The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis

My guest this week is the phenomenal Poorna Bell. Poorna is an award-winning journalist and author, and a hugely inspiring voice in the conversation around mental health. Her first book Chase The Rainbow, charts her life with her late husband Rob, who struggled with depression and addiction and died by suicide in 2015. It’s a staggeringly moving, but also incredibly warm and vivid read, which offers vital insights both on mental health and grief. She has followed it up with the recently-released In Search of Silence, which chronicles her journey to rebuilding her life after bereavement. We discuss all of this, in a conversation that is both moving and inspiring. She’s wonderful.

Buy In Search of Silence here: https://tinyurl.com/y5qwngq9

Twitter: @aliceazania @poornabell

Instagram: @aliceazania @poornabell

Edited by Chelsey Moore

My guest this week is Kate Mosse, world-famous, bestselling author - and the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize For Fiction, which is awarded on Wednesday 5 June. I LOVED her. We talk about how she quit her high-powered job to pursue writing, why her husband took her surname when they had children, getting confused with Kate Moss (no “e”), writing her most recent book The Burning Chambers (which came out in paperback earlier this year) - and how she set up the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 1996 in response to an all-male Booker Prize shortlist. She also reveals the one piece of advice she’d give to any aspiring writer.

Buy the Burning Chambers here: https://tinyurl.com/y6ev4rnw

Twitter: @aliceazania @katemosse

Instagram: @aliceazania @katemossewriter

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Emma Gannon is the queen of the side hustle. Having started blogging while working in PR, she went on to carve out her own multi-disciplinary portfolio career as an author, journalist, and podcaster. In her bestselling book The Multi-Hyphen Method, she shows you how you can apply the same approach. It’s fantastically useful - I’ve actually given it to quite a few people as a gift.

We talk about the importance of redefining success on your own terms, how people get “personal branding” wrong, creating boundaries - and the background to her setting up her hugely successful podcast Ctrl Alt Delete which has seen her interview the likes of Jameela Jamil and Esther Perel.

Buy The Multi-Hyphen Method here https://tinyurl.com/y5rwmxb8

Twitter: @aliceazania @emmagannon

Instagram: @aliceazania @emmagannonuk

My guest this week is Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Set in New York City in the year 2000, it tells the story of a wealthy young woman who decides to go into hibernation with a cocktail of sedatives. Recently released in paperback, it’s darkly funny and wonderfully, unashamedly strange. Ottessa is undoubtedly one of the most original voices in fiction today, whose stories share an intriguing sense of the grotesque - and I found our conversation, which took in everything from being an outsider to why she doesn’t drink alcohol, utterly fascinating.

Buy My Year of Rest and Relaxation here https://tinyurl.com/y3v45ka8

Twitter: @aliceazania

Instagram: @aliceazania

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Yvonne Battle Felton’s brilliant novel Remembered tells the story of Spring, an emancipated slave whose son Edward has been accused of driving a streetcar into a shop window. I love this book - and am not surprised that it was longlisted for The Women’s Prize For Fiction.

This is also my first ever live episode - I spoke to Yvonne for the monthly literary salon I host at the Ned hotel in London so it is recorded there. We discussed her decision to leave the US for the UK, why rejection can be a good thing and the role of Black Lives Matter in shaping the book. I loved talking to her - she was so warm and thoughtful. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy Remembered here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembered-Yvonne-Battle-Felton/dp/0349700494

Twitter: @aliceazania @YBattleFelton

Instagram: @aliceazania @whyiwritebattlefelton

Edited by Chelsey Moore

My guest this week is Alex Holder, whose book Open Up: The Power of Talking About Money aims to break the taboo around money by encouraging us to be more open about what we earn and how we spend, save and deal with debt. It’s a brilliant read – hugely relatable and relevant, and it might just change your life. We talk about all of this, as well as how to say no to hen parties, the mental health toll of feeling financially out of control, and how we can all get on top of our money.

Buy Open Up: The Power of Talking About Money at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Up-Power-Talking-About/dp/1788161874

Twitter: @aliceazania @AlexandreHolder

Instagram: @aliceazania @alexandreholder

Edited by Chelsey Moore

My guest this week is Sophie Mackintosh, whose debut novel The Water Cure was the subject of a seven-way bidding war. Telling the story of three sisters whose parents have brought them up on an isolated island to inoculate them from the dangers presented by men and a toxic world, it won rave reviews, was longlisted for The Booker Prize, and has recently come out in paperback. I LOVED talking to Sophie - we talk about how growing up speaking Welsh made her a better writer, how she wrote The Water Cure around her marketing job, why female anger is a force for good - and so much more.

Buy The Water Cure at https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-water-cure/sophie-mackintosh/9780241983010

Twitter: @aliceazania

Instagram: @aliceazania @sophmackintosh

Edited by Chelsey Moore

I have a special affinity with Sharlene. One of the characters in her remarkable novel Ponti, which has just been released in paperback, is a former cult horror actress. My mum is also a former cult horror actress. That’s where the similarities end - but it feels fittingly spooky given the super-natural aspects of Ponti, a sweeping tale of friendship and jealousy, which won the inaugural Deborah Rogers writers’ award and was described by none other than Ian McEwan as “remarkable.” I loved speaking to Sharlene - we covered everything from the crippling imposter syndrome she experiences to frenemies to why perfectionism is a form of censorship.

Buy Ponti here: https://www.foyles.co.uk/all?term=sharlene+teo+ponti

Twitter: @aliceazania @treebirds

Instagram: @aliceazania @strangelikeness

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams is my favourite debut of the year so far - I’m not surprised it was the subject of a bidding war. It tells the story of Queenie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, who works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white, middle-class peers. When she breaks up with her long-term boyfriend, she enters a period of anxiety, and awful relationships. I LOVE this book - it’s funny and poignant and youthful and feels so relevant. Reading Candice’s writing is like speaking to a friend - as was interviewing her. We talk about the shocking under-representation of BAME writers, battling confidence issues and how she writes in the middle of the night, and much, much more.

Buy Queenie at https://www.waterstones.com/book/queenie/candice-carty-williams/9781409180050

Twitter: @aliceazania @CandiceC_W ‏

Instagram: @aliceazania @candicec_w

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Elizabeth Day is an award-winning author and journalist - and host of the brilliantly successful and totally riveting podcast How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, in which she interviews the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Alastair Campbell and Lily Allen about the things that haven’t gone right in life. Having published four novels, including the 2017 smash-hit The Party, she has just released her fifth book, also called How To Fail. Part memoir, part mediation on the power of failure, it takes in career highs and lows, her struggle with infertility, the breakdown of her first marriage and more. Like everything Elizabeth produces, it’s beautifully written and sharply observed but also so honest and true. We talk about that - as well as her childhood in Northern Ireland, feeling like an outsider, being a closet introvert, therapy and more. She’s incredible.

Buy How to Fail: Everything I'Ve Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong at

https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-fail/elizabeth-day/9780008327323

Twitter: @aliceazania @elizabday

Instagram: @aliceazania @elizabday

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Sunday April 21 - Candice Carty Williams on writing the debut of the year and why representation matters