Babble

Things are changing a bit for season 3, listen in to find out out more!

Bibliotherapist and author Ella Berthoud on solving life’s ailments through fiction, how it all started, and the merging of her passions: reading and painting

Bio: Ella Berthoud is a bibliotherapist at the international School of Life, where she prescribes novels and fiction to readers for all life’s ailments, from shyness to having murderous thoughts…

She is the author of The Art of Mindful Reading, she edited and contributed to 30-Second Literature: The 50 Most Important Forms, Genres and Styles, Each Explained in Half a Minute, and she co-authored The Novel Cure and The Story Cure with Susan Elderkin.

Ella is also a talented artist, and she has found a wonderful way of merging this talent with her love for reading: she listens to audiobooks, allowing her paintings to take on the colours of the books she’s listening to.

We’re a team of young arts enthusiasts who want to open up the world of arts and literature for everyone to enjoy easily, for free, and internationally. We conduct interviews with authors and artists who you may or may not have heard before, and spotlight the many up-and-coming and new voices that we believe are thoroughly deserving of exposure, and who arguably don’t get enough of it.

We project the voices of the diverse, international talent pool that is out there, from the new to the renowned. Our platform gives artists a platform that will introduce them to eager audiences who may not have found them otherwise, and ultimately provides a high-quality, entertaining show. Our interviews focus on journeys, be it a journey to publication, or the reason they started creating.

James Kennedy is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, record label owner, public speaker and now published author of his memoir, Noise Damage: My Life As A Rock ’n’ Roll Underdog. He babbles with Rob Simcox, a Babble co-founder who will be heading up Babble’s music interviews.

Formerly the singer/guitarist from the political alternative rock band KYSHERA, James has been releasing music since 2002 as both a band member and as a solo artist. James’ musical back catalogue includes noise music, acoustic, prog rock, grunge, MOR, experimental electronic and orchestral music, making him a particularly unique figure on the modern music scene. Almost all of the instruments on his seven albums as well as all of the production, has been performed by Kennedy - no small achievement considering his 40% hearing loss due to childhood ear surgery.

His book is part-memoir, part-expose, and lays bare the struggles of navigating the music industry. The wit and James’ capacity for self-reflection makes Noise Damage relatable for anyone in or out of the musical world, and without ever needing to lean on cliche, it tells a powerful tale of overcoming adversity.

Rob Simcox is working on his career in the sound/audio industry. Robert is the sound engineer and audio editor for Babble, who uses his knowledge and experience to ensure all the audio across our platform is as smooth as possible for the audience's ears.

Despite being told by his highschool art teacher that he wasn’t talented enough to take the subject, Trevor Romain is a best-selling, award-winning author and illustrator of an award-winning series of self-help books for children, as well as a sought-after motivational speaker for children.

He has written over 50+ books that have sold more than a million copies worldwide and have been published in 22 different languages, which help kids tackle everything from how to complete their homework without throwing up to how to deal with divorce.

Trevor works with kids in schools, hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and with kids on military bases around the world, where he provides families with the tools they need to cope with absent parents as well as the possibility of loss and grief.

Trevor was the past President of the American Childhood Cancer Organization, has done meaningful work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, The United Nations, UNICEF, The Boys and Girls Club, and the USO. Since 2007, Trevor is also the co-founder of Comfort Crew for Military Kids and serves as President of the Trevor Romain Company.

Where to start with Shola Kaye? There’s been quite the journey from a graduate of Natural Sciences at Cambridge and a Master of Science (Analytical Chemistry) at Emory University, to the trifecta of an arts career - speaking, singing, and writing books. Megan Thomas does her best to cover the lot.

Shola is a multi award-winning speaker, specialising in communication, leadership and D.E.I (diversity, equity and inclusion). She not only inspires through her powerful talks and presentations, but has written two books about how to find that power within yourself. It’s all quite ironic, too, given the starting point for this part of her career was losing her corporate job as a result of not speaking up enough.

Her first book, How to be a DIVA at Public Speaking: The step-by-step system to engage your audience and present with confidence, goes hand-in-hand with Shola’s extremely successful YouTube series, Speak Up Like a DIVA. Its focus is empowering its readers to speak with authority and confidence in all aspects of their lives, but especially in the workplace. Her latest book, Big Talk, Small Talk (and Everything in Between) teaches the art of effective communication with skill-building strategies.

