Episode Four: Courttia Newland

The episode we take a look at the five books on Courttia Newland's hypothetical shelf. Courttia Newland is the author of nine books including his debut, The Scholar and the story collection, Cosmogramma. His work has appeared in many anthologies and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is the co-editor of the seminal IC3 The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, spanning poetry, to short fiction, memoir and essays. As a screenwriter he has co-written for the awarding winning BBC series Small Axe and The Woman in the Wall. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Kingston University and his latest novel, A River Called Time, was published in 2021 shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award Science Fiction Book of the Year in 2022. His collection of essays, The Art of Opposition: On Hope, Resilience, and Creative Expression Beyond the Mainstream comes out with Faber and Faber in July 2026.

What will his five books be? Listen in to find out...

I did promise to mention the name of the short story I discussed, when I remembered what it was called, so... we also spoke about 'Dark Neighbourhood' the title story of the collection of the same name, by Vanessa Onwuemezi published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Hypothetical Bookshelf, a kind of desert island discs for books, inspired by Italo Calvino's essay, Whom Do We Write For? or The Hypothetical Bookshelf. This is a podcast that asks writers what other works their writing is in conversation with. Looking for the ways new work can make connections between different books on a writer's and reader's hypothetical shelf. I'll be interviewing a different author each time and asking them to name five books of fiction or non-fiction that can be put beside their own on that imaginary bookshelf. Calvino also writes about how this juxtaposition and conversation between different works can question the established scale of values and code of meanings generally accepted by the wider culture. And I'm keen to test that theory, asking authors about different approaches to storytelling techniques and traditions to inspire listeners with new reading lists and new creative practices. And today I am delighted to be speaking with Courtia Newland. Courtier Newland is the author of nine books, including his debut, The Scholar, and the story collection Cosmogramma. His work has appeared in many anthologies and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He's the co-editor of the seminal IC3, the Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, spanning poetry to short fiction, memoir, and essays. As a screenwriter, he's co-written for the award-winning BBC series Small Axe and The Woman in the Wall. He has a PhD in creative writing from Kingston University. And his latest novel, A River Call Time, was published in 2021 and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award Science Fiction Book of the Year in 2022. And I think it's an amazing book. I'm a huge fan. At the time of recording, uh Courtier is about to publish his collection of essays, The Art of Opposition on Hope, Resilience, and Creative Expression Beyond the Mainstream with Faber and Faber. And it's yeah, it's very exciting.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Thank you. Thank you. It's a really real honor to be on this podcast. This is a really interesting idea. It's something I think about a lot. So yeah, it's really great to chat about these things with you.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

It's quite hard, isn't it, to pick five?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

It's way more than five. I mean, so many.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

And I think I think maybe our feelings about which we would pick might change over time.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Um yeah, yeah. There are different things for different phases of my career, but I try to uh think about what I liked in the beginning and what really drew me to them in the beginning, and then what I'm you know interested in now. And yeah, there's people that have been left out who I try and squeeze in a mention as well, who are pivotal in my growth. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

That sounds good. I'm always up for squeezing in mentions. Um, so uh let's start with your first choice, The Intuitionist by Colton Whitehead. Do you want to tell me a little bit about this book and why you picked it?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Well, so it's just uh such an interesting book. I can't remember how it came to me. I think maybe I was sent it and it was in a TBR on you know in my house for a while, and then I just picked it up. I didn't know who he was. This is Davy novel. I didn't know what it was about, and then I realized that it's about um an elevator inspection company in New York. And there are two schools of elevator inspectors. There are the um empiricists who work by the traditional model of elevator inspection and repair, which you know, just tools and whatever, and they they they look at it and they diagnose and they take the elevator apart and they do all the things that you would expect an elevator inspector to do, and they are the intuitionists, and they believe they can feel what's wrong with the elevator, they intuit what is wrong with the elevator, and there's yeah, then they're two these two schools are at war with each other for who's gonna control elevator inspections and and and the company in in New York, and I suppose in the world, world domination in the end. So, so uh yeah, so I was like, what? I could not believe what I was reading, and it sounds really boring, but then it just so it was just amazing, and it's all it's all an allegory in a sense for race. Uh, you know, this this elevator inspector that we're following, uh Lila May Watson is an African-American woman, and she's you know, she's at the forefront of all this, she's a she's an intuitionist, she's at the forefront of all this, and she gets involved in a mystery to do with a crashed elevator. And who was at fault? Was it the empiricists or the intuitionists?

SPEAKER_03 4:55

I started reading this a little bit when you told me that this was one of your choices, and I was completely hooked really early on. Um, and yeah, you can definitely hear that theme because the intuitionists get described in a very kind of racialized way, don't they, in comparison to the empiricists. I mean, I've only got a little bit of the way in, but um yeah, I'm completely hooked. Uh uh so could you share a little bit? I think you've got a little bit you can yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

I'm gonna read with a lot of these and this one, I'm gonna read the opening just because yeah, that's the thing that grabbed me for these books always. You know, the opening is that I don't I can't think of a single book I've read where the opening doesn't just cook me in straight away, so it's always good to start from there. And plus, everybody knows where you are, and it's not my book, so I can't explain where it's so well the way the characters are meant to be, and things like that. So, yeah, this is page one. It's a new elevator freshly pressed to the rails, and it's not built to fall this fast. She doesn't know what to do with her eyes. The front door of the building is too scarred and gouged to look at, and the street behind her is improbably empty, as if the city had been evacuated, and she's the only one who didn't hear about it. There is always the game at moments like this to distract her. She opens her lever field binder and props it on her chest. The game gets harder the farther back she goes. Most of the inspectors from the last decade or so are still with the guild and are easy to identify. LMT, MG, BP, JW. So far, she doesn't particularly like the men who preceded her at 125 Walker.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Yeah, she's a fantastic character, isn't she? Yeah. Um and so what what was it about this book that made you think this has to be part of my five?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Uh just the impact it had on me as as a uh I think I'd written two novels, I think, or at least I was it yeah, midway through my second novel at the time when I found it. And what what was happening to me at that time in my career was that I'd I'd always thought that I wasn't gonna do the same thing all the way through my career. I'd already come to that assumption, but I had no idea how to go about it. And I didn't know what I would do. It was different, but I knew I wanted to write different books and I didn't want to stay in one register the whole time. And then I encountered uh Rupert Thompson, The Insult from a friend. He he gave me that book, and that blew me right out of the water. I was just like, oh my god, wow, this is I love this kind of stuff. And that's when I started thinking about okay, what if I was to introduce a kind of surrealism into our daily lives? So the same characters that were in the scholar society within, you know, those kind of inner city black working class characters, British working class characters, but introduced surrealism into their world, what would that look like? So I'd always been a roll doll fan, I'd always loved Tales of the Unexpected Kiss Kiss. So I was really intrigued by this kind of thing. I like sci-fi, I love Tolkien. So I was like, you know, like I know that's more fantasy, but just that these elements, you know, these elements of in in this world in any way, what would that look like? And I encountered Rupert Thompson, and then I read Close and Whitehead, where it was like, oh, there's someone who's black who's doing this, you know, who's playing around with these things and kind of coming at the whole idea of who we are from left field. And I think that was the thing that grabbed me at first. And then, of course, there's the writing. The writing was just so so brilliant, and you can see even now when I look at it, I'm like, oh yeah, there's where now I do those things like that. The oh the opening sentence, one opening sentence. That's where it comes from. I didn't actually realize until I just opened it up now and had a look, oh yeah, no, that's that. And I have read it three or four times since I first read it.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Yeah, I I can imagine it would be a rereader because yeah, there's a lot in there, isn't it? It's it's it's relatively straightforward to read, but there's a lot behind, like you say, there's there's there's you know um a lot going on behind the the kind of story itself, and and it just it feels it feels kind of timeless in a strange way, although it must be set at a time. I don't know what's the Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

