Tender Buttons

In this episode, we speak to acclaimed poet and novelist Garth Greenwell about his latest novel, Small Rain. We speak about chambers of mind and body within the architecture of the novel, and touch as something with the power to both connect us with and alienate us from our animal corporeality. We explore the embodied nature of syntax in Garth's work, and the ways in which pain can shatter this. We question the 'arts of living' and discuss the necessity of uncertainty and contradictions within fiction, and the importance of sitting with discomfort. We speak about civility, neighbourliness, political division and the myriad ways in which our lives are dependent on others.

Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His novella Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City.

References

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

Introducing Myself by Ursula K. Le Guin

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Garth's work.

This conversation was recorded in person at Albatross Café in Bristol.

This is a special live episode, hosted at Storysmith to mark the launch of Strange Relations by Ralf Webb.

We think about the contemporary crisis in masculinity through the lives and work of mid-century American writers John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin, considering how their legacies might inform the current moment. We speak about the censorship of radical elements of these writers' work, including elements of their politics, queerness and intimacy, and consider the role of their interpersonal and intertextual relationships in understanding their work. We speak about what it means to reclaim space in the canon and expanding terms such as bisexuality, as well as notions of boyishness. We discuss the relationship between poetry and prose, the use of novelistic techniques in non-fiction and the ethical responsibility involved in writing about well-known literary figures.

Ralf Webb is a poet, writer and editor based in Bristol. His debut collection of poems, Rotten Days in Late Summer was published by Penguin in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. Webb’s poetry and critical writing has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, and The Poetry Review. He currently manages a creative writing mentorship programme in collaboration with Folio and First Story, which supports school-age writers from low-income backgrounds.

References

Strange Relations by Ralf Webb

Late Days in Rotten Summer by Ralf Webb

Warped Pastoral: Ralf Webb and Sam Buchan-Watts in conversation

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ralf's work.

In this episode, we speak to author, translator and musician Jen Calleja about her inventive novel, Vehicle. We discuss what it means to write a verse novel and the politics of translation. We discuss the use of archive and the ways in which experimental writing can meet transformative politics and possibilities. We speak about bringing the energy and ethos of DIY punk to the novel and the literary world more generally, through the importance of radical independent publishing and the role of collective writing, as well as the dangers of censorship within the arts.

Jen Calleja is a poet, short story writer and essayist who has been widely published, including in The White Review, The London Magazine, and Best British Short Stories (Salt). She was awarded an Authors’ Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors to work on Vehicle, and was shortlisted for the Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize for an excerpt from the novel. She was also longlisted for the Ivan Juritz

She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library.

Calleja played and toured in the DIY punk bands Sauna Youth, Feature, Monotony, Gold Foil and Mind Jail spanning a period of over a decade as both a drummer and a vocalist.

She is also a publisher at Praspar Press.

References

Vehicle by Jen Calleja

I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For by Jen Calleja

GOBLINS by Jen Calleja and Rachel Louise Hodgson

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jen's work.

In this episode, we speak to writer Jason Okundaye about his recent book, Revolutionary Acts. We discuss archives as living, moving things, and non-linearity as a mode of articulating queer Black histories. We think about the role of body language, tone of voice, feelings and vulnerabilities in the act of embodied transcription. We think about the notion of 'archival pleasure' and understanding the body and desire as sites of history. We discuss the necessity of oral histories being relational as opposed to extractive, and what it means to push against the 'deficit paradigm', recording stories of Black gay abundance, desire and celebration, as well as making space for mess and discomfort, refusing neat and simplistic narratives of unity within political activism.

Jason Okundaye was born to British-Nigerian parents in South London in 1997. He writes essays, features, and profiles on politics and culture for publications such as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, British Vogue, GQ, Vice, Dazed, and i-D. He also co-curates the digital archive

References

Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain by Jason Okundaye

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jason's work.

In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Helen Oyeyemi about her most recent novel, Parasol Against the Axe. We discuss the use of non-linearity when attempting to write about a complex city like Prague. We chat about the city as a dissociative state, and the relationship to surrealism and conflicting histories. We speak about the intimate relationship between reading, writing and desire, and the way that books can reveal details about the reader, as well as the author. We explore the book as a living object which shifts across time and space, and the use of play and perplexity across Oyeyemi's work. We discuss what it means to resist master narratives and embrace slippery, shapeshifting narrators, subverting the reader's expectations. We examine a hunger for novels which require the reader to work, and what it means to be actively involved in the process of meaning-making.

Helen Oyeyeymi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won a Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread, What Is Not Yours Is Yours, and Peaces, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best Young British Novelists.

References

Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyeymi

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyeymi

Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyeymi

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyeymi

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Prague Tales by Jan Neruda

In this episode, we chat to Andrew McMillan about his novel, Pity. We discuss intersections of masculinity, sexuality and class and the way the body might hold these ideas within fiction and poetry. We think about the ways in which the form of the novel can hold multiple truths and stories, and how this links to post-industrial identities. We explore the dangers of describing post-industrial towns by their lack or an absence, and consider what it would take to find new definitions of community. We chat about the need for more northern stories, and the idea that everyone's village, town or city is worthy of literature. We think about finding a new language to discuss the past, which honours its legacies and yet allows us to define ourselves on new terms, in order to move forwards.

Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physical was

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References

Pity by Andrew McMillan

Pandemonium by Andrew McMillan

Playtime by Andrew McMillan

Physical by Andrew McMillan

As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Andrew's work.