She’s also enjoyed a career as a singer, which she speaks about on different levels, from where she’s performed to her experience of writing music to a brief. Though she’s no longer writing original music, she can identify the similarities to the confidence required for musical performance and that of motivational speaking.

Dan Anthony is a creative on many levels: he writes adored children's books, he lectures in Creative Writing at Cardiff Metropolitan university, his research interest examines the relationship between creativity and intellectual property, and being a scriptwriter on CBBC’s Tracy Beaker series is only one of his many exploits in the world of TV and radio. He is an ambassador for the power of writing and its transformative nature.

Dan’s comic short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3, Radio Wales and by the New Welsh Review, with hits including Pub Globo and The Fishford Observer, to name just a couple. He has written and directed six situation comedy series for radio and written and presented several documentary series.

His new book, Submarine Spies and the Unspeakable Thing​ (age range 9-12), tells a tale of how dogs, cats, parrots, chinchillas and submarine spies transform a young Caitlin’s life into a heart-warming adventure in a small Welsh town. His children’s trilogy, The Rugby Zombies (age range 9-11), features an array of zombified shenanigans, and was nominated for a Tir na n-Og award by the Welsh Books Council. His other titles include The Bus Stop at the End of the World (age range 9-11), Steve’s Dreams (age range 7-9), and The Last Big One (age range 13+). Dan’s passion for inspiring young readers and writers is clear from his workshops, which he presents in junior and secondary schools throughout the UK.

Lucy Smith, one of our new Babble interviewers, is a flash fiction, prose poetry and short story writer and podcaster (namely Talking Ink and The Talkies), who asks Dan interesting, exploratory questions which unearth wonderful insights into the world of writing, and a facilitate a happy, fun interview on a diverse range of topics, from his research on copyright to his approach on creative process.

Lorraine Brown spent her childhood devouring the Sweet Dreams teen romance series, so it’s only fitting that her debut novel Uncoupling is such a wonderful modern romance, published by Orion Books.

Lorraine’s career has hardly been a straightforward one, but her path towards her writing debut is inspiring nonetheless. From fashion journalism to temp jobs, with drama school in between and topped off with a postgraduate diploma in psychodynamic counselling, it’s no wonder that Lorraine’s characters are such three-dimensional, multi-faceted people and more to the point, that Lorraine was such an interesting Babbler.

Uncoupling was long-listed for the Bath Novel Award in 2016, which spurred Lorraine on and kept her working on it in Waterstones Hampstead’s café. Being one of 11 mentees on Penguin Random House’s WriteNow programme in 2018, where she worked with an editor on the novel for a year, further kept Lorraine charging forward. On came the deal with the literary agency. Then the book deal. Then the Babble interview. And the rest is history.

Neema Shah’s day job is in marketing, specialising in TV, digital and brand strategy for companies including the BBC, and it was on her commutes that she started writing Kololo Hill six years ago. Her writing is the historical fiction retelling of the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972 by Idi Amin and the impacts of diaspora, but it is endless in humour, love and joy - the things which Neema believes, in spite of struggle, humans use to survive.

Neema was born in London and spoke English at home, and yet elements of both Indian and East African culture were present in her life, be they ways of cooking Indian dishes with African spices, or using Swahili and Gujarati words when speaking. She uses her writing to explore themes of identity and belonging, and Kololo Hill is an insightful, entertaining and eye-opening piece of historical fiction out 18 February 2021 for readers to devour.

Kololo Hill was a “2021 Pick” for Foyles, Daily Mail, The Irish Times, Cosmopolitan and Eastern Eye. She won the Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Live 2017 with an early extract of Kololo Hill, was runner-up in the York Festival of Writing Best Opening Chapter 2017 and the DGA First Novel Prize 2018, she was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Prize 2018 and longlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize, SI Leeds Literary Prize and Retreat Novel Prize, all in 2018.

Chris Soal is an award-winning emerging artist living and practicing in Johannesburg, South Africa, using unconventional found objects - like toothpicks and bottle caps - to make mesmerising art which represents the world we live in... and also to design Dior bags, as part of the Lady Dior Collaboration. 

Chris babbles with Megan Thomas about what inspired him to pursue a career in visual art, and the path he took to get to where he is today. Covering everything from the symbolism of his materials in a South African context and the practical reasons which inspired his choice in materials, to navigating what it means to put a price tag on art and the value of interdisciplinary conversations when it comes to creative process, this interview displays Chris’ grounded humility paired with an inspiring depth of thought that goes into every piece he creates.