He never he's never specific about what time it is, but it feels both old and new at the same time, which is really strange. I don't know how he's managed to achieve that, but it feels like yeah, it could be set in the past and it could be set right now, and it could be in the future almost as well. I mean, he's not specific about anything, yeah, completely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

I I wondered the bits of it that I I heard. I was like, because I recently read um Skyfull of Elephants.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Um, and I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. It felt like they were connected, so I'm kind of intrigued that you're basically saying, you know, that there's this um that you know that the sort of like setting it in a real world, but kind of creating this fantasy, and then this whole idea of the kind of mechanical nature of it, you know, it's a it's a it's a technological thing, even though obviously there's uh um I'm uh so did this sort of start with your short stories, do you think the in inspirations kind of to move into that kind of different yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I think it did. I think I started with short stories just because I'd only just started writing short stories around the time of society within. I'd never thought about them really before. I'd always thought novel, novel, novel. And then I just started writing short stories. Um, I say in my book of essays actually, but like as a way to kind of work in between writing a novel. And um yeah, but then I started getting really intrigued by the form and and using it as a way to just try out styles, so try out voices, try out different ways of writing, which then started to sneak its way into into my um into my uh novel writing. And uh I read uh Henry Dumas uh Ark of Bones, which is another big inspiration, and then I discovered this was after you know reading Colson Whitehead, and then I discovered that you know, yeah, of course, people have been doing this from from from way back. And uh Ishmael Reed, of course, you know, playing with surrealism. I mean, he's he's the I think the big granddaddy of of surrealist African-American writing, I think. But also, you know, of course, Percival Everett, and I stumbled up on across him, and that was just like, oh wow. So then, yeah, there's this I I discovered this branch or this offshoot, you know, alternative um uh African diaspora writing, you know, the palm wide wine drink drunkard, drinker, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and yeah, just yeah, all these things that were going on like uh as an offshoot or or just another branch of what was considered, you know, traditional, yeah, or historical even.

unknown 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Yeah. Um I've really enjoyed that. Um, you know, the uh trilogy by Tade Thompson, the Rosewater trilogy. I've really enjoyed that as well. Um although obviously that's sort of um set in Nigeria, but um, it's all part of the same thing to me.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, yeah. Because it's this like alternative African diaspora universes or worlds, or you know, different ways of looking at things. I haven't read the whole trilogy trilogy, but I've read I've read the first book, and it's yeah, it blew me away. Yeah, really good book.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Yeah, it's exciting. And I mean, of course, you then have ended up doing something. I mean, a river called Time is so uh it kind of blew me away, actually, just just like the amount of thought that went into creating that world. I don't know how you did it. Yeah, go on, say a bit more about the book because I it would be interesting to hear you describe it. I think you do a better job than me.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah, well, yeah, it's it's basically to kind of make it into the short form version is uh the river call time is set in a parallel world where slavery and colonization didn't happen. So because it didn't happen, African cosmology has be begun become the dominant religion. So that's the that's the backdrop and the setting of of our river called time. And I won't say too much about what happens within that because I like it to be a surprise, to be honest. But uh yeah, so it's it what's odd about all of this is that before I'd read the intuitionist at that stage when I had the idea for River Court Time, which was like you know, uh just after the scholar, I I didn't know you could do this stuff. So I had the idea before I knew I had the kind of like the templates or the the the you know the um the other examples of how you might go about it, you know. So I suppose when I found the issue intuitionist, which wasn't that long afterwards, uh I remember I was living on North Pole Road. I say this in the afterward of Rival Time, I was living on North Pole Road in West London, and then I got a hostel in Labra Grove. At first, I was living in a room upstairs, and then I got a bigger room downstairs, and I remember that's when I found this on the on the um it was sent to me, and it was on a pile of books that had been sent to me. And then I also got sent John Henry Days as well, a proof of John Henry Days, which is Colson's second book, second novel, which is really, really just like abstract, you know. Um, and yeah, but both of those things really grabbed me and just like made me think, okay, well, I don't want to do it like that. It's not to say that I was going to do it like that, but you can do it. You can do it, it can be done. And I had to find my own pathway as to how to do it. But but yeah, I so yeah, with River, I I I was just at that stage when I encountered the intuitionist and when I encountered John Henry Days, I was still trying to work it out and piece it together. Yeah, certain things hadn't like I didn't know at that time, I think that slavery and colonization hadn't happened in that world. I hadn't come to that point yet at that time. But I was just trying to be, I had bits and pieces of the story. Like I wanted it to be about astral projection, and I wanted it to be um I wanted I had the arc, you know, which is is this is a huge um indoor city that had been built where all the rich had gone to live because outside that was just pollution and crime and devastation. So the what they lived in inner city London, a parallel version of inner city London, but it was actually inner city, it was it was a huge building, basically, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

That's amazing. I mean, I'm not surprised that the idea took a long time to kind of like build, but it's exciting that you had that idea because I think that you know, that long ago, if you see what I mean, I think you know, people are always asking writers how do you come up with ideas? Um, and it's an you know, sometimes you can have an idea and it just takes a while to actually build into something. Yeah, um but I think did you um I presumably you also did a lot of reading, thinking about reading lists. You must have done a lot of reading for that.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Times tons, yeah. Yeah, reloads of I put I put a couple, well just the non-fiction reading list I put in the back of the book as well, just saying, yeah, these are the these are the things that I these this is the research that I did. But then on top of that, there was obviously a fiction list, you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:36

So um you're never tempted to share your uh your fiction list as well as your no, I would share that, I would share away.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, I mean definitely Arc of Bones was was in that list. Um definitely the Rosewater. It's the first book in the Rosewater trilogy, it is Rosewater, right? Yeah, it's called Rosewater.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

I think the trilogy might be called something else, actually.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I read that. Yeah, that was uh that massively uh helpful. Um I'd have to go through everything that I was reading at the time, but I was reading a lot of um you know African futurism, uh Afro futurism, but also Afro Surrealism or African Surrealism as well. And I'll just draw in from all of it, basically. Yeah, and also just like you know, books that are considered regular books, you know, also that, like, you know, like I said, and we'll talk about this later, but um Edith O'Brien sneaked in there, you know, and really helped me with my African futurist vision, you know, just like that weirdly enough. So it was it was that's definitely part of my reading list with regard to that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

Yeah, I think that's the wonder of books, isn't it? Um, is that sometimes books that you you might not overtly seem like a direct inspiration can in fact be really powerful when you're trying to think about how you create your own worlds. Um oh, thanks for that. So, what about book number two? Do you want to tell us about that? Horsewater by Sarah Hall.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

So, Horeswater by Sarah Hall. Uh Sarah doesn't know my friends don't know that I'm doing this. Yeah, yeah, uh, maybe she gets to hear it. But just um, yeah, just what a fantastic, amazing book. Um I I came to it because we met uh Avon. We were I was a guest reader at Navon and she was teaching there, and uh we just uh yeah had a really nice conversation, we went for a nice long walk, and yeah, just just yeah, it was really it was really amazing just to meet her and talk to her. I didn't know anything about her writing, and then after we've met, I went away and kind of did a little bit of research and found this and read it, and just again, just like just wow, what an amazing writer, so immersive, uh, so poetic. Um, and and I think one of the biggest inspirations for me in this book, which I then brought into River as well. This really helped me with River. This is another one of those books I would put in the River inspirational list, is is just taking my time and uh and and and kind of like uh just immersing yourself in description, you know, and just uh yeah, not not wanting to, yeah, everyone wants a story. Oh, yeah, have to be pacey, it has to hold my attention and stuff. And actually, I'm a kind of reader where I'm like, you can really take your time with me. I really don't mind if it's just rich and it's uh I feel like I'm living in the world with the characters. And I think I wouldn't say she was the first person that I I I saw do that, but she was the one that had a really big impact on me in terms of like me being able to write that way. I'd say the first person was Tolkien, you know, Lord of the Rings, where everyone was saying, Oh, too much description is really boring, not for me. Oh, it's like, oh, this is so good, I can really see everything, you know, and I want to feel that way. So I tried to do that similar thing in in River.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

