Tender Buttons (tenderbuttonspodcast)
Explore every episode of Tender Buttons
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul 2022 | 019 Jessica Andrews: Milk Teeth Live Special @ Storysmith Books | 00:42:05 | |
In this special episode of Tender Buttons — the last of Season 2 — we share a live conversation between Jessica Andrews and Samantha Walton, recorded at the launch of Jessica's new novel Milk Teeth at Storysmith Books in Bristol. Milk Teeth follows the story of a girl grows up in the north-east of England amid scarcity, precarity and a toxic culture of bodily shame, certain that she must make herself ever smaller to be loved. Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews (Sceptre: 2022) Saltwater by Jessica Andrews (Sceptre 2019) Melissa Febos, Body Work (Manchester University Press: 2022)- and you can listen to our recent episode with Melissa here Samantha Walton Everybody Needs Beauty (Bloomsbury: 2021)- check out our previous episode with Samantha here Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians (Faber: 2016) Andrea Ashworth, Once in a House on Fire (Picador: 2014) Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (Scribner: 2020) | |||
| 03 Mar 2024 | 035 Marianne Brooker: The Politics of Care | 00:50:03 | |
In this episode, we speak to writer Marianne Brooker about her book Intervals. We discuss the politics of care and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care. We talk about the importance of interdependence, and how networks of care link to activism and writing. We think about the right to abundance and life, while considering what it means to die a good death. We chat about intersections of class, gender and disability, and beauty and maximalism as an act of resistance. We imagine writing as reparative magic and consider what it means to write into and with grief, as opposed to pushing against it. We speak about what it means to draw kinship with other writers and thinkers such as Denise Riley, Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson and Lola Olufemi, among others. Marianne Brooker is a writer based in Bristol, where she works for a charity campaigning on climate and social justice. She has a PhD from Birkbeck and a background in arts research and teaching. She won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for Intervals, her first book, which was also longlisted for the inaugral Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024. You can now subscribe to our Patreon for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:
Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work. References Time Lived, Without its Flow by Denise Riley The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe | |||
| 28 Jan 2024 | 034 Sheila Heti: Alphabetical Diaries | 00:45:01 | |
In this episode, we speak to author Sheila Heti about her brilliant new book, Alphabetical Diaries, in which she alphabetizes her diaries over a ten-year period, creating parallels and juxtapositions between past and present versions of the self. We speak about the role of formal constraints in her work and her resistance of linear time, progress and the notion of a complete, continuous narrative of selfhood. We think about rhythm and the materiality of language in relation to associative narrative structure. We chat about Heti's body of work, from How Should a Person Be? to Motherhood and Pure Colour, exploring the myriad ways in which she interrogates time and selfhood through hybrid forms, pushing the boundaries of the novel. Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including Alphabetical Diaries, Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. She is the current Alice Munro Chair of Creativity at Western University in London, Ontario. In 2022, she was the Franke Visiting Fellow at Yale, and an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Religious Studies, teaching Fate and Chance in Art and Experience with Noreen Khawaja. You can now subscribe to our Patreon for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:
Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work. References Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti Pure Colour by Sheila Heti Motherhood by Sheila Heti How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti | |||
| 24 Oct 2021 | 011 Caleb Parkin: On Queer Ecologies | 00:39:42 | |
In this episode, we talk to Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin about taxonomies, ecophrastic poems and the historical exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people from environmental movements and access to nature. We chat about the way our sense of 'nature' is always mediated through culture and the need for irreverence and irony to offset the self-righteousness that can be associated with climate activism. We discuss how queer perspectives can alter the conversation around climate justice and the need for us to sit with uncertainty and unknowingness. Caleb's dazzling, slippery poetry collection - This Fruiting Body - is out now from Nine Arches Press. As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Caleb's book at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons References This Fruiting Body by Caleb Parkin Wasted Rainbow by Caleb Parkin Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise by Jane Hirshfield Our theme music is a sample from Flotation by Ben Vince from his album The Purge. | |||
| 30 May 2022 | 017 Moses McKenzie: On Morality, Religion and Finding Space | 00:39:20 | |
In this episode, we discuss morality, religion and how to find space between conflicting social codes. We discuss the relationship between possibility, choice and criminality and the intersection of class and race in contemporary Bristol. We chat about what it means to write about a place that is not widely represented in fiction and developing a literary voice through hip-hop, grime and the Bible. We explore the potential of the novel to spark political change and the role of artistic responsibility. References An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie Bristol Cable interview with Moses McKenzie | |||
| 27 Dec 2021 | 013 Samantha Walton: On Land Justice, Collective Wellbeing and Nature for Everyone | 00:52:48 | |
