Babble

Sarah Wragg is a bit of a wordsmith: from copywriting, speechwriting and playwriting, to poems, short stories and open mic nights. Her individual poems have appeared in print before, in anthologies by publications such as Beautiful Dragons Press and Indigo Dreams. Ghost Walk is her first solo collection, published by Hedgehog Press, which is a selection of spine-chilling poems which double up as tiny ghost stories comparable to those written by the haunted Victorians.

Megan Thomas attended the launch of Ghost Walk the night before Sarah’s interview, so arrives armed with a series of questions about ghosts, what we love so much about them, the importance of brevity in ghost stories and the process of writing them. Also discussed is Sarah’s publication journey, which involved winning a competition for Ghost Walk.

Author and journalist Melanie Warner’s career started in the business sector, where she was writing for Fortune magazine, including chronicling the (first) dot com boom in Silicon Valley. Her career changed direction when she started writing about food for The New York Times. The success in her career has made it possible for her to write about food and science on a freelance basis and she has published two non-fiction books. 

Her first book, Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over The American Meal, is a startling and thoroughly researched exploration of the processed food industry. Melanie has managed to write a book using both a fine-tooth comb and an open-mind, meaning the results are balanced and rooted in science.

Next came The Magic Feather Effect: The Science of Alternative Medicine and the Surprising Power of Belief. We do love a literary reference here on Babble, the magic feather being the feather Dumbo carried in his trunk which he thought was making him fly (it was, of course, his confidence and the feather was just an ordinary feather). Melanie gets to the heart of the placebo effect, the appeal of alternative medicine versus the science of it, and her experiences researching the range of healing practices out there.

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For our launch episode of Babble, author Sue Nyathi babbles with Megan Thomas about her journey as schoolyard storyteller to finance analyst to full-time multi-booked author. 

Sue Nyathi was born and raised in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Her writing career began at school where 'Sue's Books' were much-loved by her friends and peers, and she is now a respected and three-time novelist based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Her debut, The Polygamist, is about four women who don't have a lot in common... except their mutual husband. Next came The GoldDiggers, a story about the lives of Zimbabwean immigrants who have fled to Johannesburg in search of a better life. They have all made the journey for different reasons, but face tremendous hardship nonetheless. Her most recent novel, A Family Affair, published in October 2020 by Pan Macmillan, follows the lives of three sisters in a traditional family which seems idyllic from the outside. As we've come to learn from seeming-perfection... that's never the case.

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