In this episode we caught up with Canadian writer Sarah Bernstein (featuring occasional contributions from her then newborn child). Sarah is the author of the novels 'the Coming Bad Days' (2021) and 'Study for Obedience' (2023) and the poetry collection 'Now Comes the Lightening' (2015). Recorded back at the beginning of 2024, our chat covers, amongst other things, the relative importance of voice over story in Sarah’s writing, the overlap between academic writing and fiction, including referenc...
Dec 11, 2024•47 min•Ep. 66
This month we are speaking with international prize-winning novelist and former Edinburgh Makar / Poet Laureate (2008-2014), Ron Butlin. In 2009 he was made the first-ever Honorary Writing Fellow (together with Ian Rankin) at Edinburgh University. Much of his work — novels, short stories and poetry — has been widely broadcast and translated. In addition to his plays for BBC radio and theatre, he has written seven opera libretti, three of them for Scottish Opera. He also writes for children. Ron ...
Nov 06, 2024•51 min•Ep. 65
This month's episode features our chat with novelist and short story writer Amina Cain, the author of the novel Indelicacy , a New York Times Editors’ Choice and finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux , and two collections of short stories, Creature and I Go To Some Hollow . Her latest book, A Horse at Night: On Writing , came out in October of 2022 with Dorothy, a publishing project in the US and Da...
Jun 26, 2024•50 min•Ep. 64
This month’s episode is our chat with the late Christopher Priest, who sadly passed away on 2nd February 2024. In what will have been one of his last interviews, we spoke to Christopher on 3rd November 2023, where he talked us through his development as a writer, his skepticism about using notebooks, dealing with dreadful editors, not writing for nine years, and how writing is like walking to Doncaster. Christopher was a hugely acclaimed writer, and having written for nearly 60 years, his work s...
May 29, 2024•53 min•Ep. 63
This month we return to our first in-person recording for way too long, as we sat down with writer, musician and all-round cultural agitator Bill Drummond. As half of the KLF, Bill produced some of the finest singles of the 1990s, before dumping a dead sheep at the door of the Brit Awards, deleting the group's back catalogue and burning a million quid on a Scottish Island. But he has a writing life so rich and interesting that we don't ask him a single question about any of that. You can access ...
Apr 24, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 62
This month, we are speaking to the Egyptian poet and author Iman Mersal. We talk about the genesis of ideas, structure and form when writing in Arabic, and the importance of urgency in directing your writing. Iman's work includes the creative non-fiction work Traces of Enayat (2023, And Other Stories https://www.andotherstories.org/traces-of-enayat/ ), and her poetry has been featured in numerous publications such as Blackbird, The American Poetry Review, Parnassus, The New York Review of Books,...
Mar 27, 2024•45 min•Ep. 61
Episode 60 with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams This month, we are speaking to not one but two authors as we discuss collaborative writing with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams. Natasha and Luke are the joint authors of Diego Garcia , winner of the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize. We talk about their unique approach to crafting a novel and the differences between empathy and solidarity, as well as the current situation for the displaced Chagossian people, a key focus of their novel. An update...
Feb 21, 2024•44 min•Ep. 60
We're opening 2024 with our chat with David Shields: David is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (PEN/Revson ...
Jan 24, 2024•53 min•Ep. 59
In this episode we're joined by Johanna Hedva, a Korean American writer, artist, and musician who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Johanna is the author of the essay ‘Sick Woman Theory’, originally published in 2016, which has now been translated into ten languages. Hedva is also the author of the novel On Hell, which was one of Dennis Cooper’s favourite books of 2018, and the nonfiction collection Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain. 'Your Love ...
Jul 26, 2023•56 min•Ep. 58
For episode 57 we caught up with the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, author of 8 novels, 3 collections of short stories, numerous plays and pieces of non-fiction and 5 memoirs. An indefatigable defender and promoter of African literature and language, Ngũgĩ’s writing spans from the early 1960s onwards. He talked to us about his journey to becoming a writer, from having friends who proved he didn’t need to wait for permission, then being a central figure in the emergence of African writing’s rec...
Jun 28, 2023•49 min•Ep. 57
For episode 56 we're joined by Daisy Hildyard, the author of two novels – Emergency (2022) and Hunters in the Snow (2013) – and one work of nonfiction, The Second Body (2017). Daisy’s first novel, Hunters in the Snow , received the Somerset Maugham Award and a ‘5 under 35’ honorarium at the USA National Book Awards. Her essay The Second Body , a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. She lives with her fam...
