Ourshelves

Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago's most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. She has published four novels and one collection of short stories. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dublin Impac Award and longlisted three time for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In the finale episode of this season of Ourshelves, Rachel and Lucy discuss the lasting power of individua...

Annie Hodson is a queer writer and playwright from York, and one of the 40-strong cohort of the London Library’s 2022-2023 emerging writers’ programme. She has just won the Virago short story competition, with her story ‘Banshee’, which will appear in the paperback of Furies in spring 2025. Lucy and Annie dive into Annie’s earliest introduction to Virago through her aunt’s vast collection of ‘gree...

Audrey Osler is Professor Emerita of Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds. Her latest book,  Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From?   will be published by Virago in November and looks at the British Empire through the history of one family.    This week, join us as Audrey and Lucy dive into ‘Britishness’ and the conflict between identity...

Victoria Belim is a writer, journalist, and translator of Persian literature and poetry. She speaks eighteen languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Indonesian. Her memoir,  The Rooster House , was published earlier this year by Virago and explores her search for the truth behind an unmentioned family secret - and the Ukrainian people's complex relationship with their Soviet history. &nbs...

Emma Donoghue is an acclaimed writer whose novels include the international bestsellers Room and The Wonder . She wrote the short story ‘Turmagant’ in Virago’s recent collection of short stories, Furies, and her upcoming novel, Learned By Heart , publishes on 24th August 2023. On this episode, Emma and Lucy Scholes dive into the varied cultural reach of novels, short stories and films, the genius...

Natasha Walter  is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist and human rights activist. Her books include  The New Feminism   and  Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism , which was reissued as one of Virago’s 50thAnniversary Five Gold reads this year. On this episode of Ourshelves, Natasha and Lucy Scholes discuss the continued relevance of  Living Dolls  in...

Are families a refuge or a prison? Join Veronica Raimo as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the line between fiction and auto-fiction, drawing the curtain back on the creative process, and the many idiosyncrasies of language that arise during the translation of fiction.   Veronica Raimo is the author of four novels, the most recent of which,  Lost On Me  ( Niente di Vero ) was ...

Kirsty Logan is a novelist and short story writer. She’s the author of Now She is Witch , Things We Say In The Dark , The Gloaming , The Gracekeepers , A Portable Shelter , and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales . To mark the publication of her new book, The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir , she talks with Lucy Scholes about writing like no one is reading, pregnancy journeys, disobedien...

Join Lucy Scholes as she talks with American author Mecca Jamilah Sullivan about her debut novel,  Big Girl  – reviewed by the  New York Times  as ‘achingly beautiful’ – about a young black girl growing up in 1990s Harlem. On the table for discussion is coming-of-age fiction, beauty standards, women’s bodies and matrilineal traditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priva...

On the premiere episode of this special series of Ourshelves, commemorating Virago’s 50th anniversary, join Caroline O'Donoghue, New York Times  best-selling author and the host of the award-winning   podcast  Sentimental Garbage , as she talks about her new novel, The Rachel Incident. Listen as Caroline and Lucy Scholes discuss the intersection of Irish women’s fiction with the his...

Shahrukh Husain, editor of The Virago Book of Witches , who says it represents ` womanhood in all its complexity’ is not at all surprised to see a resurgence of interest in `all things witchy’. The witch knows her strength, defies authority and embodies our current fears of injustice. Shah tells Lucy how the witch can be playful but also terrifying, particularly to men, and about a childhood fasci...

In this special bonus summer episode Sharma Taylor, author of What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You , takes us to the heated demi-monde of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1980s, a turbulent time in politics and gangland crime. She tells Lucy Scholes about writing in patois; the Caribbean authors right now who are representing the strength of women in society; and what her mother sacrificed to buy her boo...

Clare Chambers is the author of nine novels including Small Pleasures, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She joins Lucy Scholes to rave about the inimitable Barbara Pym, a Virago Modern Classic author whose love affairs shocked sixties society and who wrote about vicars’ tea parties with waspish humour and moving brilliance. (Tea: ‘a drink she did not much like because of the comfort it...

