The Writing Life

In this episode of The Writing Life, NCW CEO Peggy Hughes speaks to four dazzling voices in contemporary poetry. On Wednesday 22 November, Jay Bernard, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Gail McConnell and Joelle Taylor gathered to celebrate the launch of exciting new poetry archive collection, ‘Towards a Centre for Contemporary Poetry in the Archive'. This project, delivered by the British Archive for Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, is supported by the Mellon Foundation with partners the National Centre for Writing and Norfolk County Council Library and Information Service. The project aims to promote and preserve the archives of contemporary poets of colour, LGBTQ+ poets and writers from other historically underrepresented backgrounds and practises in the UK and Ireland. Together, they talk about the archival project, their individual contributions and creative processes. They discuss their understanding of their own work, and how poetry and spoken word can be archived. Visiting Poetry Fellow, Will Harris, joins them to explore the project.

Writer and performer Molly Naylor discusses scriptwriting with theatre director Jen Dewsbury. They explore crafting story ideas, developing a strong premise, and the importance of planning in scriptwriting. The podcast also covers challenges in scriptwriting, the essence of writing, and the benefits of collaboration.

Bestselling crime writer Ian Rankin discusses his new standalone thriller 'The Rise' and the challenges of writing short stories. They explore character development, high concept thrillers, and the evolution of Inspector Rebus. Rankin reflects on past experiences in the book industry and creative writing education.

Author Fiona Mason discusses her memoir '36 Hours' on The Writing Life podcast. She explores writing about death, receiving funding from Arts Council England, and balancing promotion with new creative projects.

Fiction writer Yan Ge discusses the process of writing short stories in her English language debut collection. They explore the challenges and advantages of the genre, with insights on editing and the importance of musicality in crafting stories. Yan reflects on her journey, the impact of translation, and offers advice for emerging writers on perseverance and hydration.

This episode of The Writing Life features musician and writer Kalaf Epalanga and writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn on the process of writing and translating Kalaf’s exhilarating debut novel, Whites Can Dance Too. They were interviewed by NCW Programme Manager Rebecca DeWald. Kalaf Epalanga is a musician and writer. Best known internationally for fronting the Lisbon-based dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola and Portugal. Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with over one hundred books to his name. He has translated fiction and non-fiction for adults and children, from Europe, Africa and the Americas.  Rebecca chatted with Kalaf and Daniel about many aspects of writing and translating Whites Can Dance Too, including the structure of the book and whether it can be called non-fiction. They also discuss the process of translating music and different forms of Portuguese, from Portugal, Angola and Brazil.

In this episode we’re bringing you a conversation with debut novelist and creative writing teacher Priscilla Morris. Priscilla’s first novel Black Butterflies is the author’s personal response to the war that devastated her mother’s hometown of Sarajevo, Bosnia, in the former Yugoslavia, from 1992-1996. Priscilla spoke to NCW Communications Assistant Molly-Rose Medhurst about her approach to researching and writing sensitively about the Siege and the atrocities of war, drawing from memory and from the recollections of family and friends. She also talks about her desire to centre the importance of community in the book and her narrative approach to time. Priscilla and Molly’s conversation contains references to sexual assault, death, violence and the horrors of war linked to the Siege of Sarajevo. Please take care when listening.  

In this episode of The Writing Life, we are joined by author, screenwriter and lecturer Tom Benn to discuss his latest novel, Oxblood. Set in 1980s South Manchester, Benn's blazing novel of female solidarity and the legacy of male violence centres on three generations of women at the heart of an underworld family. It won the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award and was longlisted for the Gold Dagger 2023 and Gordon Burn Prize 2022. Tom chats to NCW CEO Chris Gribble about the genesis of Oxblood and why it took six years for him to write. He talks about choosing to write a crime novel in a ‘different way’ from a female perspective; and his aim to re-sensitise the reader through dark or violent stories. He and Chris also discuss how publishers may react to a book like Oxblood, which sits within the crime genre but also interweaves elements of other genres. For the introduction, Steph is joined by NCW Development Manager Dan Scales to talk about a new fundraising campaign launched this month for Escalator, our long-running talent development programme for underrepresented writers. You can support the campaign here: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/support-us/donate/escalator-campaign/ Applications for Escalator 2023-24 close at 10am BST on Tuesday 19 September 2023. Find out more and apply here: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/get-involved/writers/escalator/

In this episode of The Writing Life, NCW Programme Officer Vicki Maitland speaks with writer, editor and workshop leader Katy Massey about the process of writing real people in memoir. Katy was a journalist for many years before studying for an MA and PhD in Creative Writing. Her memoir, Are We Home Yet? was published in 2020 and praised by Bernardine Evaristo as ‘a gem’. It was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Portico Prize. In addition, her work has been widely anthologised, including Common People edited by Kit de Waal, The Place for Me, and speculative collection Glimpse. Her first novel All Us Sinners, an unusual take on the crime genre, is due to be published by Sphere in January 2024. Together, they discuss how her new self-paced course for NCW, How to Write Real People in Memoir, provides the tools you need to think of yourself as the main character in your story: from creating distinct voices in your narrative to discovering the difference between memory, truth and perspective.

In this episode of The Writing Life, NCW Chief Executive Chris Gribble caught up with Claire McGowan to discuss how she got started as a writer, her route(s) into publishing and how she’s maintained and developed a career in writing across a range of genres and over a lengthy period of time. Claire McGowan published her first novel in 2012, and has followed it up with many others in the crime fiction genre and also in women’s fiction (writing as Eva Woods). She has had four radio plays broadcast on the BBC, and her thrillers What You Did and The Other Wife were both number-one bestsellers. She ran the UK’s first MA in crime writing for five years, and regularly teaches and talks about writing. Her first non-fiction project, the true-crime book The Vanishing Triangle, was released in 2021. She also writes scripts and has several projects in development for TV. Together, they discuss how Claire's teaching work has developed across her writing career and how her new course for NCW distils a lot of what she’s learned about the many different ways and means of creating suspense in your writing: from character to landscape, to plot to style. Claire's self-paced online course 'How to Create Suspense in Fiction' will launch on the NCW website on Monday 7 August.