In this final episode of 2021 and our first season we chat to poet and academic Samantha Walton about democratising nature and landscape writing; green deprivation and the policing of green spaces and the dangers of individualised neoliberal 'nature cures', as discussed in her recent book Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (Bloomsbury: 2021). We speak about the need to carve out space for grief amongst the climate crisis, how to emasculate mountain literature via Nan Shepherd and the space that poetry allows for articulating ambiguity and discomfort, as found in Samantha's hallucinatory poetic sequence Bad Moon (SPAM Press: 2020). As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Samantha's book at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons References: Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (Bloomsbury:2021) Bad Moon (SPAM Press: 2020) Self-Heal (Boiler-House Press: 2018) The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Canongate) Samantha is also co-editor of Bristol-based small press SAD Press, whose work you can check out here. | |||
| 28 Feb 2022 | 014 Max Porter: Hybrid Forms | 00:58:06 | |
In our first episode of Season Two, we chat to the inimitable Max Porter about pushing the limits of language, the role of art in ritual and collective experience and a search for joy within the mundane. We discuss the relationship between novel and stage, as well as the dichotomies of guilt and shame, care and kindness and humour as a form of resilience in a changing world. We talk about Max's desire to 'capture the pulse of feeling' in his book The Death of Francis Bacon and explore how to reinstate ritual in the ways we relate to landscape and the nonhuman world. We talk about writing as a mode of time travel and mourning as a kind of love. As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Max's work at Storysmith Books. Listen to the episode for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons REFERENCES: Time Lived Without its Flow by Denise Riley Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter | |||
| 26 Jul 2021 | 009 Jenn Ashworth: Presence, Absence and Finding the Right Form | 00:50:34 | |
In this episode, we chat to novelist, memoirist and academic Jenn Ashworth, about her new novel Ghosted (Sceptre: 2021), a brilliant, unconventional blend of crime fiction and horror to find a form that can hold grief, loss and the myriad of ways in which people can go missing. We speak about the complexity and multi-layered dimensions of working class identities, from work to family to notions of belonging, as well as the challenges of writing trauma in both fiction and non-fiction. As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Jenn's books at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons Ghosted by Jenn Ashworth (Sceptre: 2021) Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth (Goldsmiths: 2019) | |||
| 29 Mar 2021 | 005 Kerri ní Dochartaigh: Thin Places | 00:59:55 | |
In this episode we chat to writer Kerri ní Dochartaigh about her new book Thin Places (Canongate) and its powerful weaving of memoir, history, Irish folklore, language and nature writing. We discuss her childhood growing up in Derry amidst the Troubles, the necessity of expanding our kinship with the non-human world and the ways in which a new generation of writers of landscape are blazing open the field. You can find Kerri's book at storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons. As a Tender Buttons listener you can also get 10% discount, listen in for more details on this... Episode References
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| 25 Sep 2023 | 031 Eliza Clark: Violence and Transgression | 00:59:28 | |
In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Eliza Clark about her novel, Penance. We discuss violence and transgression within fiction, and what this can reveal about wider society. We chat about the satirisation of the true crime genre, and the socio-political context which surrounds violent acts. We examine the role of the internet in writing, publishing and how it effects our experiences of our bodies and desires. We discuss the influence of both mainstream and social media in shaping narratives about people and places, as well as aspects of social class and regional inequality between the north-east and London. We chat about what it means to write difficult female characters and the difference between writing first and second novels. Eliza Clark is from Newcastle. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North's 'Young Writers Talent Fund'. Her debut novel, Boy Parts, was published by Influx Press in July 2020 and was Blackwell's Fiction Book of the Year. In 2022, Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women's Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five, and she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Penance was published by Faber in 2023. References Boy Parts by Eliza Clark Penance by Eliza Clark You can now subscribe to our Patreon for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:
Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work. | |||
| 05 Sep 2024 | 040 Ralf Webb: Queer Masculinities | 00:50:21 | |
This is a special live episode, hosted at Storysmith to mark the launch of Strange Relations by Ralf Webb. We think about the contemporary crisis in masculinity through the lives and work of mid-century American writers John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin, considering how their legacies might inform the current moment. We speak about the censorship of radical elements of these writers' work, including elements of their politics, queerness and intimacy, and consider the role of their interpersonal and intertextual relationships in understanding their work. We speak about what it means to reclaim space in the canon and expanding terms such as bisexuality, as well as notions of boyishness. We discuss the relationship between poetry and prose, the use of novelistic techniques in non-fiction and the ethical responsibility involved in writing about well-known literary figures. Ralf Webb is a poet, writer and editor based in Bristol. His debut collection of poems, Rotten Days in Late Summer was published by Penguin in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. Webb’s poetry and critical writing has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, and The Poetry Review. He currently manages a creative writing mentorship programme in collaboration with Folio and First Story, which supports school-age writers from low-income backgrounds.
