Ourshelves

By Virago Books

Ourshelves is a place where writers from the legendary feminist publishing house Virago will talk about their cultural worlds. Host Lucy Scholes will be diving into writers’ bookshelves, rec... more

4.3

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FAQs about Ourshelves:

How many episodes does Ourshelves have?

The podcast currently has 76 episodes available.

Ourshelves episodes:

February 18, 2022 Ourshelves: Discovery with CN Lester
Discovery with CN Lester

How do we keep fighting when there seems to be no hope? CN Lester is a musician, academic, activist and author of Trans Like Me and they tell Lucy Scholes the best advice they’ve been given for continuing to work in the face of backlash. Join their fascinating conversation on their discovery of women composers of the Italian Baroque (who should never have been forgotten!), their newfound love for Ursula K Le Guin (who should have won a Nobel Prize!), and their deeply personal joy in the poetry of Joelle Taylor (who has won the TS Eliot Prize!).

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1h
February 04, 2022 OurShelves: Midlife reckoning with Dana Spiotta
George Saunders calls Dana Spiotta a ‘great American writer’. It’s true - but why does it feel so surprising to hear a woman given that accolade. Join Lucy Scholes as she meets the award-winning author of Wayward and four other novels, celebrating the rare joy and complexity of midlife characters, from the accused widow in Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen to Olivia Colman’s haunting performance in ‘The Lost Daughter’. Together they ask: Why is this moment in life so disturbing and so powerful, and what can we learn from confronting it?
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52min
December 17, 2021 OurShelves with special guest Monica Ali
OurShelves celebrates the end of Season 4 with the beloved Monica Ali, a fellow of Royal Society of Literature, Patron of the Hopscotch Women’s Centre, and bestselling author of Brick Lane and the upcoming Love Marriage, her wonderful, complex and optimistic book about the entangled lives of two very different families – which kept Lucy Scholes up late at night turning the pages. She asks Monica how she gestated this book for ten years, how she made her less likeable characters empathic and how listening to Esther Perel’s sex and relationship therapy inspired her to change their narratives.
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49min
November 26, 2021 OurShelves: Kaitlyn Greenidge on the White Gaze
Kaitlyn Greenidge, acclaimed author of Libertie and We Love You, Charlie Freeman, has written the new introduction to Ann Petry’s landmark Virago Modern Classics novel The Narrows. She takes a deep dive into Black American history, where Petry’s writing depicts an interior life under the unrelenting gaze of whiteness. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes to find out why a single mother and Beat poet put speed in her coffee, more realistic alternatives to Emily in Paris and the concept of gender in Yoruba culture in Nigeria.
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47min
November 12, 2021 Ourshelves: Survival with Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott, Edgar-award winning author of eight novels including the HBO series-adapted Dare Me and her latest ballet school-set The Turnout is celebrated for her dark, precise depictions of young women in hothouse environments. She tells Lucy Scholes how thrillers honour women’s instincts of fear, why she’s too shy to write true crime and her admiration for a female film director flipping the script on nudity.
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42min
October 29, 2021 Ourshelves: Savagery with Claire Oshetsky
Do we see being a carer as a feminist failure?

Claire Oshetsky’s new novel Chouette is about raising a non-conforming child, represented by a wild but lovable owl-baby. In this episode of Ourshelves she talks with Lucy Scholes about how wrapping what started out as a memoir in a fantastical world made it possible to be honest, especially about the violence of motherhood. They compare their favourite books about feral children, discuss the role of white feminism in the Afghanistan war, and celebrate the trans women she admires.

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47min
October 15, 2021 OurShelves: Backstage with Dame Eileen Atkins
Backstage with Eileen Atkins

How does the writing we love create the roles we perform?

Join Dame Eileen Atkins, stage and TV star, three-time Olivier Award winner and screenwriter of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and ‘Mrs Dalloway’ talk about her autobiography, Will She Do? She tells Lucy Scholes how she created the first entertainment about servants inspired by her parents’ lives, how a casting director got her addicted to the books of Virginia Woolf and how women in repertory theatre felt in charge.

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1h 4min
October 01, 2021 OurShelves: Rescue with Donna Coonan
Donna Coonan is Editorial Director of the Virago Modern Classics list, which was set up 1978 to demonstrate the existence of a necessary canon of women’s writing and to challenge the sometimes narrow definition of what a ‘classic’ is. Since 2005, she has brought over 200 new books including those by Muriel Spark, Barbara Pym and Patricia Highsmith to this beloved list with its iconic green spines.

Join Lucy Scholes as she fangirls with Donna about the VMCs and find out how she does the detective work of a classics editor; how Virago reassessed the legacy of Daphne du Maurier, championing her as a vital 20th century author when she’d been dismissed as a writer of romances; how Valley of the Dolls challenges the definition of a classic; and how she’s bringing prescient, ground-breaking Black American authors like Gayl Jones, Ann Petry and Gloria Naylor back into print.

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47min
September 17, 2021 OurShelves: Awakening with 吕频 Lü Pin
How do you say ‘Me Too’ in Chinese – when it’s banned on social media?
吕频 Lü Pin, Chinese feminist activist featured in Awakening by Rachel Vogelstein and Meighan Stone, talks to Lucy Scholes about her work challenging gender-based violence in a state without freedom of speech or protest. Through ingenuity, humour and sheer determination, she says, because ‘nobody’ – not even the Chinese government – ‘can control everything’. She remembers the first time she read something which taught her to be proud of being a woman; champions the pop star singing about domestic violence in China; and argues for the importance of anger in fighting her cause.

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38min
September 03, 2021 OurShelves: Heroics with Susie Boyt
How do we get through the difficult days?

Susie Boyt, author and theatre director, got through the pandemic by walking for miles listening to poetry podcasts to replace the conversations she’d have with friends about books. Here, she tells Lucy Scholes how she had a feminist awakening watching a play where women honoured the horror their friend went through; the sheer joy between grandmother and granddaughter in her latest novel Loved and Missed; and why Judy Garland is her ultimate heroine.

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52min

FAQs about Ourshelves:

How many episodes does Ourshelves have?

The podcast currently has 76 episodes available.