Alice and Miriam discuss what might have happened if she hadn’t accepted a job offer in Poland in her twenties, and had stayed living and working in London instead. Along the way they talk about the perspective you get from travel, how to step back and examine the system you're living in and the pros and cons of mainstream publishing. Alice also has a very scandalous home counties affair.

Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright Alice Jolly. She won the 2014 V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize with one of her short stories, ‘Ray the Rottweiler’, and her memoir Dead Babies and Seaside Towns won the 2016 PEN Ackerley Prize. Her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. In 2021, Jolly was awarded an O. Henry Prize for her short story ‘From Far Around They Saw Us Burn’ and the story collection of the same name is out now and available in your local bookshop.

Make sure to subscribe to hear the rest of Season 4 – in each episode, Miriam Robinson interviews a guest about another path their life might have taken. Together, step by step, they write the stories of their unlived lives.

Produced by Neil Mason

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