Strange Relations by Ralf Webb Late Days in Rotten Summer by Ralf Webb Warped Pastoral: Ralf Webb and Sam Buchan-Watts in conversation Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ralf's work. | |||
| 28 Mar 2022 | 015 Lola Olufemi: The Radical Power of Imagination | 00:53:48 | |
In this episode, we chat to Lola Olufemi about the radical potential of imagination. We speak about the relationship between theory and lived experience and how to deconstruct linear narratives of history and time. We talk about the possibilites language and art can bring to political movements and revolutionary ideas, as well as their limitations. We discuss how to move beyond the trappings of crisis and the importance of re-discovering play, both in writing and in our communities. We explore the role of collaboration within art and the reconfiguration of history as a kind of process which is constantly being re-made, through ancestral connection and the reanimation of archives. References: A FLY Girls' Guide to University by Lola Olufemi, Odelia Younge, Waithera Sebatindira, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan Feminism Interrupted by Lola Olufemi Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi Poetics of Relation by Edouard Glissant Dialogic Imagination by Mikhail Bakhtin As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Lola's work at Storysmith Books. Listen to the episode for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons | |||
| 24 May 2021 | 007 Rebecca Tamás: Poetry as Magic, Witches and the Non-Human | 00:53:21 | |
In this episode, we chat to poet and essayist Rebecca Tamás about the figure of the witch, the power of language to manifest change in the world and poetry as a way to speak with not for voices that have been silenced throughout history. We talk about the role of awe and emotion in forging a deeper relationship with the non-human world, climate grief, the loss of language and the impact of late capitalism on our psyches, bodies and planet. You can buy Rebecca's books from Storysmith with a 10% discount, check out the episode to find out more. References Witch by Rebecca Tamás (Penned in the Margins: 2019) Strangers by Rebecca Tamás (Makina Books: 2020) Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry Ed. Rebecca Tamás, So Mayer and Sarah Shin (Ignota Books: 2018) Other References Timothy Morton: Being Ecological (MIT Press: 2019) Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions: 2013) Illuminations by Walter Benjamin | |||
| 30 May 2023 | 027 Preti Taneja: On Radical Doubt and Radical Hope | 00:45:41 | |
In this episode, we speak to Preti Taneja about her brilliant book, Aftermath. We discuss the ways in which individual actions are mapped onto societal, national and global histories and inequalities. We consider the paradoxical limits of language and writing to articulate grief, as well as a return to other radical writers and thinkers. We discuss the oppression of the prison industrial complex system and its relationship to racism within the UK education system. We speak about the use of shame to denigrate marginalised people and the erasure of colonial and imperial history within schools. We discuss the role of fictions, both within literature and within society, and the ways in which particular narratives have the potential to imprison or empancipate people. We consider the gatekeeping within contemporary literary culture and wonder what literature could look like in a more equitable world. Preti Taneja is a writer and activist. Her debut novel We That Are Young (Galley Beggar Press, 2017) won the Desmond Elliott Prize for the finest literary debut novel of the year and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski, Europe's premier award for a work of world literature. Her second book, Aftermath (And Other Stories, 2021) won the Gordon Burn Prize in 2022 and was a New Yorker notable book, a New Yorker best book of the year, a White Review book of the year, New Statesman book of the year in 2021 and in 2022, and shortlisted for British Book of the Year - Discover. Her writing has been published in The White Review, the Guardian, Vogue India, the New Statesman, Granta, INQUE and in anthologies of short stories, essays, literary criticism and prose poetry. She has taught writing in prisons, worked with arts practitioners around the world mediating their own conflict and post conflict zones, and with young people across deprived parts of the UK who want to get published. She is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA). In 2022 Preti was named winner of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in Languages and Literatures 'for her work on combining ethics, politics and aesthetics; developing pioneering hybrid creative forms, including via literary prose to advocate for minority rights.' She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review magazine, and for the multi-award winning independent press And Other Stories, for which she accepts submissions of full manuscripts. References We That Are Young by Preti Taneja Aftermath by Preti Taneja Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Preti's work. | |||
| 31 Jul 2023 | 029 Isabel Waidner: Liberating the Canon | 00:50:26 | |
In this episode, we chat to Isabel Waidner about their new novel, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility. We discuss the notion of 'liberating the canon' and the role of formal innovation in representing marginalised perspectives across gender, sexuality, social class and race. We explore the queering of the Bambi figure in Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, the radical importance of acknowledging references and transdisciplinary approaches to art-making. We discuss the role of football and music as traditional ways for working-class people to access 'social mobility' and consider how literature might fit within this. We explore the queering of time and history within the novel and highlight the necessity of balancing a critique of society with the liberatory potential of queer imaginaries. We dicuss the gatekeeping of the literary establishment, the false promises of meritocracy in awards culture and the commodification of art, exploring the limitations of neoliberalism. Isabel Waidner is a writer based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They won the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. References Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature by Isabel Waidner We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner Sterling Carat Gold by Isabel Waidner Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabael Waidner An Alternative Art History of the 1990s by Isabel Waidner (Frieze) All Us Girls Have Been Dead for So Long by Linda Stupart and Carl Gent Nicole Eisenman, Bambi Gregor, India ink on paper, 1993 John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears, 1978 Loot by Joe Orton As always, listen for the code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Isabel's work | |||
| 28 Jun 2021 | 008 Zakiya Mckenzie: Collective Memory, Decolonising the Archives and Wandering the Woods | 00:47:19 | |
