What can two female authors' experiences of publishing tell us about the ways women are currently permitted (or not permitted) to speak in the culture at large? Why does that matter, even if you're not a writer or a woman? This week, I'm joined by a writer I really admire to discuss these questions and more: Olivia Sudjic. Her essay Exposure had a big influence on me as I was writing Open, and helped me think through what I might anticipate in writing something so naked and putting it out into the world.

We also spoke in this conversation about how we've been handling the news of Roe v. Wade's overturning (and the fact that both of us had not heard from any of our cis male friends since the news broke), writing fiction, and creativity's connection to anxiety.

Olivia Sudjic is a writer living in London. She is the author of 'Sympathy', her 2017 debut novel which was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award and the Collyer Bristow Prize, and 'Exposure', a non-fiction work named an Irish Times, Evening Standard and White Review Book of the Year for 2018. Her second novel, ‘Asylum Road’, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Vogue, Paris Review, Frieze, Granta and Wired. She has taught Creative Writing at King’s College London and is currently completing her third novel, also to be published by Bloomsbury.