Yeah, I think I mean it's a whole new world to describe, right? So you kind of need that, you need to spend your time. Um, and I think given given the amount of what we live with now, the effects of empire, colonialism, all of that, to to kind of unpick all of that and then reimagine, that's a really big task, you know. So like I think I think we need to be able to see that. Um, and I think you do such a wonderful job of that. Um, so yeah, this this horsewater is it's set in northern England, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Um yes, yes, it's uh yeah, it's it says here the old northern county of Westmoreland, and it's 1936. And if um right, they're gonna build a new reservoir, which means that their their village will end up underwater. Uh so this man's come to the village to propose this to help it to happen, and everyone, of course, is outraged, but he's actually a really nice guy as well. So they're kind of torn because he's such a nice guy, but they're all they should be against him, but they find themselves not against him. And the main character, God, oh we look at her name. I don't say it on the back, I can't remember her name, but the main protagonist, um, she knows she's meant to be against him, and she's really angry with him at first, and then she gets to know him, and eventually they fall in love. So then it's this conflict of like, but I've fallen in love with this guy who's gonna like ruin my village, and you know, my my dad's gonna be so angry, and you know, yeah, it's my father, and everyone's gonna be angry, and but it's just a really beautifully told story, yeah. Just really simple simple but rich.

SPEAKER_03 21:55

Yeah, I used to live near um Rutland Water, and there's a there's

SPEAKER_01 22:00

whole there's a whole town under that reservoir and I just find the idea of like something that's been abandoned in that way but still exists I don't know I find that whole concept quite enticing yeah well she opens with that right she opens with with with the idea that yeah that the the waters are coming yeah but but the father is is going to retrieve something from the house before he you know he goes completely under the water and he knows that that's going to happen he knows that's coming and um it actually ends and I think I could be really wrong about this so please please no one come for me if you hear this later say that was completely wrong but I think it's she's talking about the late district I think right she like she talking about that region or area I'm not entirely sure but yeah it that also kind of like blew my mind a bit that that I wasn't always there I didn't know you know I mean and yeah it's it's a it's uh again it's not I think offshoot is too light to put it but it's I think it's connected in a way to I don't know oppression empire imperialism but just in a slightly different way I mean we're well aware in the African diaspora but before they came to us they were doing it in in in their own country you know I mean and so yeah I think that that it's this idea of what was happening to the working class even though this is way after slavery and stuff like that but still just the this decimation of the working class that that we still see today and you know can continued into the 1980s I think it's really yeah we can see parallels in that and an affinity in that as well yeah yeah I think that idea of of infrastructure um and technology requiring displacement and you know um devastation is definitely something yeah that that that I mean I've not read the book but that sounds like they definitely must share that.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Shall I shall I read the opening bit so listeners can get a little um taster. Okay so this is from the very opening of Utta by Sarah Hall. The woman on the bed was screaming bold blue murder and Jesus bastard Christ curses formed like saliva in her mouth and she spat them out onto the tangled sheets of the bed a bed which had once belonged to her grandmother and in which her own mother had been born. The cotton under her hot body was saturated with her sweat and with her swearing. The woman's body was making colours that her husband had never seen before colours he did not know a human being could make soft orange on her like human blood should never be and white and a precise burgundy. Samuel Lightburn watched his wife struggling as internal shapes moved through her body saw her muscles damaging themselves as she struggled Jesus bastard Christ the woman screamed and slowly she came apart he could not stand it.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Ella Ella gosh it's really powerful and I'm sorry I don't have a northern accent because I think that would add something to it really add something to it wow um yeah so and and have have you then I mean is this your favorite of her books would you say this is you've obviously picked this one uh it's hard to pick a favorite to be honest I have to say uh yes and no I would say is there's there's another one that I really really love uh and also helped in a slightly different way the Carl Hulen army don't know if that's how you pronounce it but uh yeah I really yeah that really really speaks to me and it's kind of like uh again it's like really really really grounded speculative fiction so so again I would put that on on on that bookshelf that hypothetical kind of like um bookshelf for River as well um but yeah yeah so so no and I love her short stories uh you know I love her short story collections so it it's difficult for me to even I like the I love the electric Michelangelo yeah it's like it's hard it's difficult I think for me you know the one that is saying with the intuitionist and that's why uh there there's a there's a few not all I suppose but yeah there's a couple of of of debut novels because it's like the first time someone grabs me it's like it's really really memorable the first time you you you got hit with that oh my god this voice you know and then and that always stays with you and and and and leaves something in you I think or in me at least you know so yeah yeah I think it's that really it's just because I first encountered her and I've taught it uh and on a number of occasions I've brought it into the classroom and I think people are always just like it's like yeah incredible stuff so yeah and when you teach it what what kind of what what do you focus on just just you know well building uh language characterization uh restraint I think all of those things really um tell me more about restraint I'm fascinated by that you mean like what you don't say as much as what you say yes exactly what you don't say as much as what you say and this this thing it's like with with with science fiction uh I think one of my pet hates in science fiction is this thing where you have then you explain the world you know and uh I also think our Hunan army is really good in that sense because Sarah does it but she does it in a really interesting way she finds a way that okay I know I need to tell you the world so I'm gonna find a uh a mechanism or device with which to tell you and I'm gonna be keep it short and staffy and then I'm gonna keep it moving. Whereas with with Horswater uh I mean I think she maybe there's because you need some telling sometimes you know you can't just like show show show all the time there needs to be some telling but it's how you do the telling that's really interesting and I think what she does with this book or what she showed me with this book was just how to kind of really really show us the world and then kind of thread through with this with this telling so you just feel like you're there with them rather than being told oh this is how these people behave and this is who they are because they are you know the kind of yeah very traditional storytelling model.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

So yeah that's the restraint as well that I think is really important that restraint to just like just just just like look if the reader might not get it that's okay like like most people the people who are supposed to will I think you know and I think you've just got to have that confidence so it's the restraint in that sense and confident enough not to just blab everything and be like can you feel my hand I'm holding your hand I'm showing you this thing you know yeah yeah no I mean I'm just thinking actually when you were saying that it made me think of Buck the story from Cosmogramma where you're just kind of you're complete in a completely different alien world right but uh and you I don't know how to say the word but you're like Temondry lined the horizon as he walked onto the front porch bringing distant thunder a cloud of dust and we're just thrown straight into this totally different place. Um we've got all these words for like different kinds of things but in a way you don't explain them and but by the end of the story we're like I feel like we've been kind of like yeah just taken into a completely different world but you haven't done all of that and this is how this looks and this is how this looks and in fact when one of your main characters sleeps through a lot of like this like amazing like city and he's like well he doesn't actually see a lot of it because he keeps falling asleep and suddenly he's like this structure that's been partially built by having passed the earth through these creatures. So they're on this alien planet and it's yeah filled with insect like creatures but all of this is very slowly just we learn it just by being with the people and how they interact with each other.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah I'm a I'm a great believer in in that kind of thing just like being with the characters and seeing the world with their characters' eyes and not saying too much because you know that's what we do when we're in this world we don't explain our world to readers because we all live in our world and I want you to feel what the characters feel in and if it even if it's a speculative world or a slightly surreal world they live in it so I don't want them to speak to me like they're an outsider. That for me when I'm reading if I see people doing that it jerks me out of the story. Who are you talking to?

