Little Atoms

Madeline Stevens joins Neil to talk about her first novel, Devotion . They discuss the drafts and graft that come before a debut novel, how Madeline's seven years spent working as a nanny in New York influenced her writing, and how what started out as a short story became Devotion . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Hoffman joins Neil to talk about his latest book Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places . They discuss the aborted attempt by Boris Johnson to build an airport on the marshland of Kent's Hoo peninsula, what 'protection' really means when it comes to preservation, and why we owe it to future generations to maintain the habitats of threatened species. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/...

Niven Govinden joins Neil to talk about his new novel This Brutal House , about family and protest in the vogue ball community of 1980s New York. Govinden's previous novels include All The Days And Nights , Graffiti My Soul and Black Bread White Beer . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Smith is a lecturer in creative writing at Plymouth University, specializing in environmental literature and focusing particularly on oceans, climate change and the ‘Anthropocene’. He joined Neil to talk about his first novel, Doggerland , writing rooted in place, and the enjoyment of writing a character who is "really just a git". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Poet Richard Osmond joins Neil to talk about his latest collection, Rock, Paper, Scissors , inspired by his experiences during the London Bridge terrorist attack on 3rd June 2017. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion is her first book. She joined Neil to talk about how we're all forced to perform and monetize ourselves on the internet, the culture and industries around optimization and life-hacking, and the American tradition of self-reinvention. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...

Rachel DeLoache Williams is an ex-Vanity Fair photo editor and author of My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress . She tells Neil about her friendship with Anna Delvey, the 'Russian heiress' who deceived New York's art scene for a year, and how she became her mark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the 600th Little Atoms! and Neil welcomes Laura Cumming back to the show. Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the  Observer  since 1999. Her book,  The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez , was Book of the Week on Radio 4,  Wall Street Journal  Book of the Year and a  New York Times  bestseller. It won the 2017 James Tait Black Biography Prize and...

Claire McGlasson is a journalist who works for ITV News and enjoys the variety of life on the road with a TV camera. She lives in Cambridgeshire.  The Rapture  is her debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lee Jackson is a Victorian enthusiast, creator of the popular online resource on the social history of Victorian London,  www.victorianlondon.org , and currently working on a PhD entitled 'Dickensland'. His book  Dirty Old London  was described by The Times as 'a tightly argued, meticulously researched history of sanitation that reads like a novel' and by the Lancet as 'a triumph of...

Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers in 2011 and was selected for the Africa 39, a 2014 Hay Festival project to identify the best African writers under 40. Her first published story, 'Muzungu', was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010...

Caroline Crampton is a writer and editor who contributes regularly to the Guardian , the Mail on Sunday and the New Humanist . She has appeared as a broadcaster on Newsnight, Sky News and BBC Radio 4. Her first book is The Way to The Sea: The Forgotten Histories of The Thames Estuary . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at the Idler Festival 2019 at Fenton House, Hampstead. Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles on modern literature, psychoanalysis and cultural theory. His books include How to Read Freud and The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark . He is a regu...

Carolina Setterwall was born in 1978 in Sala, Sweden. She studied Media and Communication in Uppsala, Stockholm and London and has worked within the music and publishing industries as an editor and writer. Setterwall lives in Stockholm with her son.  Let's Hope for the Best  is her first novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Angela Saini is an award-winning British science journalist and broadcaster. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Observer, New Scientist, Wired, New Humanist among others, and she regularly presents science programmes on BBC radio. She has won awards from the Association of British Science Writers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And she was named European Science Jo...

Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and writer. He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, associate lecturer at Birkbeck College, and associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research where he runs the European Jewish Research Archive. His previous books include Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community . His latest book is Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Li...

Anna Sherman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied Greek and Latin at Wellesley College and Oxford before moving to Tokyo in 2001.  The Bells of Old Tokyo  is her first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard King is the author of the acclaimed  How Soon Is Now? , which was named  Sunday Times  Music Book of the Year, and Original Rockers . His writing has appeared in the  Observer ,  Vice ,  Guardian ,  Caught by the River  and many other publications. He was co-editor of  Loops , an occasional journal of music writing published jointly by Faber &am...

Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book and is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern California. She teaches at the City University of New York's John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn.  She Would Be King  is her debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nathaniel Rich is the author of the novels  Odds Against Tomorrow  and  The Mayor’s Tongue . His short fiction has appeared   in  McSweeney’s ,  The Virginia Quarterly Review , and  VICE ,   among other publications. He is a writer at large for  The New York Times Magazine  and a regular contributor to  The New York Review of Books  and&n...

Pete Brown is a British author, journalist, blogger and broadcaster specialising in food and drink, especially the fun parts like beer and cider. His broad, fresh approach takes in social history, cultural commentary, travel writing, personal discovery and natural history, and his words are always delivered with the warmth and wit you'd expect from a great night down the pub. He writes f...

Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a BA from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing for several years, she wrote for the  Economist  as a staff writer. Her debut novel is  The Farm . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in 1954 in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 due to what the state dubbed `unacceptable democratic tendencies'. He came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan. Several of his Russian-original novels have been published in English translation, includin...

Andrea Lawlor lives in Western Massachusetts and teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College. Lawlor is a fiction editor for  Fence  and the author of a chapbook,  Position Papers  (Factory Hollow Press, 2016).  Paul Takes The Form of A Mortal Girl  is their debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season Butler is a writer, artist and dramaturg born in Washington, DC. Through her work, she explores her interest in identity and otherness, the opportunities and traps of hindsight and hope, and what it means to look forward to an increasingly wily future. An early draft of of her debut novel  Cygnet  was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asi...