Two Lit Chicks

Francesco Sedita is an accomplished children’s publisher at Penguin, running Penguin Workshop, an imprint he developed over his 14 years at the company.   
  
He attended NYU, where he studied writing and graduated with his MFA.  While working on his undergraduate degree, Francesco spent a year as a “Saturday Night Live” writing intern.

In his time as a publisher, Francesco has worked with Anne Rice, Michael Crichton, and Dolly Parton. He developed and oversaw the marketing and creative campaign for the final book in the Harry Potter series, the launch of which broke every sales record in the publishing industry.  
 
Currently, Francesco is promoting the third book in his graphic novel series, The Pathfinders Society.  And in 2023, he will publish two picture books.  

 Francesco’s Choices
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
- Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
- Swan Song by Robert McCammon
- ANY Choose Your Own Adventure
- Nobody's Fault by Patricia Hermes

 Listener’s Choice (Lyndsey Croal)
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page (UK Only).By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

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 Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Georgia Pritchett is a multi-award-winning comedy and drama writer, who has five Emmys, six Writers Guild awards, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA and a Producer’s Guild award. She is currently a writer and co-executive producer on HBO's critically acclaimed show, Succession, which is currently filming the fourth season. Georgia was the co-executive producer and writer on the HBO multi-Emmy winning show Veep, which ran for seven seasons.
 
Georgia recently show-ran The Shrink Next Door for Apple TV: an adaptation of the hit podcast, it starred Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn.
 
She wrote three episodes of HBO's Avenue Five, Armando Iannucci’s space comedy starring Hugh Laurie. Georgia has written extensively for Miranda Hart and Tracy Ullman and the shows Have I Got News for You, Smack the Pony, Not Going Out and The Thick of It. She created, wrote and show-ran 2DTV for ITV as well as Quick Cuts starring Doon Makichan, Feel The Force and three series of Life of Riley - starring Caroline Quentin for the BBC.

Georgia’s memoir My Mess is a Bit of a Life was released in the summer of 2021 to rave reviews

Georgia’s Choices

The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Victoria Wood scripts by Victoria Wood
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Fight Night by Miriam Toews 

Listener Choice (Jessica Popplewell)

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

This is Jen Hyatt’s last episode with Two Lit Chicks as she leaves to concentrate on her writing. At the end we welcome our new host…

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only).
By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Keep  in touch
We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

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Thank you so much for listening.  
Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Erin Kelly worked as a journalist before publishing her debut, The Poison Tree, which the ITV adapted for television. Since then, she’s published eight more psychological thrillers and in 2014 was chosen to write the novelisation of the BAFTA-winning Broadchurch. Her ninth book, The Skeleton Key, published in September. 

Three of her books were Richard and Judy picks. Her books have sold over a million copies and been translated into 25 languages.

As well as writing fiction she continues to work as a journalist and also teaches creative writing. She lives in north London with her husband and two daughters, and an ever-growing collection of toy lambs. 

Erin’s books:

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Baby-led Breastfeeding: How to make breastfeeding work - with your baby's help by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett
The Binding by Bridget Collins

Other mentions:
This is Water Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace

 You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page (UK Only).

By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

We discuss mental health in this episode. If you need help, there are places to go and people you can  speak to. Here are the contact details for Mind.

Keep  in touch
We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

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Thank you so much for listening.  
Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the 60s and 70s. 

Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC.

Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was long-listed for the Women's Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah was shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020. Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Writer in Residence at Leicester University.

Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes  was published in August 2022. 

Kit’s Choices:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Open by Andre Agassi
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Other books mentioned:
How We Mortals Blame the Gods by Mairin McSweeney

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only). By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Keep  in touch
We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening.  
Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Stacey McEwan is a school teacher by day and fantasy writer by night. She is a book influencer on multiple platforms and began writing Ledge after book lovers of the internet begged her to share her story ideas. Stacey lives on the Gold Coast, Australia with her husband, two children and one questionable dog. When Stacey isn’t writing, teaching, or making ridiculous tiktoks, you’ll find her playing with her children, reading, annoying her husband, or possibly all three at once.

Find Stacey on TikTok and Instagram: @stacebookspace

Stacey’s Choices:

- The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
- The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
- The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Also mentioned:

- Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) Fan fiction site
- Brandon Sanderson

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only).
By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Keep  in touch

We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening.  

Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Frances Quinn grew up in London and read English at King’s College, Cambridge, realising too late that the course would require more than lying around reading novels for three years. After snatching a degree from the jaws of laziness, she became a journalist, writing for magazines including Prima, Good Housekeeping, She, Woman’s Weekly and Ideal Home, and later branched out into copywriting, producing words for everything from Waitrose pizza packaging to the EasyJet in-flight brochure.

In 2013, she won a place on the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course, and started work on her first novel. The Smallest Man was published in 2021 by Simon & Schuster with her follow up, That Bonesetter Woman, set for 2022. She lives in Brighton, with her husband and two Tonkinese cats. 

 Frances’s Choices

Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse by Ursula Moray Williams
Half Life of Stars by Louise Wener
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Bomber by Liza Marklund
The Vizard Mask by Diana Norman

Other books and media mentioned:
ABBA music
Swedish crime writers Camilla Lackberg, Stieg Larsson and Viveca Sten

Julia mentioned using MidJourney to create fantastic character studies and visualisations as writers and readers. She’s written a thorough “how-to” blog post on our website. 

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only).

By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Keep  in touch

We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

 Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening.  
Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

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Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels, including Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche.

Since then, she has written 19 more novels, plus novellas, short stories, game scripts, the libretti for two short operas, several screenplays, a stage musical (with Howard Goodall) and three cookbooks. 

Her books are now published in over 50 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022. She is a passionate advocate for authors’ rights, and is currently the Chair of the Society of Authors (SOA), and member of the Board of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).

 Joanne’s Choices
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Other books and media mentioned
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Backlisted Podcast (Joanne Harris/Gormenghast episode)

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only). By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Julia mentioned using MidJourney to create fantastic character studies and visualisations as writers and readers. She’s written a thorough “how-to” blog post on our website.

Keep  in touch
We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:
 
Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening.
 
Listeners, we love you.

 Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here

Support the show

In the opener for Season Two, we share book news with updates on previous guests, and announcements about the literary greats in our upcoming Season Two. We are thrilled to have the amazing Joanne Harris as our first guest on September 5. Mark your calendars!

Also, we announce our second flash fiction competition with the theme Books Change Lives. More details to follow soon on our TwoLitChicks.org blog. 

Share a book that changed your life, and why, on social media #BooksChangeLives and tag us. If your post or audio clip is played on the show, we will send you a TLC mug.

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

We want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media.

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Please go to Bookshop.org (UK only) to buy the books mentioned on our show, to support independent booksellers and to help with the costs of our podcast.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening. Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here.

Support the show

In the wrap up episode for Season One, we reveal the winners of our inaugural flash fiction award on the theme of courage. We also discuss how we judged the entries, so that future entrants have a clear idea of our thought processes. 

Big thanks to the amazing Maria Austin for her dramatic readings of the two runners up and the winner. Maria is an award-nominated actress based between London and Belfast. She trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York and now works across an array of mediums – screen, theatre and voiceover. 

Also, we reveal a few of our guests for Season Two.  

Make sure to listen to the very end for the extended outtakes. Thank goodness for our producer, Jeremy Chapman, who edits out our silliness.

TWO LIT CHICKS WILL BE BACK! Our pre-season chat will drop on August 29 with our first interview on September 5. Mark your calendars. 

If you would like to share a story about the book that changed your life and why, share it on our social media channels. If your post or audio clip is played on the show, we’ll send you a Two Lit Chicks mug.

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media.

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening. Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here.

Support the show

Born in Bristol and raised in Lagos, Nikki May is Nigerian-British. At twenty, she dropped out of medical school, moved to London, and began a career in advertising, going on to run a successful agency. Her debut novel Wahala was inspired by a long lunch with friends. Nikki lives in Dorset with her husband, two standard schnauzer and way too many books.

Books chosen by Nikki:

The Famous Five by Enid Blyton
Ice Station Zebra by Alistair McLean
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Real Food by Nigel Slater                                                                                                                                           

Other books mentioned
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole 
Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan

You can buy books mentioned in this episode on our Bookshop.org Affiliate page. (UK Only). By purchasing here, you support both small bookshops AND our podcast.

Keep  in touch
We love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:

Twitter: @twolitchicks
Instagram: @two_lit_chicks
TikTok: @two_lit_chicks
Email: [email protected]

If you do one thing today, sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you updated with all our news.

Thank you so much for listening.

Listeners, we love you.

Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice Here.

Support the show