SPEAKER_03 31:13

You know who are you telling this to I mean it's interesting because you write you write TV and film scripts as well don't you and theatre and I mean you're just like a an all over everything when it comes to writing um not poetry okay terrible not poetry all right that sounds to me like someone who probably could write good poetry but just feel scared of it. I feel scared of poetry. But um yeah I just you know like sometimes you watch those TV shows and someone describes something and you know that they're just saying it for the audience and not it's not something that they would say to like the person that they work with.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

And you just feel that sink you know that kind of sense of like oh God yeah yeah yeah because you're just out of it you're out you're not in it anymore and I do I really resist that and yeah again it's just that that restraint is to kind of to keep you in the world to keep you going to not be like hey we're in this world and to kind of be on the other side of it you know to to write from the minute we start you should be there with them and you shouldn't really let them go until you they come out on the other side you know it should really like immersion is the is the word I keep coming back to because that's what it should feel like you're under the whole way you know do you think that the speculative world is quite appealing when you want to write about sort of like um politics class race all of those things do you think it's a good sphere to to do that because you're able to kind of you know be more allegorical be less pointed maybe although it's often quite obvious when you read some people yeah I mean I think I think for me it's not so much that I think it's just that I can really push to the limits of my imagination and I think that's what I felt was really free and I don't think I mean I think feel like if I'm writing a story set in this world I I'm just as political and I I feel like pushing it politically even if I'm not you know not not big P political but just underneath it all again there's that that threat that thematic thread but I feel like um it's just the the boundless things you can do with speculative fiction with like surrealism you know just there's no it's not there's no rules of course there's plenty of rules and stuff but it just feels like there's less rules you know and I can I can come at things again from that left field alternative angle and I think for to be honest with you particularly with black British writing and our traditions it feels like a little bit of uncharted territory which is appealing to me. Yeah and so yeah if I'm gonna do something that's set in in in Britain and set in reality I'm gonna be going somewhere where people haven't gone before you know and then there's obviously more scope to do that in in the speculative realm than there is I mean there's plenty of so many stories that haven't been told in reality as well I'm not I'm not trying to say that they've all been told but just like yeah there's there's slightly less in the spec in the speculative realm.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

But in a way you're always telling those real stories aren't you you're just putting them in slightly different places.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Exactly I mean that's how I feel yeah they're just like they they're they're real in a sense you know and yeah I I I want to really really play with that moving forward you know it's just like okay so this is this is the real story but but sometimes when does it slip over and you know like what I was doing with River when does does you know River slip into reality I mean and what is reality you know this kind of idea. It's a very good question uh anyway isn't it like what what is reality um and I I think I think that's kind of like well for me a lot of literature is is asking that question um yeah yeah and may and maybe one of the things um I was just thinking to your collection of essays which obviously the next is like a nonfiction thing you've got coming out but um in that you talk about silence and the stories that need to be told um but that aren't always easy to tell um and yeah I wondered whether you know you're talking about kind of talking about real life and finding different places to put them um and how those two things come together for you do you think there's a way in which you've you've gone down one avenue as a way to explore how you write about that kind of silence of sort of working class black British experiences I don't know what do you what's your and you when you say gone down an avenue can you can you explain more like I mean more being more speculative as you as you kind of yeah yeah yeah yeah it was just it was a different pathway is like again like if you you know Colson's talking about race that he's using this you know these elevator inspectors to do that like yeah which how can I come from completely left field but be talking about this thing that you know we're also obviously in constant conversation with which is you know being a black person in this world you know and yeah and how does that collide with like you know uh history and class and all of these things that are really pertinent and and happening and yeah yeah and what um and what happens when you mix those things up what do you what do you get out of it you know so the whole thing is just a huge experiment to be honest you know like that's how I feel like I'm just experimenting all the time I'm just trying to see okay if you put that with that then how does it come out you know but at the core of it uh recognizing okay so so yeah this is the DNA of it it's always coming from this place you know which is you know I'm a man and I'm I'm I'm I'm working class I can still consider myself working class you know I'm black British um you know Caribbean you know just like uh yeah yeah what what what does that what does that alchemy produce so like in my screen writing for example I've got into a lot of like period writing uh but but obviously not period in the sense that you know everybody would you know it would spring to mind when people think about periods uh I've written about you know Jamaica in the 1930s you know um and even Jamaica in the 1980s you know um which was an adaptation but still you know just getting into that is like a it's the same thing but slightly different you know so yeah just I don't know I again going back to what you said earlier or what we we were talking about earlier I don't feel like I don't feel like specul writing speculative fiction is more different if that's the thing that you could say you know it's not more different in that sense it's just that uh I can exercise a different part of my brain a different muscle and that's great for doing that but I'm equally excited about exercising the historical part of my brain or I would do like all the rom com you know I mean part of my brain I'd like to exercise that part of my brain you know it's not that I'm just like oh no all these other things I can't touch because I'm doing this over here.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

It's like I want to go in all those places you know yeah I love that little little advert there let's uh you know let's let's get you signed up for a rom com. I'd watch it I'm up for it.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I've got an idea.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

Okay, cool. Yeah yeah um yeah I think I was particularly like because um you gave me I was lucky enough to have a little sneak peek and um from one of your essays and I think one of the things you said that really did move me was this idea of you know you've you came across this kind of slogan um by street art utopia on X uh which dates it should not have to happen to you for it to matter to you which is all something that like we all kind of like technically sort of agree with. And then you know you say this seems like a definitive explanation of what literature and drama does and is another version of fiction breeds empathy mantra the question I come up against time and again is breeds empathy for whom the resanding repetitive answer not us. And that to me was like a very powerful passage because I feel um the empathy gets talked about a lot when it comes to fiction and empathy is all well and good right obviously we want to feel empathic towards others but there is there is a like I mean I suppose this is all about the gatekeeping of like publishing to some extent isn't it um but there's also that feeling around well well empathy is also well and good but you can sit there and cry or feel bad or whatever but but then what?

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Yeah yeah oh definitely I mean empathy has to become action but I think for a lot of us right now I mean we would we would take the empathy yeah okay I mean because I mean yeah it's just not even that isn't happening you know and there's that that that um I don't know if it's a stat or a report that was written you know just after Black Lives Matter you know when you know when Black Lives Matter happened and people ordered all those books from the bookstores and stuff and then they just basically didn't come to get them or they returned them you know and that is quite when you think about it when we talk about fiction breeze empathy or non-fiction breeze empathy or reading about other people it's all about putting yourself in other people's shoes then I'm like uh no it's not people refuse to do it they say no I don't want to know that I don't want to do that I don't want to read that you know uh you know I've watched people in a bookstore pick up my book and turn it over and see there's a black person on the cover and then just put it back then not read the blurb not just put it back you know yeah so I think um yeah just this idea about literature being about getting into the the the the the shoes of other characters I just I refute you know I think it's it's a more about it has become about seeing yourself represented in a way and um yeah I don't think that's good for art or literature or anything really life.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Yeah yeah no I I really agree with that I think if you only see yourself and in a strange way that's social media hasn't really helped that I think because we see we get fed what we've already looked at do you know what I mean there's it's hard to find something that's not what we would already be looking for. It's like and actually what you need I think um forget as human beings but maybe also as just as as artists is you need you need to find things that surprise you you need to be shocked by things you need to be um you know challenged by things or or or read about different places different decisions you know that people make in different situations um yeah yeah I mean I think I think that that's always happened.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

