Little Atoms

David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author of two novels, the cult classic This Is Memorial Device, which won the Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and For The Good Times which won the Gordon Burn Prize. He is also the author of England's Hidden Reverse, a history of the UK's post-punk/Industrial underground. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger's Wife, winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest novel is Inland. She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Hunter College. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Padraig Reidy hosts this week, speaking to Guardian journalist and author Henry McDonald about his novel Two Souls. They talk punk, football and paramilitary activity in 70s and 80s Belfast, and how a few wrong choices changed the path of young men's lives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Neil speaks to Sarah Perry, author of the bestselling The Essex Serpent, which won Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and Book of the Year 2017 at the British Book Awards. Her latest novel is Melmoth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elle Nash is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, NAILED, Reality Beach, Hobart, and other places. She was a member of the Denver Press Club and now lives in Arkansas. Occasionally she reads tarot in exchange for money. Her debut novel is Animals Eat Each Other. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and her work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Republic, among other publications. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author and music journalist David Stubbs joins Neil to talk about his latest book Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music. They chat about the evolution of synthesisers, the women who pioneered electronic music and where the genre is now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, was long listed for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the memoir about her father’s life and assassination, Songs of Blood and Sword, was published to acclaim. Her most recent novel is The Runaways, and her latest book is New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lillian Li joins Neil to talk about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist Ben Fergusson joins Neil to talk about An Honest Man, the final book of his Berlin Trilogy. They discuss writing against the backdrop of 1989 Berlin, the summer after leaving school, and the novel's parallels between relationships, infidelity and espionage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.