Two Wayward Writers ~ South

This episode is all about Doris Lessing because Rachel read The Golden Notebook and Laura read The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five. Does writing about women have to be feminist or can it be humanist? Should writers stay in their genre lane? And was hers the best ever response to winning a Nobel?

In this month's episode of Two Wayward Writers South, Rachel and I discuss Sonder, a term coined by John Koenig in 2012. It refers to the realisation that strangers' lives are as vivid and complex as our own. Along the way, we also talk about the perspectives and experiences of a variety of authors, and we also think about who gets to write what. Featuring a brief visit from some mangosteens.

Laura and Rachel discuss Kishotenketsu, an Asian storytelling sensibility. If you find the first half of your story dragging towards a midpoint reveal, then you might be a natural Kishotenketsu writer, meaning this podcast is for you! SPOILERS for the Bong Joon Ho's Parasite... and Bambi.

Laura and Rachel discuss Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gothic feminist short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", first published in 1892. Has it stood the test of time? Does it need that many exclamation marks? What is a rest cure and why don't you want to be prescribed one?

Can the writer's voice alone make you keep reading? In the first episode of Two Wayward Writers to be hosted from the Equator, Laura and Rachel explore narrative voice, that invisible quality that makes every writer's work uniquely theirs. With help from Joseph Conrad, John Irving, and a thirty-five-year struggle with Virginia Woolf.