I don't I I know yeah well I I think that yeah I think social media has contributed to something that was already there in the first place and if we had like if if if we were behaving empathetically uh then our algorithms would reflect that I think I mean that's how they work right yeah yeah no that's like a very very good response to that um we weren't doing it in the first place you know and way before the internet when I was you know a young writer looking around for um you know people who could I could read who would reflect my experience I couldn't find them you know and there's a reason why I couldn't find them you know we talk about gatekeeping and whatever and things have got marginally better but they've also got a little bit worse and I don't didn't want to just read about my experience I wanted to read widely so I did want to read about my experience of course but I also um one of the books that didn't make it onto this list is a Norwegian writer and I can't remember their name but they wrote a book called The Unseen it's upstairs in my bookshelf I've got a I've got a shelf on my um upstairs in my room which is my favorite books you know what's what is on there and stuff the intuitionist and most of these books came from that shelf but but it's it's called the unseen and it was a Norwegian writer, and I absolutely love that book. And I, you know, just um yeah, I'll find it. It's gone from my head right now who the who the author was, but it's just a beautiful, beautiful book. And when I first first got into reading in a big way, I was reading Banana Yoshimoto, and yeah, that yeah, and just like everybody I could get my hands on from everywhere because I really want to read the world. But if we're gonna say we're gonna we we want to read the world, we should really be doing that, and should be we should be reading everybody. And I just don't, yeah, that's not reflected in the bookstores, and that's not reflected in the you know in in people's reading habits and things like that. And I just think we we've got to be able to break out of that if we can, but also it's a it's partly it's partly people, but it's also marketplace and one of those other things, you know.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Yeah. Well, you're giving us a list of new things to read, so you're you're helping. You're on your way. Um I think was it Roy Jacobson?

SPEAKER_01 45:04

That's right, Roy Jacobson.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

Yeah. Um brilliant. That's another one. That's another one for us.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful book.

unknown 45:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:12

I love the idea of having a bookshelf with all your favorites on. Um yeah, that's that's quite tempting. I'll think about that. Uh so um let's move on to your next book, which is Lush Life by Richard Price. Um, tell us a bit about this book.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Well, I mean, by the time I came around to this book, slightly different from the others, I'd read a lot of Richard Price by that stage. Uh, I first came across him when my writing mentor, Barney Platz-Mills, uh, was taking me through my paces. I was learning the trade, so to speak, the art, the craft. And I was writing The Scholar, and he gave me clockers. And he said, Well, you gotta read this. If you're writing that, you've got to read this. And again, it was just like completely blown away. Oh, what an amazing, fantastic book. Um, then usually for me, when I read someone like that who does that to me, same with all of these authors that I've discussed so far. I'm going back into the back catalogue, I'm reading everything that they've got, went right back to the Wanderers 1970 something that came out. I'm reading that book and just seeing some parallels between him as a person and me, even though he was um, you know, a white uh New Yorker, working class New Yorker from the Bronx, you know, just um yeah, what he was doing with language, what he was doing with his own experiences, and you know, and and him becoming from this community, like working class community, and then becoming a writer. And then, yeah, I just read you know the Samaritan and just like so many books. He became a screenwriter for a while, you know, he then came, went into that, stopped writing novels for a while, and then came back to novels again. I just read Lazarus Man, his latest novel, just like one of the best novels I've read in in recent times, man. He's just so consistent and so good. And then you talk about what we were saying before, empathy for characters. This guy's just got it in spades, man. I mean, there's I don't know how he manages it because there's these people doing really, really terrible bad things, but there are no bad people in his book. You know what I mean? He just never he they they've they've got their reason and they're they're whole 360-degree human beings, and yeah, that was the that one of many lessons that I learned from Richard Price was just that thing of like treat your characters kindly, you know, don't villainize your characters, even if they're the villain, they don't see themselves in that way, they think that they're a hero, you know. So, how do you show that aspect of them that makes them think, oh, I'm doing the right thing because even if they're wrong, you know? So, yeah, just a great, fantastic writer, amazing writer. Oh, and he wrote on the wire as well. I mean, it's just this was the duel as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

Um, do you want to give us a little bit of the book?

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Yes, I couldn't find the bit I really wanted to read, which was uh a bit where a father uh he's it's about this this kid that gets murdered inadvertently and uh in a botch robbery, and uh there's a scene where the father goes to the mall to identify his son, which was just so heartbreaking and so just so well written. And but I was looking, looking, looking, I couldn't find it. So I'm just gonna get and read the opening and uh yeah, see how far we can get. Um so it starts quality of life, 11 p.m. The quality of life task force, four sweatshirts in a bogus taxi set up on the corner of Clinton Street alongside the Williamsburg Bridge off ramp to profile the incoming salmon run, their mantra, dope guns overtime, their motto, everyone's got something to lose. Dead tonight. The four car stops so far this evening have been washouts. Three municipal municipals, a postal inspector, a transit clerk, and a garbage man. All city employees off limits, and one guy who did have a six-inch blade under his seat, but no it's been released. A station wagon coming off the bridge pulls abreast of them at the DeLancey streetlight. The driver, a tall, grey, long-nosed man sporting a tweed jacket and a cuffney cap. The quiet man, Gio Hagen murmurs, that'll do pig shark hat. And there's a bit that uh I wanted to read but but I couldn't, which is what I teach in in my classes when I look at this opening, which is um just a description of um them their their um their patrol basically. But um, I mean have I got space for a few more words? Like read a few more words.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

I I think if it's from a different passage, I think we're fine.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

Okay, great. So I'm just gonna read read just this bit because I use this all the time. And yeah, like I said, it's just describing the way that they're driving around the blocks in New York looking for people. Restless, they finally pull out to honeycomb the narrow streets for the hour of endless tight right turns, palatal joint, jazz joint, gyro joint corner, schoolyard, crapery, realta, corner, tenement, tenement, tenement museum corner, pink pony, blind tiger, muffin boutique corner, sex shop, tea shop, synagogue corner, boulingerie, bar, hat boutique corner, glazier, galeteria, matzo shop corner, and it just goes on like that. It's just like wow.

SPEAKER_03 50:51

It's very cool because I can see how the neighborhood's changing, just literally through the description of it.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

It goes on, that's halfway through the paragraph, yeah. But amazing, and again, it's that thing of that putting you in the world without saying what's going on and what's happening. He just shows you just through that that drive, you know.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Yeah, and there is as as you were saying earlier, real restraint there. Like there's really hot, there's not, it's not overdone in any way, but you can really visualize it.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Yeah, yeah, he's a brilliant writer, brilliant writer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

And so why do you I mean, is you pick this because you love his writing, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

He he he he is a guy that writes really gritty working class inner city stuff, but brings such poetry to it, you know. He just he's just super poetic, and it's not also he's very, very again, this is right, like complete opposite of what I was talking about with say like Sarah or something. He's mega pared down. You know, I mean it's the bare bones. So you look at something like gospel according to Kane, or even like you know, my earlier book, Scholar Society within, yeah, I'm kind of like working in that pocket. That's what I was into at those at those times, and that's uh that's something I like to pull out of the bag. I like to do the ribbical time, that's fancy stuff too. But sometimes I like to go really, really just like sharp and pared down, you know, and he's really good at that, just minimal uh language. But again, like I said, poetry is just like every word is precise and it it kind of is is active, you know, it's it's doing something. And again, his empathy for character, uh just his I think just his way about. I always thought for me, when I was a kid, I used to ride around my neighborhood, my ends, and uh I would just take pictures and I would take pictures of council estates. Even me like 13, 14, I had all these pictures up on my wall of just like council estate, buyer exit, all these things, and I had no idea why I was doing this. I didn't know why. I was taking pictures, and then later when I wrote The Scholar, I was just like, oh wow, man, I was doing that when I was young, you know. I mean, I was really that it was happening then, and uh he he the way he writes is is it's almost like those photos, you know. I can just see everything, and it's what I I want to emulate in my writing if I you know when I go back to writing about this stuff, just like that's what I was saying, actually, capturing the beauty in those places, which really looks messed up and just dirty and all that stuff, but but some kind of strange beauty in that, you know. Um Sarah Gavron, uh she did the movie Brick Lane, the adaptation of Brick Lane.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