In this episode, we speak to writer Marianne Brooker about her book Intervals. We discuss the politics of care and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care. We talk about the importance of interdependence, and how networks of care link to activism and writing. We think about the right to abundance and life, while considering what it means to die a good death. We chat about intersections of class, gender and disability, and beauty and maximalism as an act of resistance. We imagine writing as reparative magic and consider what it means to write into and with grief, as opposed to pushing against it. We speak about what it means to draw kinship with other writers and thinkers such as Denise Riley, Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson and Lola Olufemi, among others.

Marianne Brooker is a writer based in Bristol, where she works for a charity campaigning on climate and social justice. She has a PhD from Birkbeck and a background in arts research and teaching. She won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for Intervals, her first book, which was also longlisted for the inaugral Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024.

You can now subscribe to our ⁠⁠⁠Patreon ⁠⁠⁠for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:

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References

Intervals by Marianne Brooker

Time Lived, Without its Flow by Denise Riley

The Undying by Anne Boyer

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe

In this episode, we speak to author Sheila Heti about her brilliant new book, Alphabetical Diaries, in which she alphabetizes her diaries over a ten-year period, creating parallels and juxtapositions between past and present versions of the self. We speak about the role of formal constraints in her work and her resistance of linear time, progress and the notion of a complete, continuous narrative of selfhood. We think about rhythm and the materiality of language in relation to associative narrative structure. We chat about Heti's body of work, from How Should a Person Be? to Motherhood and Pure Colour, exploring the myriad ways in which she interrogates time and selfhood through hybrid forms, pushing the boundaries of the novel.

Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including Alphabetical Diaries, Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages.

She is the current Alice Munro Chair of Creativity at

You can now subscribe to our ⁠⁠⁠Patreon ⁠⁠⁠for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:

Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work.

References

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

In this episode, we speak to academic, author and broadcaster Noreen Masud about her memoir, A Flat Place. We discuss the psychological, literary and philosophical histories and connotations of flat landscapes. We talk about Masud's experience growing up in Lahore, Pakistan, then moving to the UK and the complexity of language, culture and the post-colonial experience. We discuss what it means to resist the history of landscape writing, from white male colonial stories of nature as redemption and Romantic notions of landscape as revelation or a text to be interpreted 'correctly.' Instead, our conversation considers what it means to open space for failure, misinterpretation and post-colonial discomfort, without resolution.

We discuss memory as place, the importance of sitting with unknowingness, the connection between listening and mutual aid and the limits of empathy. We talk about counteracting the constant strive for meaning in literature with seeking play, sound and irreverance.

Noreen Masud was born and raised in Pakistan. She is a literary scholar working on the twentieth century, writing about things which, in one way or another, present variously as absurd, unrevealing, embarrassing or useless. These include aphorisms, flatness, spivs, puppets, nonsense, leftovers, earworms, footnotes, rhymes, hymns, surprises, folk songs, colours and superstition. She is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2020, and a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Hard Language: Stevie Smith and the Aphorism, and A Flat Place.

References

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Willa Cather

Kangaroo by DH Lawrence

Against the Trauma Plot by Parul Sehgal

You can now subscribe to our ⁠Patreon ⁠for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:

Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work.

In this episode, we speak to Nathalie Olah about her book Bad Taste: Or The Politics of Ugliness. We discuss notions of taste and the intersection with social class and cultural capital. We think about the ways in which a fear of judgement is intrinsic to working-class survival and the construction of working-class femininities within this. We chat about the ways in which ideas of social mobility force working-class people to assimilate to middle-class ideas of taste, and the loss and displacement caused by this. We highlight the importance of working-class writers amplifying the people, places, objects and events that are significant to them, from Pamela Anderson's hyper-feminized look in the film Barb Wire (1996) to Dolly Parton's embrace of 'trashy' aesthetics. We discuss the role of austerity and scarcity within contemporary notions of 'style' and 'class' and how this links to the wealth and power of dominant taste-makers. We explore the role of culture and beauty in upholding power hierarchies and the way this shapes our lives.

Nathalie Olah is a writer currently living and working in London. Her political awakening happened when she was living in the Netherlands in 2014, completing an MA (global political economy, University of Sussex / Utrecht University) and working for research organisations and grassroots protest groups challenging the biases of the international courts and witnessing the distant, passive cruelty of EU bureaucrats subjecting millions of people to misery during the Greek debt crisis. She came back to the UK in 2016 when electoral politics was just starting to get interesting; joined a few organisations, wrote a few things. This all led to the publication of her first book, Steal As Much As You Can in 2019.

Her background has always been aesthetics, philosophy and literature. She first studied English Language and Literature, but her professor, Christopher Butler, was a philosopher and art historian. Her main interest is media spectacle and propaganda, and the quaint exceptionalisms of the western psyche and that of the upper/middle class in particular. She is always trying to challenge the assumption — in a visually over-saturated world — that seeing is knowing, and ultimately prevent the slide into what academic Eva Illouz has termed ‘scopic capitalism’.

Her new book, Bad Taste: or the politics of ugliness is about the industries of taste (which prospered after 2008), how they aestheticise and valorise scarcity, which is an invention of capitalism, and create a false hierarchy of virtue centred on consumerism.

Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published widely in Five Dials, Dazed, AnOther, i-D, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement.

References

Bad Taste by Nathalie Olah

Look Again: Class by Nathalie Olah

Steal as Much as You Can by Nathalie Olah