, among others, and has been shortlisted for the ...
Feb 11, 2020•33 min
Eoin Colfer is the author of the internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl series, which has been translated into over forty languages. A Disney film adaptation will be released in 2019, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Dame Judi Dench. Eoin's books have won numerous awards including The British Children's Book of the Year, The Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and The German Children's Book of the Year. Born in Ireland, Eoin was educated at Dublin University and qualified as ...
Feb 04, 2020•28 min
An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York at NYU. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English. Braised Pork is her debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 28, 2020•29 min•Ep. 625
Ziya Tong is on the board of WWF International and was formerly the Vice Chair of WWF Canada. She presented Daily Planet , Discovery Channel's flagship science programme, until its final season in 2018. Tong also hosted the CBC's Emmy-nominated series ZeD , PBS' national prime-time series, Wired Science , and worked as a correspondent for NOVA scienceNOW . She is the author of The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our W...
Jan 21, 2020•30 min
Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain, which was made into a film by Netflix. Her latest book is The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 14, 2020•31 min
Romesh Gunesekera is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction including Reef , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Sandglass , winner of the inaugural BBC Asia Award, and The Match , the ground-breaking cricket novel. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages and he is the recipient of many awards including a Premio Mondello in Italy. He was born in Colombo and lives in London. His latest novel is Suncatcher . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...
Dec 17, 2019•27 min
James Meek is the author of six novels including The People's Act of Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Award. It has been published in more than thirty countries. Meek's last novel The Heart Broke In was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and he has also written two collections of short stories and two books of non-fiction, Private Island , which ...
Dec 10, 2019•46 min
Padraig Reidy hosts this episode, joined by Caleb Klaces to discuss his debut novel Fatherhood . They talk about the place of being a father today, the value of home and the novel as an adult bildungsroman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 06, 2019•27 min•Ep. 620
Emma Forrest has published three novels, an essay collection and the memoir Your Voice In My Head . An Anglo-American currently based in London, she recently wrote and directed her feature debut, Untogether . Her latest novel is Royals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 03, 2019•27 min
In this episode Neil speaks to Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman. She was named journalist of the year (Press Gazette) and won the 2018 Paul Foot journalism award for her reportage on the Windrush scandal, which led to the downfall of the Home Secretary and the government loosening its ‘hostile environment’ policy for migrants. She tells Neil about her new book The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 26, 2019•29 min•Ep. 618
David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author of two novels, the cult classic This Is Memorial Device , which won the Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and For The Good Times which won the Gordon Burn Prize. He is also the author of England's Hidden Reverse , a history of the UK's post-punk/Industrial underground. Hosted on Acast. See aca...
Nov 19, 2019•32 min
Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger's Wife , winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest novel is Inland . She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Hunter College. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 15, 2019•31 min
Padraig Reidy hosts this week, speaking to Guardian journalist and author Henry McDonald about his novel Two Souls . They talk punk, football and paramilitary activity in 70s and 80s Belfast, and how a few wrong choices changed the path of young men's lives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 12, 2019•30 min•Ep. 615
This week Neil speaks to Sarah Perry, author of the bestselling The Essex Serpent , which won Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and Book of the Year 2017 at the British Book Awards. Her latest novel is Melmoth . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 05, 2019•30 min
Elle Nash is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, NAILED, Reality Beach, Hobart, and other places. She was a member of the Denver Press Club and now lives in Arkansas. Occasionally she reads tarot in exchange for money. Her debut novel is Animals Eat Each Other . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 29, 2019•29 min
Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker , and her work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Republic , among other publications. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 24, 2019•48 min
Author and music journalist David Stubbs joins Neil to talk about his latest book Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music . They chat about the evolution of synthesisers, the women who pioneered electronic music and where the genre is now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oct 21, 2019•32 min•Ep. 611
Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon , was long listed for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the memoir about her father’s life and assassination, Songs of Blood and Sword , was published to acclaim. Her most recent novel is The Runaways , and her latest book is New Kings of the World: Dispatches from ...
Oct 14, 2019•32 min
Lillian Li joins Neil to talk about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant , which was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oct 10, 2019•30 min
Novelist Ben Fergusson joins Neil to talk about An Honest Man , the final book of his Berlin Trilogy. They discuss writing against the backdrop of 1989 Berlin, the summer after leaving school, and the novel's parallels between relationships, infidelity and espionage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oct 07, 2019•33 min
Madeline Stevens joins Neil to talk about her first novel, Devotion . They discuss the drafts and graft that come before a debut novel, how Madeline's seven years spent working as a nanny in New York influenced her writing, and how what started out as a short story became Devotion . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 30, 2019•29 min•Ep. 607
Julian Hoffman joins Neil to talk about his latest book Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places . They discuss the aborted attempt by Boris Johnson to build an airport on the marshland of Kent's Hoo peninsula, what 'protection' really means when it comes to preservation, and why we owe it to future generations to maintain the habitats of threatened species. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 23, 2019•33 min•Ep. 606
Niven Govinden joins Neil to talk about his new novel This Brutal House , about family and protest in the vogue ball community of 1980s New York. Govinden's previous novels include All The Days And Nights , Graffiti My Soul and Black Bread White Beer . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 16, 2019•37 min
Ben Smith is a lecturer in creative writing at Plymouth University, specializing in environmental literature and focusing particularly on oceans, climate change and the ‘Anthropocene’. He joined Neil to talk about his first novel, Doggerland , writing rooted in place, and the enjoyment of writing a character who is "really just a git". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 12, 2019•29 min•Ep. 604
Poet Richard Osmond joins Neil to talk about his latest collection, Rock, Paper, Scissors , inspired by his experiences during the London Bridge terrorist attack on 3rd June 2017. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 10, 2019•44 min•Ep. 603
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion is her first book. She joined Neil to talk about how we're all forced to perform and monetize ourselves on the internet, the culture and industries around optimization and life-hacking, and the American tradition of self-reinvention. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 02, 2019•29 min
Rachel DeLoache Williams is an ex-Vanity Fair photo editor and author of My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress . She tells Neil about her friendship with Anna Delvey, the 'Russian heiress' who deceived New York's art scene for a year, and how she became her mark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 26, 2019•31 min•Ep. 601
It's the 600th Little Atoms! and Neil welcomes Laura Cumming back to the show. Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her book, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez , was Book of the Week on Radio 4, Wall Street Journal Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller. It won the 2017 James Tait Black Biography Prize and was published to critical acclaim (‘A riveting detective story: readers will be spellbound’ Colm Tói...
Aug 19, 2019•37 min
Claire McGlasson is a journalist who works for ITV News and enjoys the variety of life on the road with a TV camera. She lives in Cambridgeshire. The Rapture is her debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 12, 2019•31 min•Ep. 599
Lee Jackson is a Victorian enthusiast, creator of the popular online resource on the social history of Victorian London, www.victorianlondon.org , and currently working on a PhD entitled 'Dickensland'. His book Dirty Old London was described by The Times as 'a tightly argued, meticulously researched history of sanitation that reads like a novel' and by the Lancet as 'a triumph of popular scholarship'. His latest book Palaces of Pleasure: How the Victorians Invented Mass E...
Aug 05, 2019•31 min