And she really focused in a lot of that movie on the um on the cherry blossoms in the council estate, you know. And I had a cherry blossom tree right outside my house when I was growing up. And uh I always thought I just really loved that, you know, the the fact that that that was there in my really I lived near the A40 West Way, so we had the A40 Westway and we had cherry blossom trees. And I said to her, I got to meet her and say to her, like, I never forget the way that you actually show the cherry blossoms on the estate, you know, and she's like, Wow, I can't believe you remembered that. Yeah, it really stuck out to me because that's how I see it. I see it, cherry blossoms and and the subway concrete.

unknown 54:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

Well, I mean, I think originally, even that kind of like brutalism that a lot of that those structures get kind of like described under, was originally built with a lot of like positive intention. And you know, they weren't meant to be seen to be ugly. Um I wonder whether some of it is the way that we've we've kind of like put different ideas over the top of what we see, which is, I guess, the thing that writing can do, right? It can strip away some of that. You can see things in a different way all over again.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Yeah, yeah. I went to Hong Kong and uh Hong Kong, I don't know if you know, is full of um what we call council estates. They're everywhere, blocks of flats and um you know, uh playgrounds and all of these things. But when I was there, I was like, these are all pristine. Like people have taken care of them. There's no dirt on the floor, everything it was beautiful. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I mean, people actually just took care of it, yeah, looked after it and it looked really nice.

SPEAKER_03 55:36

Yeah, it's like um oh, what's the one that I'm thinking of that's gone out of my head? The the famous one um in London that's effectively a council estate, but just posh people live there.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

In the Barbican you took it over.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Yes, yes, the barbecue, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:51

I mean, it can be nice.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

And that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

It's really beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:57

Yeah. Um yeah. Uh well, brilliant. That sounds yeah, I'm uh it's it's another one for my list for sure.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Um it's a really good book, really, really good book. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:11

So shall we talk about number four? Um, which is The Street by Anne, we're not sure, Petri, Petri.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

Petri, Petri, yeah, never. I've heard it said so many different ways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Uh, because again, this is New York City. Tell us a bit more about this book and and your reasons for this one.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

Uh so when I was uh a teenager, I think people started to really realize that I read a lot. Like they knew all the time. And so before that, I would just get any book. You know, I mean, like adults would just give me books all the time. Oh, read this, read this. And some of them were really super inappropriate, they were adult books. But it was just like just give him anything he's reading, just give him a book. You know, so I was reading all sorts of stuff, and then when I got to become a teenager, people started to worry about uh my my racial sensibilities. So they began to give me a lot of Baldwin, and you know, like it was that phase, you know what I mean, where you know they were like, Oh, you just gotta read Baldwin or you gotta read Ogre or you've got to read, you know, like Rusty, and you know, like just uh just trying to just be like you've got to read books by people of colour, and um yeah, a lot of that was uh I don't know if she sits in this in this bracket. I don't think she does, but like say Harlem Renaissance kind of in the vein of those books, you know. Uh I don't I think she might have been a part of the first Harlem Renaissance, like the early lot. I feel like you know what, I haven't read this book in so long, and I don't have it right now because it's in stories somewhere. So so I'm not a lot of this is from memory, but I feel like it was taking place in the 1930s and stuff in in in Harlem. So yeah, she would have been before Baldwin, before Mayor Angelou, before Orla Marshall, before that cohort. Um but yeah, yeah, I don't know if she was a part of that, but she was certainly right in that space, you know. And um, so I was getting given these books basically, and I don't know how much adults knew if they knew they were classic books or they were just the books they could get hold of. So uh I was reading Rose of Guy, A Measure of Time, uh which I should not have been reading as a teenager. There's really, really graphic set things in that book. Um yeah, and I was reading me and obviously Mayor Angelou, and so this was one of the books that was there. Uh um read a book called Bet Betsy Brown, which was more like a bit of a teenage kid's book. But yeah, I um um I read this, this came across my my my not my desk, but you know, it was given to me. So, you know, just I open it up and whatever. I'm from again the opening uh page, just like what I was in. I was in. So this book is really, really instrumental in the writing of the scholar. I've said it many, many, many times. Okay, but but when I wrote The Scholar, I was so I'd read this book like 20 times, you know, and um it just grabbed me. It's a tragedy, and I and I think it really influenced the fact that I wanted the scholar to be a tragedy as well. And it's about this woman who moves to Harlem, she's coming from the south, she moved to Harlem with her son to get away from her husband. I can't remember what had happened between her and her husband, but they split up. She moves to this place to try and make it in the world. She wants to be a singer, she wants to be a jazz singer, and she's really beautiful. And all these different guys are just like, you know, there's the hustler that wants to, you know, he wants to have her, and there's the janitor who works in the in the apartment that she lives in that wants to have her. And I think there's a white guy in it somewhere who's who's represents wealth and everything, and he can make her singing career, you know what I mean? He can pay for this and that and the other, and they're all vying for her, and she doesn't want any of them, but he's like, How do I make my way as a single woman in this place? And she moves to this street in Harlem, and and yeah, it's a tragedy. I won't say what happens, but yeah. And um, there's one particular scene again. If I had the book hover the boy, but there's one particular scene in the book to do with her son, because when the janitor realizes that she's not gonna, she's not gonna have anything to do with him, he's just a lowly janitor, and she's this beautiful woman. He plots his revenge on her because he feels like he's been shunned, but by using her son, and he he he he wants to befriend the son and then mess him up and get him to do illegal stuff that he's gonna then get arrested for and it's gonna ruin her life. So he gets to the son, and there's one particular scene where he will which is the partly the process of him doing that, which I used in the scholar for when Sean decides to make a pivotal decision to do this rather than the right thing. The son does the same thing as well when he sees it by seeing his mum iron uh some some clothes and then burn herself and then get upset and oh, I'm sick of being poor, I'm fed up of being poor. I just I wish I had more money, and that's when he's like, Okay. The son just watches and say, Okay, I'm gonna do what I have to do when he previously said no recently. Yeah, so yeah. So I I I took that, I nicked that. I nicked that completely.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Well, I always tell people you nicked it from uh uh I think you told me earlier, and uh that it was the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

Yeah, I didn't know that when I read it. I didn't know that. I found that out years later, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's such a powerful, really, really brilliant book, and yeah, it's such great writing. And again, like I said, it's that she just put me in that world, man. I can really see it and really felt for the characters, and yeah, yeah. Even the guy who does that, like that there's a you know, we we're with him at some point, and you can see even though it's wrong for him to do it, like you can see where it's coming from, there's a reason for it, and there's something he's messed up as well. The street has messed him up as well, that's why he does it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:29

Yeah. Uh shall I shall I give us a little bit of the opening?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