May 17, 2023•56 min•Ep. 56
This month marks the fifth anniversary of Unsound Methods - thank you to everyone who's joined us along the way, and hello to any new arrivals... In this episode we speak to Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey about the writing of their collaboratively composed novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (available from Boiler House Press, here: https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/macbeth-macbeth-by-ewan-fernie-simon-palfrey ) 'Macbeth, Macbeth' is described by its authors as a critical fiction. A sequel, critiqu...
Jan 18, 2023•51 min•Ep. 55
In a slight shift from our literary fiction focus, we caught up with writer and script editor Jenny Landreth - one of the driving forces behind the brilliant children's animated TV show 'Hey Duggee'. Having both become fathers only weeks apart in the summer of 2018, Hey Duggee was one of the most joyful discoveries in the often barren wastelands of our young daughters' TV choices... We learnt about how script editing works and how a show like Hey Duggee is put together, as well as speaking a lit...
Nov 16, 2022•49 min•Ep. 54
In this episode with chatted with Etgar Keret, writer of short stories, comics, a children's book and a memoir. Etgar's books have been published in fifty languages. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope. He is currently a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He has received the Book Publishers Association's Platinum Prize several times, the St Petersburg Public Library's Foreign Favourite Award (2010) an...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 53
Our guest in this episode is Australian writer Daniel Davis Wood, author of Blood and Bone (2014) which won the Viva La Novella Prize and At the Edge of the Solid World (2020), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Our chat with Daniel covered unconventional composition techniques derived from artistic practice, the difference between writing novellas and novels, reading your work out loud and plenty more. We also briefly covered Daniel's work as a publisher with his press Splice ....
Aug 17, 2022•57 min•Ep. 52
Episode 51 with Claudia Durastanti. This month we speak to writer and translator Claudia Durastanti. We cover the importance of travel and geography in writing, mapping fictional spaces, translation and the overlap of metaphor between languages. Claudia is the author of Strangers I Know and Cleopatra Goes To Prison, translated to English, as well as well as Un giorno verrò a lanciare sassi alla tua finestra and A Chloe, per le ragioni sbagliate. Claudia is on twitter here: https://twitter.com/CD...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 51
Hitting the half century, we speak to British-Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Cullen, author of collections including Wave Caps (2014), Paranoid Narcissism! (2017) and, most recently, Hologram (2022). Miguel's work has involved integrating sound chips and video-screens into the bound collections, raising some interesting blends of form. He has been published by Caught by the River, Abridged, Lunar Poetry, Magma Poetry, Purple Fashion Magazine and Stand. He was shortlisted for the Canterbury...
May 18, 2022•42 min•Ep. 50
This month we speak to writer and artist Sara Baume. Sara is the author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015), A Line Made by Walking (2017), the non-fiction handiwork (2020) and Seven Steeples , which is released this month on Tramp Press, who have published all of her work so far. Amongst much else, we cover: living a creative life that combines writing and visual art; learning narrative from arthouse cinema; finding a form from the original idea; writing slowly; abandoning work that doesn’t fe...
Apr 20, 2022•45 min•Ep. 49
In this episode we speak to writer Richard Beard. Richard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead , Dry Bones and Damascus , which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and he is the author of five works of narrative non-fiction. His memoir The Day That Went Missing won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography and in the US was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. His latest memoir/polemic is Sad Li...
Mar 16, 2022•49 min•Ep. 48
In our latest episode we had a chat with novelist Sam Byers, author of Idiopathy (2013), Perfidious Albion (2018) and last year's Come Join Our Disease . We talked about needing to write ideas down and how they eventually demand it, using a journal while writing a novel, getting the voice right before venturing too far and the vast gulf between dialogue on the page and in the real world. Sam has a website: http://sambyers.co.uk/ Sam's books are available through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org...
Feb 23, 2022•53 min•Ep. 47
Our first guest of 2022 is the novelist Keith Ridgway, author of, among other works, 'the Long Falling' (1998), 'the Parts' (2003), 'Animals' (2006), 'Hawthorn and Child' (2012) and, most recently, 'A Shock' (2021), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Keith was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2001. Our chat with Keith took us through the daily fight with the concept of routine, specificity of place, giving up writing and returning, and experiencing a reading crisis - followed by being kn...
