This week’s guest is Michael Pedersen, whose new book Boy Friends is a profoundly personal, searingly honest examination of grief, inspired by the death of Scott Hutchison, the author’s dearest friend, and artistic co-conspirator Although heartbreaking at moments, Boy Friends is by no means a depressing book. In fact it’s funny, and tender, and insightful, as well as an authentic and touching quest to give voice to the maelstrom of emotions such a devastating loss provokes. It’s also an examination of male friendship, and the difficulties many of us have expressing the love that underpins them, having been brought up in societies that minimise or mock such emotions.
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Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. His second collection, Oyster, was published in 2017 and was illustrated by and performed as a live show with Scott Hutchison (of Scottish band Frightened Rabbit). Pedersen has been named one of Canongate’s Future 40; was a finalist for the 2018 Writer of the Year at the Herald Scottish Culture Awards; was awarded the 2014 John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award; and won a 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie!, a prize-winning arts collective that has produced cutting-edge shows around the world for over ten years.
Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time
Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1
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The Shakespeare and Company Interview