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Little Atoms

Neil Dennylittleatoms.com
Little Atoms is a weekly show about books, with authors in conversation. Produced and presented by Neil Denny.

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Episodes

Little Atoms 927 - Jeff Young's Wild Twin

Jeff Young is a writer for stage, screen and radio. Until recently a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University, he is the author of the acclaimed memoir Ghost Town . On this week’s episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his new memoir Wild Twin . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nov 22, 202432 min

Little Atoms 926 - Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of seven novels, including The Devil and Webster , You Should Have Known (adapted as the 2020 HBO series The Undoing , starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), Admission (adapted as the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin and Paul Rudd), The White Rose , The Sabbathday River, A Jury of Her Peers, The Latecomer and The Plot . On this week’s episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel The Sequel ....

Nov 15, 202430 min

Little Atoms 925 - Jonathan Coe's The Proof Of My Innocence

Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as Bournville , What a Carve Up! and Number 11 , and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls , his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen. On this episode of little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest novel The Proof Of My Innocence . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

Nov 08, 202429 min

Little Atoms 924 - Francesca Segal's Welcome To Glorious Tuga

Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Innocents (2012) and The Awkward Age (2017), and a memoir of NICU motherhood, Mother Ship (2019). Her writing has won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, a Betty Trask Award, and been longlisted for the Women's Prize. On today’s episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel Welcome To Glorious Tuga . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informatio...

Nov 01, 202428 min

Little Atoms 923 - Dava Sobel's The Elements of Marie Curie

Dava Sobel is the internationally renowned author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter . She was an award-winning former science reporter for the ‘New York Times’ and writes frequently about science for several magazines, including the ‘New Yorker’, ‘Audubon’, ‘Discover’, ‘Life’ and ‘Omni’. On today’s episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest book The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

Oct 24, 202428 min

Little Atoms 922 - Xan Brooks' The Catchers

Xan Brooks is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He was one of the founding editorial team at the Big Issue magazine in London and spent 15-years as a writer and associate editor at the Guardian newspaper. His debut novel, The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times , was listed for the Costa First Novel Award, the Author's Club Award, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. On this episode of Little Atoms, he tells Neil Denny about his la...

Oct 17, 202432 min

Little Atoms 921 - Lynne Peeples' The Inner Clock

Lynne Peeples is a freelance science journalist, specialising in the environment, public health and medicine. She holds a M.S. in Biostatistics from Harvard and an M.A. in Science Journalism from New York University. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, Nature, Scientific American and The Atlantic , amongst others. A 2020-2021 MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow and a finalist for the 2018 National Association of Science Writers long-form reporting award, on this episode of Little Atoms...

Oct 10, 202429 min

Little Atoms 920 - Kate Summerscale's The Peepshow

Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher , winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, winner of the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay , won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker P...

Oct 03, 202432 min

Little Atoms 919 - Ekow Eshun's The Strangers

Ekow Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, editor, curator, broadcaster, and author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun , which was nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity. He writes for publications including the New York Times, Financial Times and Guardian , and has created documentaries for BBC4 and BBC Radio 4. Eshun was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and the first Black director of a major arts organisation. In this episode of Little Atoms...

Sep 26, 202434 min

Little Atoms 918 - Garth Greenwell's Small Rain

Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness. His novel What Belongs to You won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His novella Mitko w...

Sep 19, 202428 min

Little Atoms 917 - Rumaan Alam's Entitlement

Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture, as well as two other novels. His writing has appeared in the New York Times , Wall Street Journal , New Yorker and elsewhere. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest novel Entitlement . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

Sep 12, 202429 min

Little Atoms 916 - Donal Ryan's Heart Be At Peace

Donal Ryan is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a Low a...

Sep 05, 202428 min

Little Atoms 915 - Irenosen Okojie's Curandera

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish , and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch , have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times , the Observer , the Guardian and the Huffington Post . She has also judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. Sh...

Aug 30, 202430 min

Little Atoms 914 - Shahnaz Habib's Airplane Mode

Shahnaz Habib is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. She translates from her mother tongue, the south Indian language of Malayalam, and has translated two novels, Jasmine Days , winner of the 2018 JCB Prize, and Al Arabian Novel Factory . Airplane Mode , her first book, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aug 22, 202429 min

Little Atoms 913 - Harriet Constable's The Instrumentalist

Harriet Constable is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker living in London. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Economist, and the BBC, and she is a grantee of the Pulitzer Center. Raised in a musical family, The Instrumentalist is her first novel. It has been selected as one of the Top 10 Debuts of 2024 by the Guardian. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aug 15, 202429 min

Little Atoms 912 - James Shapiro's The Playbook

James Shapiro, who teaches English at Columbia University in New York, is author of several books, including 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (winner of the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize in 2006 and the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' in 2023), as well as Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? O n this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about The Playbook: A Story of Theatre, Democracy and the Making of a Culture War. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...

