Ourshelves

How can we find light in the dark?

Oceanographer, marine biologist and author of Below the Edge of Darkness, Edie Widder’s life has been as fascinating as the animals she studies, and she speaks with irresistible wonderment about watching them communicate with bioluminescence in the depths of the sea. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes on squirting squids, being the only woman on the ship and overcoming sexism in science with the example of her extraordinary mother.

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Kamila Shamsie, prize winning novelist, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Granta Best of Young British author, talks to Lucy Scholes about her great-aunt, Attia Hosain, whose books are newly reissued with her introductions on the Virago Modern Classics list, and how she once took her aside to say, ‘Never stop writing’. In their conversation, they traverse the psychological journey of refugees, remember how reading Woolf for the first time felt like coming up for air and ask how much courage it takes to write.

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Can solitude be a source of inspiration?

In this bonus episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson talks to Lucy Scholes about her latest novel, Jack and its place in the Gilead quartet. Exploring the idea of solitude, Marilynne speaks with characteristic insight about living with her characters as she writes and the absence they leave behind.

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Who is your feminism for?

Austin Channing Brown was named by parents who deliberately wanted people to presume their daughter was a white man when applying for jobs. Now a speaker and writer working for Racial Justice in the US and the author of I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, she explains how her hopefulness is not rooted in white people but in the work. With candour, insight and a lot of laughter, she tells Lucy why her recent bestseller’s royalty check only reinforced her resolution that economic success should not determine her feminist principles, reveals that ‘a woman becoming herself’ is her favourite fiction genre and raves about the beauty of textile art that recalls our foremothers.

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What can we learn from African women’s movements?

If you knew about the women who fought a freedom war in 1914 Nigeria, would it alter your view of feminist history? Chibundu Onuzo, award-winning author and performer, talks to Lucy Scholes about her new novel Sankofa. Join a conversation of riotous laughs and deep thinking as Chibundu tells Lucy about the economics of cheating, Ugandan Mwenkanokano and why the Nigerian Elena Ferrante is her favourite book.

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Would you become a surrogate mother?

Publishing her first novel over the age of fifty, Susan Spindler writes brilliantly about post-menopausal life in her thriller Surrogate. Join her and Lucy Scholes as they discuss why older women are forced to emulate fertility or risk being called a ‘hag’ and to hear them talk about mothers in recent literature – from joyful physical intimacy to inherited trauma and the curious cases of women addicted to pregnancy.

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How can you create your own world when this one doesn’t serve you?

Join as we radically restructure myths, stories and genres – from the American West to fairy tales and nineties pop icons. C. Pam Zhang is author of How Much of These Hills is Gold, longlisted for the Man Booker and Rathbones Folio Prizes and one of Barack Obama’s books of the year. She talks to Lucy Scholes about defiantly imagining herself into erased histories of Asian Americans, sexy feminists and how eavesdropping inspires her writing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can reading rewire your brain?

After a childhood spent calling Henry James her ‘dude’ and Evelyn Waugh her ‘friend’ R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries, talks to Lucy Scholes about how determinedly reading more people of colour and queer voices helps reconfigure her internal world to match her external world – where straight is not the default. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes as they break down the myth of the selfish male artist and figure out how to talk about her latest book Kink, a collection of erotic short stories, with religious Asian parents.

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How can you be a strong woman in a world that’s not built for you?

Justine Cowan is an attorney used to fighting environmental cases against huge corporations but writing about her mother’s childhood in her first book, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames led her to uncover a very different injustice. She joins Lucy Scholes to talk about finding mother figures in chosen families, rewriting history from new perspectives and how, as a female lawyer in the American South, she overcame barriers by taking courage from her heroes.

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