Jan 19, 2022•53 min•Ep. 46
Our guest this month is Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy (2009), Cold Light (2011), The Friday Gospels (2013), Fell (2017) and the non-fiction work Notes Made While Falling (2019). Her latest novel is Ghosted: A Love Story out now with Sceptre. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University. Amongst much else we talk about: getting through lockdown with the support of an online writing group, 100 days of writing, how to trick yourself into writing, not b...
Nov 17, 2021•54 min•Ep. 45
This month we are joined by Lucie Elven, short-story writer and author of the Weak Spot, the debut novel published earlier this year by Prototype in the UK. Lucie has written for publications including the London Review of Books, Granta and NOON. Our chat took us on an Alpine tour through topics including: how notes demand to be put into short stories or novels, developing a long-term relationship with an editor, the function of ambiguity in fiction, and plenty more. The Weak Spot is available t...
Oct 20, 2021•51 min•Ep. 44
As we roll into autumn, we're joined by Rebecca Watson, novelist and arts writer. Rebecca's debut novel, Little Scratch, grew from a short story that was shortlisted for the White Review short story prize and the novel itself was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize. Among all the other talking our chat took us through: expanding a short story into a novel. Investigating how writing can replicate the immediacy of thought. Playing with fiction and reality, and much more. You can find...
Sep 15, 2021•57 min•Ep. 43
For our August '21 episode we're joined by Natasha Brown, the author of Assembly, which is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and will be released in the U.S. on 14th September 2021 by Little, Brown . Our discussion with Natasha includes workshopping at different stages, making speech real on the page, liberal use of index cards, and being in the enviable position of having a novel translated into other languages while it was still being edited. You can find out more about Natasha and her wr...
Aug 18, 2021•50 min•Ep. 42
In this month's episode we're joined by the novelist Sophie Mackintosh, who is the author of 'the Water Cure' (2018) and 'Blue Ticket' (2020). Topics covered with Sophie include (alongside much more): the shift to writing full time, the importance of music and having a bespoke playlist for each book, and writing a synopsis at the very beginning to help visualise the shape of a project. You can find out more about Sophie at her website here: https://www.sophiemackintosh.co.uk/ Find us on Twitter:...
Jul 14, 2021•57 min•Ep. 41
“If Adorno was alive today, he’d be writing about football. I don’t think he’d like it… but he’d be writing about it. And Gramsci for sure” In this, our 40th episode, we've got a special Euro 2020 edition of Unsound Methods, where we speak to writer and academic David Goldblatt. David is the author of non-fiction works which cover sport, particularly football, through a fascinating lens of history, sociology and politics. His books include the Ball is Round (2006), the Game of our Lives (2014) a...
Jun 16, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 40
In this episode we speak with DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little (for which he won the Booker Prize in 2003), Ludmila's Broken English (2006), Lights Out in Wonderland (2010), Breakfast with the Borgias (2014) and most recently, Meanwhile in Dopamine City which was published in 2020. Pierre joined us fresh off a bout of working on a non-fiction work and we discussed how this writing differed from fiction, how constantly reworking sections is a gift that provides intimacy with the text rathe...
May 19, 2021•47 min•Ep. 39
In this month's episode, we speak to Jon McGregor, whose latest novel Lean, Fall, Stand is published by Fourth Estate on 29th April. Jon joined us in the midst of full fat lockdown to discuss how he constructs his novels, his writing residency in Antarctica and the research with people who suffer from aphasia and their carers that informed Lean, Fall, Stand . Jon's novels include: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), So Many Ways to Begin (2006), Even the Dogs (2010) and Reservoir 13 (2...
Apr 21, 2021•43 min•Ep. 38
In episode 37 we're joined by Douglas Robertson to celebrate the publication of his brand new translation of Thomas Bernhard's Die Billigesser (the Cheap Eaters) and to discuss our favourite Austrian monologuing misanthrope. Douglas is a writer and translator based in Keystone, Florida. He studied British and American Literature at the New College of Florida and Johns Hopkins University. He has translated works from German into English by authors including E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hugo von Hofmannstha...
Mar 17, 2021•45 min•Ep. 37