In this episode we chat to Bristol-based writer and researcher Zakiya Mckenzie about decolonising the archives, collective memory and the histories of plants and their relationship to the histories of people. We discuss the inextricable links between land in England and Jamaica and the need for more radical and decolonial ways of mapping stories, land and time than the models left to us by the horrors of empire, as explored in Zakiya's recent pamphlet Testimonies on the History of Jamaica, Vol. 1 (out now with Rough Trade Books). You can buy a selection of Zakiya’s work from Storysmith with a 10% discount, tune in to the episode to find out more. Testimonies on the History of Jamaica, Vol 1 by Zakiya Mckenzie (Rough Trade Pamphlets: 2021) A collection of Zakiya's writing as Writer-in-Residence with the Forestry Commission can be found here. A Chapter in Women on Nature, ed. Katharine Norbury (Unbound: 2021) A Chapter in The Wild Isles Anthology, ed. Patrick Barkham (Head of Zeus: 2021) Her BBC4 Production on the Forest of Dean, can be found here. Dennis Potter: The Art of the Invective, Selected Non-Fiction 1953-1994 (Bloomsbury: 2015) & his classic TV Series 'Singing Detective' and 'Pennies from Heaven' | |||
| 30 Jan 2023 | 024 Ellena Savage: Anti-Memoir | 00:51:31 | |
In this episode, we speak to author and essayist Ellena Savage. We discuss hierarchies of power within the arts and the precarity of writing for a living, as well as what it means to work both within and in opposition to literary and academic institutions. We address ideas of consumption and capitalism, as well as the dream of a classless society which makes space for beauty and pleasure. We explore the experimental essay form as a means of capturing the fractured nature of memory and time, and the subversion of catalogues and archives as a feminist tool. We discuss what it means to write 'memoir' or 'anti-memoir' and the intersection of these ideas with gender and social class. We also chat about complex notions of home and belonging, amidst gentification and colonial histories. Ellena Savage's debut essay collection, Blueberries, was published by Text Publishing and Scribe UK in 2020. It was shortlisted for the 2021 VPLA and long-listed for the Stella Prize. She has written essays, stories and poems for Sydney Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, Meanjin, Overland, Cordite, Mirror Lamp Press, Kill Your Darlings,The Big Issue Fiction Edition and The Lifted Brow (where she was an editor). She has also written for periodicals such asThe Age, Guardian Weekend and Eureka Street, where she wrote a monthly cultural politics column between 2011-2016, and in the anthologies Open Secrets (2021), The Cambridge History of the American Essay (forthcoming), Choice Words (2019), The Best of the Lifted Brow: Volume Two (2017), Poetic Justice (2014), and The Emerging Writer (2013). She has written for gallery and performance contexts via Darebin City Council, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, and ArtsHouse. She also published a chapbook, Yellow City with The Atlas Review in 2019. References Blueberries by Ellena Savage Little Throbs (newsletter) by Ellena Savage Memnoir by Joan Retellack (Chain #7: Memoir/Anti-Memoir edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr) Crabcakes: A Memoir by James Alan McPherson Poetry is not a Luxury by Audre Lorde As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ellena's work. | |||
| 27 Dec 2022 | 023 Nuar Alsadir: Living Hotter | 00:49:59 | |
In this episode, we speak to Nuar Alsadir about her essay, Animal Joy. We discuss the radical possibilities of laughter, the connections between writing and psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic notion of our 'true' and 'false' selves. We chat about living 'hotter' and being 'more' in the face of a society which often asks us to diminish ourselves in order to conform to social scripts. We talk about the role of the clown within this society and the disruptive nature of poetry. We think about what it means to put unconscious and bodily experiences into writing, through the lens of Nuar's second poetry collection, Fourth Person Singular. Nuar Alsadir writes poetry and nonfiction. She is the author of the nonfiction book, Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation, and two poetry collections, most recently Fourth Person Singular, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She lives in New York where she works as a psychoanalyst in private practice. References Fourth Person Singular by Nuar Alsadir More Shadow than Bird by Nuar Alsadir Winnicott's theory of true and false selves L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq Tune into the episode for a 10% discount on Nuar Alsadir's work at Storysmith. | |||
| 28 Nov 2022 | 022 Joelle Taylor: Social Surrealism | 00:51:58 | |
In this episode, we chat to author, performer and poet Joelle Taylor. We speak about the process of translating page to stage and the juxtaposition of social realism with surreal imagery in the articulation of complex tensions around class, gender and sexuality. We discuss the rebel butch dyke community of the 80s and 90s, the queer club as a place of resistance and the destruction of these spaces by gentrification. We talk about poetry as grieving ritual and the necessity of reclaiming allyship and communality within the LGBTQIA+ community (and beyond) in an age of division and toxic internet culture. We speak about the body as a site of metamorphosis and the relationship between language and flesh. Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet and author who prior to the pandemic completed a world tour with her collection Songs My Enemy Taught Me. She founded SLAMbassadors, the UK national youth poetry slam championships, as well as the international spoken-word project Borderlines. She is widely anthologised, the author of 4 collections of poetry and is currently completing her debut collection of inter-connecting short stories The Night Alphabet. Her new poetry collection C+NTO & Othered Poems was published in June 2021 and is the subject of the Radio 4 arts documentary Butch. C+nto won the T.S Eliot Prize in 2021, The Polari Prize in 2022 and was named by The Telegraph, the New Statesman, The White Review & Times Literary Supplement as one of the best poetry books of 2021, as well as DIVA magazine’s Book of the Month, and awarded 5 stars by the Morning Star. She has received a Changemaker Award from the Southbank Centre, a Fellowship of the RSA, and her poem Valentine was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize. She is a co-curator and host of Out- Spoken Live, the UK’s premier poetry and music club currently resident at the Southbank Centre. She is the commissioning editor at Out-Spoken Press 2020-2022. References: The Night Alphabet (forthcoming from Riverrun Books) by Joelle Taylor C+nto and Othered Poems (2021) by Joelle Taylor Songs My Enemy Taught me (2017) by Joelle Taylor The Woman Who Was Not There (2014) by Joelle Taylor Ska Tissue (2014) by Joelle Taylor | |||
| 27 Mar 2023 | 025 Polly Barton: Porn: An Oral History | 00:48:48 | |
