Tender Buttons

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 a...

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 cr...

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 de...

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...

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...

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 discus...

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 c...

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...

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 hor...

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 ca...

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...

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 th...

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 ( 201...

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 Ba...

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/

Tender Buttons 001 We speak to co-host Jessica Andrews about her debut novel, Saltwater. References: Saltwater by Jessica Andrews (Sceptre: 2019)