Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University. He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memori...
Feb 07, 2025•28 min
Catherine Airey grew up in England in a family of mixed English-Irish descent, and now lives between County Cork and Bristol. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her first novel Confessions . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 31, 2025•29 min
Professor Keon West is a social psychologist at the University of London. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University in 2010 as a Rhodes Scholar and has since published more than seventy quantitative papers on prejudice and discrimination in many of the best peer-reviewed social-psychology journals, including Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Perspectives on Psychological Science. Professor West has written for national and interna...
Jan 24, 2025•35 min
Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, won the Polari First Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards and Mo Siewcharran Prize, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. On this week's episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel Disappoint me. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 17, 2025•35 min
Sumit Paul-Choudhury is an astrophysicist-turned-journalist, former editor-in-chief of New Scientist magazine and has served as a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize (then Samuel Johnson Prize), the Wellcome Prize and the Costa Book Awards. On this week’s episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his new book The Bright Side: Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 10, 2025•29 min
Ken Hollings is a writer and broadcaster based in London. He is the author of The Bright Labyrinth , Welcome To Mars, The Space Oracle and Destroy All Monsters . His work appears in a wide range of journals and publications, including The Wire, Sight and Sound, Strange Attractor, Frieze, Noon and Satori, and in numerous anthologies and collections, as well as in features and series for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and Resonance 104.4FM. He teaches at The Royal College of Art and Central St Martins C...
Jan 03, 2025•41 min
Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey became one of the first Black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in North London, she studied at the New College of Speech and Drama, then worked as an actress, before becoming Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Later, she worked in arts administration before receiving an OBE in 2001 and becoming an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is active in campaigns on modern slavery and ethical fashio...
Dec 20, 2024•31 min
Miranda Sawyer has written about pop music since 1988, beginning on Smash Hits before moving to Select , The Face and the Observer . Her first book Park and Ride explored the British suburbs, her second Out of Time exploded the midlife crisis. On. This week’s episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest book Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond In 20 Songs . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Dec 13, 2024•40 min
Niall Williams was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels, including History of the Rain , which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and Four Letters of Love , which will soon be a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Gabriel Byrne. His most recent novel, This Is Happiness was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Book of the Year and longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize. On this week’s episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest n...
Dec 06, 2024•29 min
Simon Critchley has published books on a wide expanse of ethical and philosophical subjects, including the bestselling The Book of Dead Philosophers , his cult novel Memory Theatre and his memoir-analysis of David Bowie - On Bowie . He is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. On this week's episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest book On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...
Nov 29, 2024•31 min
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, 2024•32 min
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, 2024•30 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•28 min
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, 2024•28 min
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, 2024•32 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•32 min
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, 2024•34 min
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, 2024•28 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•28 min
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, 2024•30 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•28 min
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, 2024•32 min
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, 2024•42 min
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, 2024•29 min
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, 2024•33 min