In this week's episode, we chat to writer and Japanese translator Polly Barton about her new book Porn: An Oral History. We discuss the necessity of sitting with discomfort and ambivalence and the role of unknowingness within a divided contemporary society. We speak about he nature of oral histories and the links between translation and transcription. We consider the importance of intergenerational conversation, as well as the role of nuance, contradiction and sensitivity within non-fiction. We consider what it means to leave space for desire and pleasure within discourse on sex and gender and think about Pamela Paul's notion of the pornification of society under capitalism. Polly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and her debut book, Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021. In 2022, Fifty Sounds was shortlisted for the 2022 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders and her full length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury). Her new book, Porn: An Oral History, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and is forthcoming from La Nave di Teseo in Italy. References Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families by Pamela Paul | |||
| 22 Feb 2021 | 004 Joff Winterhart: The Poetry of the Mundane | 00:54:09 | |
004 In the first of our Bristol-based episodes, we speak to graphic novelist, musician, educator and all-round local legend Joff Winterhart about the poetry of the mundane, the hinterlands of suburbs and industrial estates, crises in contemporary masculinity and Joff's use of the graphic form. Joff's graphic novels are Days of the Bagnold Summer (2012) and Driving Short Distances ( 2017). You can find both of Joff's books at storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons. As a Tender Buttons listener you can purchase Joff's books with 10% discount, have a listen for more details on this... Joff's band Bucky can be found here: https://buckytheband.bandcamp.com/ Other References: Lynda Barry's comics are One! Hundred! Demons! (2002), What It Is (2008) and Cruddy (1999) (amongst many others) | |||
| 30 Apr 2021 | 006 Ren Aldridge of Petrol Girls: Cut, Stitch, Make, Do | 00:52:45 | |
In this episode we talk to Ren Aldridge, artist, writer and singer in feminist post-hardcore band Petrol Girls about the intersection of her art and politics. We chat about the DIY punk practice of passing the mic, learning by doing, zine culture, the power and limitations of anger & more. If you would like to donate to the Solidarity not Silence campaign, to help raise funds for women facing a defamation claim from a man in the music industry for statements they made concerning his treatment of women, you can do so here or buy the Petrol Girls track, I Believe Them, here. Solidarity not Silence are also dropping a new single on 4th May via Alcopop Records - This Is Sisterhood. For updates on this follow the Solidarity not Silence Twitter here. References
Songs featured in episode:
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| 29 Nov 2021 | 012 Jo Hamya: Myths of Meritocracy | 00:45:19 | |
In this episode, we chat to author Jo Hamya about her brilliant novel, Three Rooms. We discuss her subversion of the bildungsroman narrative in order to interrogate the myth of linear progress and what it means to grow up in the wake of Blairism and the 2007-8 financial crash. We speak about the ways in which people might live in proximity to the upper echelons of society and yet never truly enter privileged spaces as a consequence of class, gender, race and politics. Through the lens of Brexit, Trump, Grenfell and the housing crisis, amidst soaring wealth inequality, Jo addresses the myth of meritocracy in contemporary Britain and interrogates the effects of social media upon our psyches. We chat about the notion of patriotism, the commodification of protest, the struggle to take up space in the modern metropolis and what it really means to inhabit a room of one's own in contemporary Britain. References: Outline trilogy by Rachel Cusk As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Jo's book at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons Our theme music is a sample from Flotation by Ben Vince from his album The Purge. | |||
| 25 Apr 2022 | 016 Yara Rodrigues Fowler: The Revolutionary Novel | 00:46:07 | |
In this episode, we chat to Yara Rodrigues Fowler about the possibilites of the revolutionary novel. We speak about the potential of art as a driving force for change in the world, providing a space to desire beyond the borders of neoliberalism, imperialism and patriarchy. We talk about the ways in which novels can hold multiple dimensions of time and space and the role of formal experimentation and translation. We also discuss queer families and sisterhood and the ways in which these relationships might act as a 'little communism' of love, hinting at the possibilities of a world which is more free. We talk about the experience of writing and releasing a second novel and how to move through the publishing world while staying true to your own ideals. Yara's new novel, There Are More Things is published on 28th April. References There Are More Things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler Listen for a 10% discount code on Yara's books at Storysmith books. | |||
| 27 Jun 2022 | 018 Melissa Febos: Writing the Body | 00:42:12 | |
In this episode, we discuss what it means to write through the body with memoirist Melissa Febos. We speak about the power of articulation as a radical tool for feminist and queer liberation and the need to break away from the narratives we are handed by patriarchal society in an attempt to forge our own maps. We talk about the practicalities of writing memoir as a public archive of the self and the existence of multiple truths and perspectives within a narrative. We address the process of writing trauma and the political and personal implications of writing from lived experience. References Whip Smart by Melissa Febos Abandon Me by Melissa Febos Girlhood by Melissa Febos Body Work by Melissa Febos Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde Listen for a 10% discount code on Melissa's work at Storysmith books. | |||
| 28 Apr 2023 | 026 Bhanu Kapil: On Monsters and Cyborgs | 00:59:12 | |
In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking to the very brilliant Bhanu Kapil about the UK publication of her collection Incubation: a space for monsters. We discuss what it means to return to earlier work in new contexts, and why the figure of the monster or cyborg is so crucial to her work, in relation to migration and border politics. We chat about the role of the body within her work, and the language of flesh and bones. We discuss the relationship between performance, writing and memory and what it means to make work which refuses categorisation. Bhanu Kapil is the author of six full-length poetry collections and a recipient of a Windham- Campbell Prize and a Cholmondeley Award. Her most recent book, How To Wash A Heart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. For twenty years, she taught creative writing, performance art and contemplative practice at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She is currently based in Cambridge as a Fellow of Churchill College. She also teaches for the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, as part of a practice- based Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability. References Incubation: a space for monsters by Bhanu Kapil Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil How to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil Plot by Claudia Rankine Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics As always, listen for a discount code for 10% discount on Bhanu Kapil's work at Storysmith. | |||
