The Writing Life

This episode is a Writing Life special to celebrate Noirwich, the 2022 Norwich Crime Writing Festival here in our fine city. The festival featured Ukrainian-born American and French artist and writer, Yelena Moskovich. Yelena has written for Vogue, The Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review and many more. She has also just released her third novel, A Door Behind a Door, an exploration of the post-Soviet diaspora. We invited our friend, creative writing tutor and the godmother of domestic noir, Julia Crouch whose 7th novel The Daughters came out earlier this year, to interview Yelena. Strap in for a lively discussion about routes to becoming a writer, identity as a writer, ownership of your art, reading, what is crime writing, ideas of Hell and much much more. Image copyright Beth Moseley

This month, we discuss revision. To help us understand how, when and why writers should revise, rewrite and redraft our work, we speak to writer and NCW course tutor, Lynne Bryan. We discuss the importance of revising one’s work, how revision is different for different types writer, when to do what kind of revision, and the role of third-party feedback. This is a great discussion for anyone doing creative writing. Lynne received her MA in Creative Writing in 1985. Her first book - Envy At The Cheese Handout - was a collection of short stories back in 1995. Two novels, Gorgeous and Like Rabbits followed in 1999 and 2002.  She’s co-edited six anthologies of short prose, her work has been broadcast on Radio 4 and her story – ‘A Regular Thing’ – was made into an award-winning short film in Denmark. Needless to say, Lynne knows her stuff, so this is an invaluable discussion for anyone who writes.

We talk to international bestselling writer Mohsin Hamid about his new book, The Last White Man. The conversation covers the key themes of his new novel: race, transformation, freedom, loss - as well as his journey into writing fiction, and, how a story is only ever half-told, until it finds a reader… Many will know his Booker shortlisted novels The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West. And some may also know his other novels Moth Smoke and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - and a non-fiction book, Discontent and its Civilizations. He writes regularly for The New York Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, Pakistan, he has since lived between Lahore, London and New York.  

Author and teacher Ashley Hickson-Lovence discusses the nuances of balancing story and plot in writing, emphasizing key plot devices and strategies for keeping readers engaged. The podcast also delves into the interplay of story and plot, the importance of theme in novels, and crafting unique narratives while breaking literary conventions.

Learn how to structure a novel from Ian Nettleton, covering characters' wants and needs, conflict, narrative tension, and building scenes. Explore quests, commitments, and resolutions for a compelling story. Delve into balancing structure and creativity, tools like Scrivener, three-act structure, and the impact of reversals in storytelling.

This is a special episode to celebrate our City of Literature programme at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. As part of the festival, we organised, curated and hosted a series of events at the legendary spiegeltent as well as talks and our publishing fair, here at Dragon Hall. Called Wandering Words, we commissioned five poets and five sound designers to create an interactive digital experience. This episode hosts the poems and the soundscapes.

What is translation and how is it experienced? In this episode, three translators explore their experiences of inhabiting multiple languages in a portrayal of life in translation, of translation as a part of everyday life, of translation as survival, and of people as translated beings. Interviews with Kavita Bhanot, Yovanka Paquete Perdigão and Nariman Youssef. Made by Gitanjali Patel and Miia Laine as part of the Visible Communities residency at the National Centre for Writing.

Novelist Megan Bradbury and Sam Ruddock from Story Machine Productions discuss the role of research in writing. Megan describes how she went to New York to research the geniuses who lived there, to bring her novel to life. She also talks about working with Professor Pete Wilde on NCW’s Translating Science project.  Megan explains how different types of research can become a regular part of your writing routine as well as helping to inspire stories and characters, while making worlds feel rich and authentic. She describes some of the more immersive and unusual methods that help her get inspired, build characters and develop the creative process. Browse our online creative writing courses.   

Khairani Barokka is an Indonesian writer and artist living in London. She is the co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, the author-illustrator of Indigenous Species, and author of debut poetry collection Rope. She was Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-In-Residence, National Centre for Writing’s Associate Artist in 2020 and she has been a Researcher-in-Residence at UAL’s Decolonising the Arts Institute. Rishi Dastidar's debut collection Ticker-tape is published by Nine Arches Press, and his work has been published by Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC amongst many others. Okka and Rishi are poets and stable mates of independent poetry publisher Nine Arches Press. Join them for a deep dive into the unconscious process of writing poetry and what they both call 'the daze' of writing, as well as the environmental elements of Okka's writing. Check out our upcoming creative writing online courses, designed in partnership with the University of East Anglia. On sale now

Mattho Mandersloot is a literary translator working from Korean into English and Dutch. He holds a degree in Classics from King’s College London and one in Translation from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He has won the Korea Times’ 51st Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, the World Literature Today Translation Prize and the Oxford Korean Poetry Translation Prize. In July 2021, we welcomed Mattho to Norwich for a month-long residency with support from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. During his residency he worked on Choi Jeongrye’s final collection of poetry, Net of Light, alongside award-winning poet and translator George Szirtes. In this conversation between Matthow and George, they discuss the intricacies of language, the power of K-pop, the rise in popularity of Korean studies, and how Mattho's love of taekwondo led him to a career in literary translation. Find out more about what we do: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/ Hosted by Steph McKenna. Music by Bennet Maples.