Aug 08, 202428 min

Little Atoms 911 - Clare Beams' The Garden

Clare Beams is the author of the novel The Illness Lesson , which was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize,and the story collection We Show What We Have Learned , which won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016. She was a finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel The Garden . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

Aug 02, 202432 min

Little Atoms 910 - Ralf Webb's Strange Relations

Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer , which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. His poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in Fantastic Man , Granta, the Guardian and the London Review of Books . He tutors in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny abouth his first nonfiction book Strange Relations: Masculinity, Sexuality and Art in Mid-Century America. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mor...

Jul 25, 202442 min

Little Atoms 909 - Hanna Pylväinen's The End Of Drum-Time

Hanna Pylväinen is the author of the novel We Sinners , which received a Whiting Award and a Balcones Fiction Prize. To research The End of Drum-Time , her second novel, which she talks to Neil Denny about on this episode of Little Atoms, she spent six months with Sámi reindeer herders in Finland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jul 18, 202429 min

Little Atoms 908 - Adam Higginbotham's Challenger

Adam Higginbotham is a British writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ and Smithsonian. He is the author of Midnight In Chernobyl , and in today's episode of Little Atoms, he talks to Neil Denny about his latest book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jul 15, 202433 min

Little Atoms 907 - Rebecca Watson's I Will Crash

Rebecca Watson is an Assistant Arts Editor at the Financial Times and one of the Observer 's ten best debut novelists of 2021. She has been published in the TLS, Granta and the Guardian . In 2018, she was shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize, and in 2021, she was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. She is the author of the novel Little Scratch , and on this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel I Will Crash . Hosted o...

Jul 11, 202429 min

Little Atoms 906 - Alan Murrin's The Coast Road

Alan Murrin is an Irish writer based in Berlin. His short story, "The Wake," won the 2021 Bournemouth Writing Prize and was shortlisted for short story of the year at the Irish Book Awards. His debut novel The Coast Road which he discussed with Neil Denny in this episode of Little Atoms was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction prize. Murrin is also the recipient of an Irish Arts Council Agility Award and an Arts Council Literature Bursary. He is a graduate of the prose fiction masters at the Un...

Jul 04, 202428 min

Little Atoms 905 - Yael Van Der Wouden's The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher. She currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, "On (Not) Reading Anne Frank", has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her debut novel The Safekeep. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jun 27, 202436 min

Little Atoms 904 - Jon Savage's The Secret Public

Jon Savage is the author of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock and Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945 . On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest book The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jun 24, 202433 min

Little Atoms 903 - Julia Armfield's Private Rites

Julia Armfield's work has been published in Granta , The White Review and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award. She was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Award 2018, and won the White Review Short Story Prize 2018 and a Pushcart Prize in 2020. She is the author of salt slow , a collection of short stories, which was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Un...

Jun 20, 202429 min

Little Atoms 902 - Noreen Masud's A Flat Place

Noreen Masud is a lecturer in twentieth century literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her memoir A Flat Place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jun 17, 202430 min

Little Atoms 901 - Clare Pollard's The Modern Fairies

Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and playwright based in London. She is the author of five poetry collections and the former Editor of the Modern Poetry in Translation magazine . Her first novel, Delphi , was published by Fig Tree in 2022. On today's show she talks to Neil Denny about her second novel, The Modern Fairies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jun 13, 202431 min

Little Atoms 900 - Kevin Barry's The Heart In Winter

Kevin Barry is the author of four novels and three story collections. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker , Granta and elsewhere. His novel, Night Boat to Tangier ,was an Irish number one bestseller, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times . He also works as a ...

Jun 06, 202432 min

Little Atoms 899 - Rachel Khong's Real Americans

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire . Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and non-binary writers and artists in San Francisco's Mission District. On today’s show she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel ...

May 30, 202428 min

Little Atoms 898 - Ayana Mathis's The Unsettled

Ayana Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times best seller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and Rolling Stone . Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. On today's show she talks to Neil Denny about her long-awaited new novel The Unsettled . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

May 23, 202438 min
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