Holly Pester, poet and author of Cafés, The Lodgers and Comic Timing, speaks to Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen. Their discussion touches on the romantic, radical ideal of the café, the conflicting rhythms of the body and work, and the right to leisure and the right to dream.

Recorded at Young Space in August 2026. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Jeremy Cooper, author of Discord, Brian, Bolt from the Blue and Ash Before Oak, speaks to Gareth Evans, writer, editor and film/event producer, about his writing to date. The conversation touches on his trajectory from the art world into writing, how our relationships with others underpin creativity, and the correspondence between art and feeling. Recorded at Young Space in February 2026. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender and Greyhound, speaks to Samantha Walton, academic and author of Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure, about her writing to date. The conversation touches on resistance to nostalgia in nature writing, mapping internal journeys onto landscape and the invention of ‘wilderness’ in American literature.

Thea Lenarduzzi, author of Dandelions and The Tower, speaks to Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women and A Woman’s Work (forthcoming in 2026). The conversation touches on the imaginative resonances of fairy tales, storytelling in the pub, and the generative possibilities of not-knowing. Recorded at Young Space in August 2025. Editing by Frankie Wells. Music by Kwes Darko.

Guadalupe Nettel, author of Still Born and The Accidentals, both tr. Rosalind Harvey, speaks to Sarvat Hasin, author of You Can't Go Home Again and The Giant Dark, about her work to date. The discussion touches on transforming someone’s story into fiction, writing in the space between reality and fantasy, and the potent symbolism of dreams. Recorded at Young Space in June 2025. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music by Kwes Darko.

Ed Atkins, artist and author of Flower, Old Food and A Primer for Cadavers, speaks to Dan Fox, filmmaker, musician and author of Pretentiousness: Why it Matters and Limbo, about his work to date. The conversation touches on catachresis and its relation to the animism of childhood, the feeling of words in the mouth, the thin border between pathos and slapstick, and the pleasure of making lists. Recorded remotely in May 2025. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music by Kwes Darko.

Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets and Modern Poetry, speaks with poet and critic Sandeep Parmar, author of Faust, Eidolon and Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies, about her work to date. The discussion touches on the confluence of memoir and poetry, the need for connection with the past and the possibility of existing in the absolute present, and the vagaries of being positioned outside ‘the house’ of poetry. Recorded remotely in January 2025. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music by Kwes Darko.

To mark the re-publication of Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine, this landmark event held at the Royal Festival Hall on 20 November gathers eight key authors to reflect on the enduring legacy of Said’s work and its role in the ongoing Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

Jehad Abusalim (via video), Tamim Barghouti, Budour Hassan, Saree Makdisi, Max Porter, Jacqueline Rose, Wadie Said, Avi Shlaim and Ahdaf Soueif, hosted by Aimee Shalan, consider what The Question of Palestine has become today, and the painful contradiction that Said himself would observe: that Palestinian gains in international moral and cultural standing since the book’s publication have done nothing to prevent the continuous losses of land and life; and that the establishment of Palestinian histories and narratives in the broader public imagination has led not to equality, but to dehumanisation and death on a scale previously unimaginable.

Presented in cooperation with the Palestine Festival of Literature and the Southbank Centre. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Esther Kinsky, author of River (tr. Iain Galbraith), Grove, Rombo and most recently Seeing Further (all tr. Caroline Schmidt), speaks with Gareth Evans, writer, editor and film/event producer. The discussion touches on the physicality of the writing process, telling a story without plot as the structuring principle, making the sensory presence of the world felt in language, and the personal and collective histories that words bear.

Recorded at Young Space in September 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Daisy Hildyard, author of Hunters in the Snow, The Second Body and Emergency, which was awarded the 2023 RSL Encore Award, speaks to writer and curator Filipa Ramos about her work to date. The conversation touches on accommodating different forms of life – human, animal, plant – in writing, the ways in which stories come to live independently of their teller, relating experiences that happen outside of language, and humility in the face of our limited knowledge. Recorded at Young Space in July 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.