In this new episode - the start of season 2!!!! - I talk to the amazing Elaine Castillo about her novel Moderation (2025).

(Also I said Dostoyevsky in the episode but obviously meant Tolstoy, so sorry).

Named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, Elaine Castillo is the author of the debut novel America is Not the Heart, the book of literary criticism How to Read Now, and her most recent novel, Moderation, recently named a New Yorker Best Book of 2025,  a TIME Must Read Book of 2025, and a Best Book of 2025 by Kirkus Reviews. She works so her rescue German shepherd Vincent can live a better life.

Episode references:

• George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
• Jane Austen, Persuasion
• Toni Morrison, Paradise
• J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings and 'On Fairy Stories'
• Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
• Émile Zola, Germinal
• Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed
• Karen Hao, Empire of AI

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this festive holiday special, I talk with Prof. Holly Furneaux about Charles Dickens' classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. 

Professor Holly Furneaux teaches and researches Victorian literature and culture at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality, and the history of emotions. Following her first book Queer Dickens (2009) she has continued her fascination with Dickens. She was adviser on the BBC series Dickensian and an organiser of the annual Dickens Day for over a decade. Holly's latest book is Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict (2025), which develops her interests in war and emotion, explored in Military Men of Feeling (2016). She is now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period.

Episode references:

• Dickens, Household Words
• Preface to Bleak House
• Michael Slater, Charles Dickens
• Paul Davis, 'Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture-Text'
• Charles Dickens, 'Somebody's Luggage'

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Michael Donkor about his novel Grow Where They Fall (2023); we talk about a passage from p.83 of the paperback edition.

Michael Donkor studied English at Wadham College, Oxford and then undertook a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway,  London. The Observer named him as one of 2018's best debut authors for his first novel Hold (4th Estate) and in 2019, he was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel Grow Where They Fall was published by Penguin in 2024. He has judged the Betty Trask Prize, the BBC's National Short Story Award and he regularly reviews for the Guardian.

Episode references:

• Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost

Follow the show on Instagram. Find Michael on Instagram (@m_donks) and X (@MichaelDonkor).

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd. 

In this episode I talk to Victoria Adukwei Bulley's poem 'The Ultra-Black Fish' from her collection Quiet (2022). You can also read the poem at Granta.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber & Faber in the UK and in North America by Knopf, Penguin Random House.

Episode references:

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
• Saidiya Hartman, Waywards Lives, Beautiful Experiments 
• Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet and Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
• Layli Long Solider, Whereas
• Rickey Laurentiis, Death of the First Idea

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this SPOOKY Halloween special, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Kaja Franck about a section from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.

Dr Kaja Franck is a Lecturer in English Literature and Programme Lead for the online MA: Literature & Culture  at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research centres on monsters and monstrous animals. She has previously published on the depiction of werewolves in Dracula (1897), the Canadian Gothic and YA fiction, alongside organising international conferences on werewolves, vampires and faeries in literature and popular culture. Her monograph, The Ecogothic Werewolf in Literature: Wolves, Woods and Wilderness, emerged panting into the wild this year. More recent publications include chapters on troll horror, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-8) and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). She has a soft spot for terrible shark horror.

Episode references:

• E. Gerard, The Land Beyond the Forest
• Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves
• John Polidori, The Vampyre
• Clemence Housman, The Werewolf
• Emily Habeck, Shark Heart
• Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

Follow the show on Instagram. Find Kaja on twitter (@kajafranck). Please leave feedback here.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Danielle Cameron about the opening paragraphs of Joan Didion's essay 'Goodbye to All That' from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968). 

Danielle is a British Mauritian writer and academic based in London. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of East Anglia, and her interdisciplinary research focuses upon interrelationships between the writing of age in literature and sociological developments. Danielle is currently writing her first book, which explores how adulthood (as defined by marriage, mortgage and career) is a neoliberal construct, and the ways in which novels both reproduce and resist this norm. From the 2024/25 academic year, Danielle will be working as a Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science at the London School of Economics, where she will be teaching on the School’s flagship interdisciplinary course LSE100.

Episode references:

• Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now
• Danielle's book recs: Elaine Castillo, Moderation; Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York and The Intuitionist; Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind; Vauhini Vara, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age; Ariel Saramandi, Portrait of an Island on Fire

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a section from Harry Nicholas' memoir A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar : A Journal of Self (and Sexual) Discovery (2023) - it's on p.103 of the UK paperback. You can buy Harry's book from bookshop.org or your local indy store.

Harry Nicholas is a writer, campaigner and gay trans man living in London. He has written for The Guardian, GQ and Dazed. A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar is his first book.

Episode references:

• Travis Alabanza, None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary; Jack Parlett, Fire Island: A Queer History; Lou Sullivan, Youngman: Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan; Matthew Todd, Straight Jacket: Overcoming Society's Legacy of Gay Shame.
• Nicola Dinan, Bellies; Andrew McMillan, Physical; Joelle Taylor, The Night Alphabet; Shon Faye, Love in Exile; Hugo Greenhalgh, The Diaries of Mr Lucas.

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Jane Yeh's poem 'This Morning,' from her collection The Ninjas. You can read the poem online, and buy this collection from your local bookshop, or at Bookshop.org.

Jane Yeh was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. Her collection Discipline (Carcanet, 2019) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was named a Next Generation poet by the PBS for her collection The Ninjas (Carcanet, 2012), and her first collection, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Forward, Whitbread, and Jerwood Aldeburgh poetry prizes.

Episode references:

• Jane's 'craft book' recs: Rishi Dastidar (ed.), The Craft;  Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird; Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town
• Jane's recs: Morgan Parker, The Magical Negro; Hala Alyan, The Twenty-Ninth Year; Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

Follow the show on Instagram. Find Jane on Instagram, Bluesky, and her website. Please leave feedback here.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Richard Scott's poem 'Still Life with Snail, Oyster, Spoon and Shallot Vinegar' from his collection That Broke into Shining Crystals (2025). You can buy this book, and his previous collection Soho, from your local bookshop or from Faber.

Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and most recently That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Episode references:

• Still lives: Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 'Still Life' and N. Adama, 'Still Life of Oysters and a Prawn on a Ledge, with a Snail and a Butterfly'
• Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
• Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
• The Letters of Emily Dickinson
• Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, A Treatise on Stars

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a passage from Okechukwu Nzelu's Here Again Now (p.47 of the UK paperback). You can buy this book and Nzelu's previous novel from your local bookshop or at Bookshop.org.

Dr Okechukwu Nzelu FRSL won a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North in 2015. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read and distributed to all staff and students at three universities. His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Diverse Book Awards. He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a non-executive director of ALCS and CLA, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Episode references:

• Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf
• John Milton, Paradise Lost
• Janet Burroway (with Elizabeth and Ned Stuckey-French), Writing Fiction
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• John Williams, Stoner

Follow the show (and Okechukwu) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.