How does writing about your life change the way you see it? Cathy Thomas talks to Lucy Scholes about her first book, Islanders, interlocking short stories set on her childhood home, Guernsey – the  pleasure of joining the dots and how playwriting informed her structure. Discovering a shared love of Annie Ernaux’s essays, they dive deeply into whether difficult experiences – from publisher rej...

How can men approach their role as feminist allies? Lucy Scholes meets Stuart Evers, award-winning author of four books including Your Father Sends His Love and The Blind Light as they discuss his introduction to the new Virago Modern Classic edition of Anna Seghers’ brilliant novel Transit, and how its depiction of people caught in the Second World War reminded him of Ukrainians caught in the com...

  What does it take for a woman to migrate thousands of miles across prairies and mountains? Join Katie Hickman, author of Brave Hearted and She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the unique voices of the women who made the Wild West, the strength of oral storytelling and the damage that was done to abortion rights in the USA by religious organisations....

What happens if you don’t fall in love with your baby at first sight? Join Kate Maxwell and Lucy Scholes as they challenge silent taboos about motherhood, from Elena Ferrante’s  The Lost Daughter  to Kate’s first novel  Hush , about a woman who struggles with her decision to have a child on her own. Kate’s recommendations: On the nightstand:  What I Loved , Siri Hustvedt and&nb...

If you spend 288 pages deep in the life of a disabled person, can that experience shift your concept of disability? Join Chloé Cooper Jones, journalist, Pulitzer nominee and author of the new memoir Easy Beauty , as she talks with Lucy Scholes about how beauty can create a powerful mental shift. They discuss the social and political act of making the disabled body visible, the meaning of staring a...

How does food connect us to our cultural identity? Get hungry listening to Claire Kohda talk to Lucy Scholes about her debut novel  Woman, Eating , which follows a mixed-race vampire in contemporary London. Claire admits she avoided reading  Dracula , explores the yōkai of traditional Japanese mythology and explains how listening to Asian recipes reminds her of her mother. Claire’s recom...

Doreen Cunningham, author of Soundings , followed the grey whales to the Arctic and she brings what she learnt on her journey into conversation with Lucy Scholes. Listen to Doreen explain how the very grammar of the Inupiat language gives the speaker a more respectful relationship with animals, how the trauma of poverty lingers and how her heroine is a grey whale named Earheart. Hosted on Acast. S...

Discovery with CN Lester How do we keep fighting when there seems to be no hope? CN Lester is a musician, academic, activist and author of  Trans Like Me  and they tell Lucy Scholes the best advice they’ve been given for continuing to work in the face of backlash. Join their fascinating conversation on their discovery of women composers of the Italian Baroque (who should never have been...

George Saunders calls Dana Spiotta a ‘great American writer’. It’s true - but why does it feel so surprising to hear a woman given that accolade. Join Lucy Scholes as she meets the award-winning author of  Wayward  and four other novels, celebrating the rare joy and complexity of midlife characters, from the accused widow in  Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch  by Rivka Galc...

OurShelves celebrates the end of Season 4 with the beloved Monica Ali, a fellow of Royal Society of Literature, Patron of the Hopscotch Women’s Centre, and bestselling author of  Brick Lane  and the upcoming   Love Marriage , her wonderful, complex and optimistic book about the entangled lives of two very different families – which kept Lucy Scholes up late at night turning the page...

Kaitlyn Greenidge, acclaimed author of Libertie and We Love You, Charlie Freeman , has written the new introduction to Ann Petry’s landmark Virago Modern Classics novel The Narrows. She takes a deep dive into Black American history, where Petry’s writing depicts an interior life under the unrelenting gaze of whiteness. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes to find out why a single mother and Bea...

Megan Abbott, Edgar-award winning author of eight novels including the HBO series-adapted  Dare Me  and her latest ballet school-set  The Turnout  is celebrated for her dark, precise depictions of young women in hothouse environments. She tells Lucy Scholes how thrillers honour women’s instincts of fear, why she’s too shy to write true crime and her admiration for a female film...