| 28 Apr 2024 | 036 Andrew McMillan: Literature is not Elsewhere | 00:50:54 | |
In this episode, we chat to Andrew McMillan about his novel, Pity. We discuss intersections of masculinity, sexuality and class and the way the body might hold these ideas within fiction and poetry. We think about the ways in which the form of the novel can hold multiple truths and stories, and how this links to post-industrial identities. We explore the dangers of describing post-industrial towns by their lack or an absence, and consider what it would take to find new definitions of community. We chat about the need for more northern stories, and the idea that everyone's village, town or city is worthy of literature. We think about finding a new language to discuss the past, which honours its legacies and yet allows us to define ourselves on new terms, in order to move forwards. Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physical was the only ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers’ award (2014). It was shortlisted the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. In 2019 it was voted as one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018, a Poetry Book of the Month in both The Observer and The Telegraph, a Poetry Book of the Year in The Sunday Times and won the inaugural Polari Prize. His third collection, pandemonium, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and 100 Queer Poems, the acclaimed anthology he edited with Mary Jean Chan, was published by Vintage in 2022. Physical has been translated into French, Galician and Norwegian editions, with double-editions of physical & playtime published in Slovak and German in 2022. He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, was published by Canongate in 2024. References Pity by Andrew McMillan Pandemonium by Andrew McMillan Playtime by Andrew McMillan Physical by Andrew McMillan As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Andrew's work. | |||
| 06 Oct 2024 | 041 Garth Greenwell: Grammar of Touch | 00:57:15 | |
In this episode, we speak to acclaimed poet and novelist Garth Greenwell about his latest novel, Small Rain. We speak about chambers of mind and body within the architecture of the novel, and touch as something with the power to both connect us with and alienate us from our animal corporeality. We explore the embodied nature of syntax in Garth's work, and the ways in which pain can shatter this. We question the 'arts of living' and discuss the necessity of uncertainty and contradictions within fiction, and the importance of sitting with discomfort. We speak about civility, neighbourliness, political division and the myriad ways in which our lives are dependent on others. Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His novella Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City. References Small Rain by Garth Greenwell Cleanness by Garth Greenwell What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell Introducing Myself by Ursula K. Le Guin Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Garth's work. This conversation was recorded in person at Albatross Café in Bristol. | |||
| 31 Aug 2021 | 010 Nikesh Shukla: Joy as an Act of Resistance | 00:46:13 | |
In today's episode we chat to the brilliant Nikesh Shukla about his recent fatherhood memoir Brown Baby. We talk about how to navigate racism and sexism while raising children, the ways in which grief distorts time, subverting the traditional memoir form, representation within publishing, the radical history of Bristol, finding joy and hope in a difficult world and how to contribute to political change in our everyday lives. REFERENCES Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla Run, Riot by Nikesh Shukla Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla The One Who Wrote Destiny by Nikesh Shukla The Boxer by Nikesh Shukla The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shukla Rife: Twenty-One Stories from Britain's Youth edited by Nikesh Shukla What is Race? Who Are Racists? And Why Does Skin Colour Matter? by Nikesh Shukla and Clare Heuchan Nikesh's Writing Tips Newsletter As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Nikesh's books at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons | |||
| 23 Jun 2024 | 038 Jason Okundaye: Living Archives | 00:51:48 | |
In this episode, we speak to writer Jason Okundaye about his recent book, Revolutionary Acts. We discuss archives as living, moving things, and non-linearity as a mode of articulating queer Black histories. We think about the role of body language, tone of voice, feelings and vulnerabilities in the act of embodied transcription. We think about the notion of 'archival pleasure' and understanding the body and desire as sites of history. We discuss the necessity of oral histories being relational as opposed to extractive, and what it means to push against the 'deficit paradigm', recording stories of Black gay abundance, desire and celebration, as well as making space for mess and discomfort, refusing neat and simplistic narratives of unity within political activism. Jason Okundaye was born to British-Nigerian parents in South London in 1997. He writes essays, features, and profiles on politics and culture for publications such as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, British Vogue, GQ, Vice, Dazed, and i-D. He also co-curates the digital archive ‘Black and Gay, Back in the Day’ documenting Black LGBT life in Britain since the 1970s. His first book, Revolutionary Acts, a social history of Black gay men in Britain, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2024. References Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain by Jason Okundaye Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jason's work. | |||
| 28 Jul 2024 | 039 Jen Calleja: Vehicle | 00:52:39 | |
In this episode, we speak to author, translator and musician Jen Calleja about her inventive novel, Vehicle. We discuss what it means to write a verse novel and the politics of translation. We discuss the use of archive and the ways in which experimental writing can meet transformative politics and possibilities. We speak about bringing the energy and ethos of DIY punk to the novel and the literary world more generally, through the importance of radical independent publishing and the role of collective writing, as well as the dangers of censorship within the arts. Jen Calleja is a poet, short story writer and essayist who has been widely published, including in The White Review, The London Magazine, and Best British Short Stories (Salt). She was awarded an Authors’ Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors to work on Vehicle, and was shortlisted for the Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize for an excerpt from the novel. She was also longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text. Prototype published her short story collection I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For in 2020. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library. Calleja played and toured in the DIY punk bands Sauna Youth, Feature, Monotony, Gold Foil and Mind Jail spanning a period of over a decade as both a drummer and a vocalist. She is also a publisher at Praspar Press. References Vehicle by Jen Calleja I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For by Jen Calleja GOBLINS by Jen Calleja and Rachel Louise Hodgson Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jen's work. | |||