Thank you, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

Uh so this is uh from the beginning of the street by Anne Petri. There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street. It rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows, and set them flapping back against the windows. And it drove most of the people off the street in the block between 7th and 8th avenues, except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault. It found every scrap of paper along the street, theatre throwaways, announcements of dances and lodge meetings, the heavy waxed paper that loaves of bread had been wrapped in, the thinner waxed paper that had enclosed sandwiches, old envelopes, newspapers. Fingering its way along the curb, the wind set the bits of paper to dancing high in the air, so that a barrage of paper swirled into the faces of the people on the street. It even took time to rush into doorways and areaways and find chicken bones and pork shock bones and push them along the curb.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

Again, yeah, just uh yeah, I can see why it grabbed me. Yeah, it's it's just really sets the scene very, very vividly. Yeah, yeah. But also doesn't very atmospheric. Very atmospheric, but also like like uh like kind of using description as a way to set the stall for what's gonna happen in the story, just that thematic underpinning is right there, you know, like yeah, this wind, you know, this kind of unseen thing that's that just harming people and whipping everything up and whatever that that's gonna happen in the whole book.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Yeah, impeding your progress.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

Yes, exactly. Everyone's hunted over trying to get to where they're going. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

Amazing. Yeah. Oh, well, that's that was uh um it's exciting to to kind of see how how many of these books have had like a really strong influence on what you've created. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

I didn't read the brief properly when you first sent it to me, so I was like, it had to be yeah, first I was doing just the books I like, and then I was like, oh, the books that have influenced me. Yeah, okay. So then I had to reshuffle the few things, you know. Yeah, a couple of years.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

It's a tricky brief, I I I admit it. I I haven't yet asked myself this question, so I'm avoiding that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

Yeah, no, I've very I have very definite um I have I have definite books. I know the books, and I always yeah, I know what what I've I've been influenced by and what I've drawn from, and yeah, I think very clearly it's strange. I don't know if that works that way for everybody, but for me I can really it's quite easy actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:27

Are they there when you're developing the ideas, or do they kind of come to you uh like do you do you consciously sort of think of an idea and think, oh, I'd like to read X, Y, or Z, or is it more that you're thinking of an idea and those books come to mind, or a bit of both, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

Yeah, I think a bit of both. I mean, I tend to read around my my my book. So if I'm doing crime, then like you know, Barney introduced me to Richard Price. So so it was like, okay, so I need to read lots of crime books. If I'm if I'm doing Well, there was no, you know, hate Horsewater didn't have any. I wasn't writing anything like Horeswater, but but I knew again in a craft level, I knew that okay, that's what I want to take from that. So yeah, that's what struck me when I read it. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'd like to do that. At the minute, it's been funny. I wrote an essay on on James Baldwin's influence on me, uh, which is no Baldwin in here, but massive influence, obviously. I mean, so it's just again it's wasn't enough books. But uh, I wrote an essay about that, and I read a lot of Baldwin just a few weeks ago, just reread a lot of Baldwin again. And um then I noticed in James Baldwin that he actually does a lot of telling. He does a lot of telling, especially in the short stories, you know. But everything, everything he tells you, he's such a great orator that who cares if James Baldwin's telling, you know what I mean? So he's gonna tell you in a way that is so beautiful and pretty that you just forget that he's telling you all this stuff. He's not showing, he shows you stuff, but he tells you a lot what's going on in the head and what the story's about and everything. And I was like, hmm. So I'm writing a story now, and I'm like, okay, can I just do a little bit of that? Let me just try it out just to see, have a go and whatever. So I'm doing that, and also I'm trying in dialogue, and I don't, and this is just my own thing, I think, to just not ever do he says, he says, okay, trying to completely cut that out, just not because I don't like it. I mean, Carver does he say she said in such a way all the way through, where it's yeah, it's amazing. But uh, yeah, just what would that be like? Can I pull it off? And I know so you know, just set myself a little uh challenge. Can I go through all the whole story and not do he said she said and what would that be like?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:47

Yeah, I like I like those kinds of challenges, I think. Yeah, you know, and I mean it strikes me hearing you say that, and also your your you're saying about you know making things beautiful and lyrical writing that there is definitely a poet in you, you're just you're just not missing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

I don't know about that, but yes, but I I think it comes out in a different way. Uh I don't know if I if I like in terms of the form that whether I would ever go that way, but I think definitely in like uh what I'm most interested in is how can I uh how can I embed that into prose? Because that's I think that's the thing I'm really really really passionate about uh more than anything else. In terms of my like my own individual voice, uh, which is not the same as say, of course, when I write a script, it's my own individual voice, but then I'm gonna work on it with other people, or when I do theatre, it's gonna be worked on with other people. But when this is you know, books and prose writing is all me, you know. So yeah, when I'm doing that, I can do it to the full extent, and yeah, what does it look like in that, you know?

unknown 1:08:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:53

And do you, I mean, you know, it is such a is such a kind of private world, isn't it? The writing of a of a book in contrast to working in collaboration with other people. Is there a part of that process that you that you enjoy in a different way to working collaboratory c collaboratively?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

Yeah, um yeah, just the just the control, you know, it's just like it's good to have that control, you know, and it's also good not to have that control, you know, sometimes. So when that's when I'm like, oh, I don't want that control. I don't want it all to be me by myself in a room for months on end, you know. I mean, I want to be around people, I want to be social. I like being in writers' rooms and talking stories with other people, and I can't think of something. So you come up with something, or I come up with something and you come up with something better based on what I said. I love all of that, but sometimes you just want to be like, okay, this is all me. You know what I mean? And that's that's prose, that's good, does it for me? Yeah. So I get the best of both worlds, I think, then yeah, yeah, very nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:54

Um, I like it. Uh so we've we've talked a little bit about some of your short stories, and your next choice is uh short story collection, Saints and Sinners by Edith O'Brien. Um, and I'm really glad you've picked some short stories. Oh, Edna, sorry, yes, Edna. Uh so yeah, tell me about this because it's great that you've yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:19

Oh man, what can I say? I mean, I love this collection. Such an amazing collection. Uh is I think I was up for I was long listed for a prize, and I think this won the prize, and and so I read it. I was like, I need to read it. Read it if I ever, and then I read it. God, hey, cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:45

Well, I mean, that's good, right? It's good to have liked what what beat you, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, more than light, it's just been like, okay, well, then of course she won. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, of course, and um, yeah, just just just plunder. I'm like, yeah, this is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And then plunder, uh what the hell, man? Just again, that thing, it's just uh and so I've written two stories where I've tried to do plunder. Uh one is in Cosmogramma, uh, which is control. Control is basically me doing plunder, and um the other I think will probably be in my next collection, which is the the prequel to plunder to to control, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:39

So control is a story that's set. Control is a story that's set when when the far right have taken over England and they're deporting everyone, basically. Enforced deportations of everybody. Oh god, and it's this kid. Yeah, when I wrote it, it was I wrote it at the time when I think uh maybe Farage had gone, um, it tried to um he'd gone up for election and he'd lost, and everyone was laughing about it. So he went up for election, whatever. And I was like, this is not funny. I'm not finding this funny at all. I don't think you should be laughing at this. This is really this has been a consistent nightmare of mine since I was a little kid. This what is going on now? This has always been in my head because I grew up in the 1970s, rarely racist all over England. I was getting into shit all sorry all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

No, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:40

My my dad would be be um, you know, uh followed by police everywhere we went. My mom would have fights with our other parents outside the school because they were calling her the N-word and stuff like that. It was just constant. I was a little kid, so depressed because I was just like, this is just everywhere. And I didn't, you know, I'm a little kid thinking about being black, which is you know, so I'm like, you guys made it about race. We we we don't make it about race, but anyway, um, yeah. So I'd had this thought in my mind all the time, and then uh yeah, I I I wrote control uh at that point in time when it was a bit of a joke, and then a few years later I read it again, and no, well, when I first when I would introduce the story, everyone would be like, Oh, you know, when I said this is about the far right, maybe taking over and deporting everyone, and they would they would everyone would laugh at that. It's like a bit of a joke, and then the next time, maybe two or three years later, no one laughed. Everyone, it was silent, dead silent. Yeah, and so that was control, and then like I said, I wrote, I can't remember, uh, I think The Road to Silver Town is the first story where I do the prequel. Basically, the night it happens, the first night it happened, I wrote, and both of those stories, again, like I said, was just yeah, me being like control a control a little more me. The road to Silvertown, totally like what if I totally try and do Edna? You know what I mean? The way she did it and everything, just do completely copy her. Whereas control was let me do Edna, but do it me a little bit me as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:18

Uh that sounds amazing. Do you want to give us a little bit of plunder?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

One morning we wakened to find there was no border. We have been annexed to the fatherland. Of course, we did not hear of it straight away as we live in the wilds, but a workman who comes to gather wood and fallen boughs told us that soldiers had swarmed the town and occupied the one hotel. He said they drank there, got paralytic, demanded lavish suppers, and terrorized the maids. The townspeople hid, not knowing which to fear most, the rampaging soldiers or their huge dogs that ran loose without muzzles. He said they had a device for examining the underneath of cards, a mirror on wheels to save themselves the inconvenience of stooping. They were lazy bastards.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:01

Should I go on a bit more or you can't you could give us another yeah, go on, give us a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:07

Another paragraph or something?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:08

Yeah, go on.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

The morning we sighted them, the morning we sighted one of them by the broken wall in the back avenue, we had reason to shudder. His camouflage was perfect, green and khaki and brown, the very colours of this mucky landscape. Why they should come to these parts baffled us, and we were sure that very soon they would scoot it. Our mother herded us all into one bedroom, believing we would be safer that way. There would be no danger of one of a strain, and we could keep turns at the watch. As luck would have it, only the week before we had gathered nuts and apples and stored them on wooden trays for the winter. Our mother worried about our cow, said that by not being milked, her poor other would be pierced with pain, said the milk would drip all over the grass. We could have used that cow's milk. Our father was not here. Our father had disappeared long before.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:55

Yeah. Um it's a very powerful story. Um, there's a there's a a store another story that I read recently, and I'm gonna have to search it out. I've no idea where it is. Um, that really you know, I mean, and I guess this is the thing about you know, writing sometimes the writing stays with you, and you can't remember where you read it or who wrote it, and then you feel terrible about that. There's this really wonderful story about um basically a whole culture growing up around waiting to be let into somewhere. So, or out, you're not really sure, but you think you think they're waiting to be kind of let into some kind of place where they'll be freer, but they're just waiting in this long line, and this whole kind of culture of living in the line has developed, and the story is about that waiting to get in, and obviously it's about borders, refugees, all of that, but it was just that whole idea of the whole world becoming that line, yeah, yeah, just waiting in that line, and I think this story is you know, it plays on that same anxiety, doesn't it? Around your whole world somehow being ripped underneath from underneath you and becoming something totally different, just like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:17

Exactly, exactly, yeah. Which is yeah, yeah, the the the eternal fear for for a lot of people, I think, you know. So yeah, I'd like to read that story by the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:28

Yeah, if I can remember what it is, I'll email you and let you know, and I'll put it, I'll put it in the description somewhere when I can remember it.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:34

Yeah, that would be great. But yeah, I think I think the way that the the um Edna O'Brien captures that, and again, it's just like um just really just straight in there, you know, like uh starting late as they call it, but but also just um just not waiting for you to catch up, and you you're gonna there's there's a in hip hop, there's uh a rapper called Lodi Lux, and he's he's a he's a battle rapper. And uh he had this really, really famous battle with this guy where all the you know like Buster Rhines within the audience watching this or whatever, and all these people were watching, and it was kind of like a vendetta battle because they they knew each other very, very well. And he was saying this stuff, he was taking this guy apart with words, just lyrically taking him apart, and every now and then it became his catchphrase he'd say, You go and get this work, you're gonna get this work. Maybe he'd stop, he'd stop, you're gonna get this work, and then he carry out and he just kept saying it all the way through. And I feel like, yeah, Enna, if she was ever in the guise of Lower Dutch, is like you're gonna get this work, you're gonna get it whether you like it or not. This is it, this is the story. I'm gonna tell you this stuff, you're gonna hear it whether you like it. You want to hear it, you don't want to hear it, and I think that's a good way to be as an artist, you know, to be like, yeah, you're gonna get this work. That's it. That's what you're gonna get. Nothing but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:06

Yeah. Uh it's interesting because I think I went to an exhibition a while ago, uh and I was in a yeah, I was in one, I think it was the National Portrait Gallery, actually, and I went into the room um where they've got that amazing artwork memorial for um Grenfell Tower that burnt down, and um, but it has a trigger warning around the outside. And part of me was like, I get why they have the trigger warning, but then another part of me is actually you've exactly what your rapper just said, like you've got your hip-hop guy, you know, you've got to some some things you need to see, some things you you need to see, and yeah, yeah. Um, and I felt this kind of like feeling of you know, if I can always choose to not see, when when do I have when what will I ever will I ever be able to see if I'm able to always turn away? I don't know, it's controversial, I get it. It's a big debate. I'm not kind of like standing on one side or the other, but it's just part of me that feels sometimes, yeah, we we need we need this work. Um yeah, it's a good thing. So we need to keep making it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:23

Yeah, yeah, we need to keep making it, and yeah, we shouldn't, you know, that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be talking about the world, you know, and then and what's going on in the world, and some of that is really, really great and brilliant and beautiful, and some of it is not so beautiful, and we should be able to discuss all of those things, you know. Um, I think it's very important.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:43

Yeah, um, I'm gonna ask you a really horrible question now, which is if you had to pick one, which would it be?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:53

Oh, oh well, if I had to pick one. I don't know if I can. Because it's like asking, it's like almost like taking, it's like, all right, if you had to lose your arm, if you had to lose, yeah, yeah, part of your body, which part of your body would you put which one do you want? You want to leave your arm, your leg, your head, yeah, whatever, your finger.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:21

Um it's the question my daughter asks me, you know, would you go blind or deaf?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:26

And you're like, well Yeah, exactly. Um it's very difficult, I have to say. Um because like like you know, what I would gain from one would be a complete loss of all the others. You know, there's there's like none no one of these books could give me what they all give me together.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:00

I'm not gonna get, you know, um, you know Sarah in Edna or Edna in Sarah or you know yeah, I'm not gonna get those things at all. Um they can't be each other, and that's what I think is the beauty about what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:23

That's a great answer. I'll take that as an answer. You can you can carry them all in your head.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:29

Yeah, thank you. Sorry for for like wimping out on that. I think it's fair enough.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:35

I I mean, you know, choosing five to begin with is pretty tough.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:38

Yeah, that was pretty tough.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:40

Listen, thank you so much uh for coming and talking to me about all of this. And um, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk about your choices, to talk about your writing and the way that you think about making books. And um, I hope everyone will not only just buy all of your back catalogue, but also look out for the Art of Opposition, which is um out in July. So thank you so much for for coming on this. And um, yeah, I look forward to to reading what you make next. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:10

Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:14

You have been listening to the Hypothetical Bookshelf podcast with me, Rebecca Latin Rostro, and my guest, Courtia Newton. Have a look at the bookshop.org hypothetical bookshelf itself. For all the books mentioned today, do buy Courtier's collection of essays, the art of opposition, on hope, resilience, and creative expression beyond the mainstream, uh, which is out for July 2026 with favour and favour. And subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcast to hear the letters. Thank you for listening.