| 26 May 2024 | 037 Helen Oyeyemi: The Surreal City | 00:38:22 | |
In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Helen Oyeyemi about her most recent novel, Parasol Against the Axe. We discuss the use of non-linearity when attempting to write about a complex city like Prague. We chat about the city as a dissociative state, and the relationship to surrealism and conflicting histories. We speak about the intimate relationship between reading, writing and desire, and the way that books can reveal details about the reader, as well as the author. We explore the book as a living object which shifts across time and space, and the use of play and perplexity across Oyeyemi's work. We discuss what it means to resist master narratives and embrace slippery, shapeshifting narrators, subverting the reader's expectations. We examine a hunger for novels which require the reader to work, and what it means to be actively involved in the process of meaning-making. Helen Oyeyeymi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won a Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread, What Is Not Yours Is Yours, and Peaces, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best Young British Novelists. References Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyeymi Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyeymi Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyeymi White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyeymi The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi De Profundis by Oscar Wilde Prague Tales by Jan Neruda | |||
| 17 Dec 2023 | 033 Noreen Masud: Psychology of Landscape | 00:41:01 | |
In this episode, we speak to academic, author and broadcaster Noreen Masud about her memoir, A Flat Place. We discuss the psychological, literary and philosophical histories and connotations of flat landscapes. We talk about Masud's experience growing up in Lahore, Pakistan, then moving to the UK and the complexity of language, culture and the post-colonial experience. We discuss what it means to resist the history of landscape writing, from white male colonial stories of nature as redemption and Romantic notions of landscape as revelation or a text to be interpreted 'correctly.' Instead, our conversation considers what it means to open space for failure, misinterpretation and post-colonial discomfort, without resolution. We discuss memory as place, the importance of sitting with unknowingness, the connection between listening and mutual aid and the limits of empathy. We talk about counteracting the constant strive for meaning in literature with seeking play, sound and irreverance. Noreen Masud was born and raised in Pakistan. She is a literary scholar working on the twentieth century, writing about things which, in one way or another, present variously as absurd, unrevealing, embarrassing or useless. These include aphorisms, flatness, spivs, puppets, nonsense, leftovers, earworms, footnotes, rhymes, hymns, surprises, folk songs, colours and superstition. She is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2020, and a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Hard Language: Stevie Smith and the Aphorism, and A Flat Place. References A Flat Place by Noreen Masud Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein Kangaroo by DH Lawrence Against the Trauma Plot by Parul Sehgal You can now subscribe to our Patreon for £5 a month, which will enable us to keep bringing you more in-depth conversations with writers. As a subscriber, you will have access to:
Please like, rate and subscribe to help promote the podcast and support our work. | |||
| 25 Aug 2023 | 030 Octavia Bright: Writing from Life | 00:56:06 | |
In this special live episode, we speak to writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright about her memoir, This Ragged Grace. We discuss the ways in which Octavia's roles as an interviewer, carer and linguist informed her process as an active listener and developed her writing voice. We explore the distinction between the pornographic and the erotic in relation to memoir writing, and discuss the process of revealing and concealment when writing from lived experience. We chat about the importance of images and symbols in articulating trauma, with reference to Louise Bourgeois' 'Spiral Woman' as a symbol which holds contradictions within recovery. We speak about the interweaving of presence, loss, memory and history within writing and discuss the influence of artists and writers such as Louise Bourgeois, Deborah Levy and Marlene Dumas on Octavia's work. Octavia Bright is a writer and broadcaster. She co-hosts Literary Friction, the literary podcast and NTS Radio show, with Carrie Plitt. Recommended by The New York Times, Guardian, BBC Culture, Electric Literature, The Sunday Times and others, it has run for ten years and has listeners worldwide. She also presents programmes for BBC R4 including Open Book, and hosts literary events for bookshops, publishers, and festivals – such as Cheltenham Literature Festival and events for The Southbank Centre. Her writing has been published in a number of magazines including the White Review, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Wasafiri, Somesuch Stories, and The Sunday Times, amongst others. She has a PhD from UCL where she wrote about hysteria and desire in Spanish cinema. References This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright Living Autobiography series by Deborah Levy As always, listen for the discount code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Octavia's work. | |||
| 26 Jun 2023 | 028 Siân Norris: Bodies Under Siege | 00:51:40 | |
In this episode, we speak to investigative journalist Siân Norris about her new book, Bodies Under Siege. We discuss the rise of far-right ideology across the world, and the ways in which fascism and the struggle for reproductive rights are inextricably linked. We consider the ways in which global anti-abortion networks are connected to movements which are underpinned by white supremacy and hostile to LGBTQIA+ rights. We think about the influence of these movements across the world, including their access to funding, their co-opting of feminist language and tactics used by the far-right to secure the support of women in their world as mothers, such as tradwifes and gender critical feminists. We discuss the possibilties of reproductive justice for women across the world, and consider the ways in which we might build a better world through the international reproductive justice movements, centered on resistance and solidarity. Siân Norris is a writer and investigative journalist who has covered far-right movements and their relocation to the mainstream for a range of publications, including the UK's Byline Times and openDemocracy. Norris is a leading voice in the UK feminist movement and her writing on issues ranging from men's violence against women, to migrant rights, and poverty and inequality, has been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, the i, and many more publications. In 2012 she set up the Bristol Women's Literature Festival, which she ran for eight years References Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global by Siân Norris Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys Happening by Annie Ernaux As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Siân's work. | |||
| 26 Nov 2023 | 032 Nathalie Olah: The Politics of Ugliness | 00:30:12 | |
In this episode, we speak to Nathalie Olah about her book Bad Taste: Or The Politics of Ugliness. We discuss notions of taste and the intersection with social class and cultural capital. We think about the ways in which a fear of judgement is intrinsic to working-class survival and the construction of working-class femininities within this. We chat about the ways in which ideas of social mobility force working-class people to assimilate to middle-class ideas of taste, and the loss and displacement caused by this. We highlight the importance of working-class writers amplifying the people, places, objects and events that are significant to them, from Pamela Anderson's hyper-feminized look in the film Barb Wire (1996) to Dolly Parton's embrace of 'trashy' aesthetics. We discuss the role of austerity and scarcity within contemporary notions of 'style' and 'class' and how this links to the wealth and power of dominant taste-makers. We explore the role of culture and beauty in upholding power hierarchies and the way this shapes our lives. Nathalie Olah is a writer currently living and working in London. Her political awakening happened when she was living in the Netherlands in 2014, completing an MA (global political economy, University of Sussex / Utrecht University) and working for research organisations and grassroots protest groups challenging the biases of the international courts and witnessing the distant, passive cruelty of EU bureaucrats subjecting millions of people to misery during the Greek debt crisis. She came back to the UK in 2016 when electoral politics was just starting to get interesting; joined a few organisations, wrote a few things. This all led to the publication of her first book, Steal As Much As You Can in 2019. Her background has always been aesthetics, philosophy and literature. She first studied English Language and Literature, but her professor, Christopher Butler, was a philosopher and art historian. Her main interest is media spectacle and propaganda, and the quaint exceptionalisms of the western psyche and that of the upper/middle class in particular. She is always trying to challenge the assumption — in a visually over-saturated world — that seeing is knowing, and ultimately prevent the slide into what academic Eva Illouz has termed ‘scopic capitalism’. Her new book, Bad Taste: or the politics of ugliness is about the industries of taste (which prospered after 2008), how they aestheticise and valorise scarcity, which is an invention of capitalism, and create a false hierarchy of virtue centred on consumerism. Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published widely in Five Dials, Dazed, AnOther, i-D, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement. References Bad Taste by Nathalie Olah Look Again: Class by Nathalie Olah Steal as Much as You Can by Nathalie Olah | |||
| 31 Oct 2022 | 021 Rebecca May Johnson: Pleasure as Power | 00:43:55 | |
In this episode, we chat to author and essayist Rebecca May Johnson about what it means to bring critical ideas into the everyday. We discuss the radical potential of the recipe as a tool for performance and intergenerational exchange. We speak about the abjection of bodies by capitalist society and reclaiming pleasure as a means of feminist praxis. We discuss the isolation rendered by the privatisation of public spaces and the necessity for communal ways to gather and eat together. We chat about the ways in which theory can neglect visceral experience and the recipe as a living text which anchors us to our bodies and the world. Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement, Daunt Books Publishing and Vittles, among others. She was a creative writing fellow at the British School at Rome in 2021. She earned a PhD in Contemporary German Literature from UCL in 2016.She also uses online publishing to conduct stylistic experiments: her essay ‘I Dream of Canteens’ was published via TinyLetter and gained widespread acclaim, winning ‘The Browser’ prize for the best piece on the internet in April 2019. Her anonymous waitressing series was voted in the Observer Food Monthly ‘Top 50’ of 2018. She was finalist in the ‘Young British Foodies’ writing prize judged by Marina O’Loughlin and Yotam Ottolenghi. She publishes a newsletter called dinner document where she shares recipes and thoughts about food every week. Small Fires is her first book. References Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson I dream of Canteens by Rebecca May Johnson Dinner Document by Rebecca May Johnson Vittles newsletter Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson | |||
| 26 Sep 2022 | 020 Travis Alabanza: Beyond the Gender Binary | 00:43:07 | |
In this episode, we chat to the award-winning writer, performer and theatre-maker Travis Alabanza about their non-fiction book on trans and non-binary identity, None of the Above. We discuss what it means to write anti-memoir, in relation to making work from a working-class, gender non-conforming perspective. We chat about what it means to claim your own narrative and how to write a theoretical text that is accessible outside of academia, as well as the necessity of artists' engagement with the communites around them. We talk about the process of moving from stage to page and the radical power of performance to create a temporary space where rules are suspended, giving us a glimmer of freedom. References Burgerz by Travis Alabanza None of the Above by Travis Alabanza The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Travis' work. | |||
| 01 Mar 2020 | 003 Huw Lemmey: Flesh, Meat and Fighting the Guerrilla Culture War | 01:07:17 | |
We chat to writer Huw Lemmey about queer desire, shame, a politics of bodily love and ways to fight the British culture war. References: You can subscribe to Huw’s weekly essays on his ‘Utopian Drivel’ substack here: huw.substack.com His two novels are Chubz: The Demonization of My Working Arse (Montrez Press: 2014) and Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell (Montrez: 2019) His Bad Gays Podcast, with co-host Ben Miller: badgayspod.podbean.com Other References: Richard Scott Soho (Faber: 2018) Jean Genet Thief’s Journal (1949) | |||
| 16 Oct 2019 | 001 Jessica Andrews: It Begins With Our Bodies | 01:14:09 | |
Tender Buttons 001 We speak to co-host Jessica Andrews about her debut novel, Saltwater. References: Saltwater by Jessica Andrews (Sceptre: 2019) | |||
| 16 Nov 2019 | 002 Catherine Madden: Slippery Desires | 01:06:21 | |
Tender Buttons 002 We chat to Catherine Madden about form, sexuality and childhood. You can follow Catherine on twitter @CatherineEMIMad and her website:catherinemadden.org/ | |||