Little Atoms

David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author of two novels, the cult classic This Is Memorial Device , which won the Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and For The Good Times which won the Gordon Burn Prize. He is also the author of England...

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger's Wife , winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest novel is Inland . She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Hunter College. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Padraig Reidy hosts this week, speaking to Guardian journalist and author Henry McDonald about his novel Two Souls . They talk punk, football and paramilitary activity in 70s and 80s Belfast, and how a few wrong choices changed the path of young men's lives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Neil speaks to Sarah Perry, author of the bestselling The Essex Serpent , which won Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and Book of the Year 2017 at the British Book Awards. Her latest novel is  Melmoth . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elle Nash is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in  Cosmopolitan, Elle, NAILED, Reality Beach, Hobart,  and other places. She was a member of the Denver Press Club and now lives in Arkansas. Occasionally she reads tarot in exchange for money. Her debut novel is  Animals Eat Each Other . Hosted on Acast. See acast...

Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is a staff writer at  The New Yorker , and her work has appeared in  The New York Times  and  The New Republic , among other publications. She is the author of  Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and...

Author and music journalist David Stubbs joins Neil to talk about his latest book Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music . They chat about the evolution of synthesisers, the women who pioneered electronic music and where the genre is now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel,  The Shadow of the Crescent Moon , was long listed for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the memoir about her father’s life and assassination,  Songs of Blood and Sword , was published to acclaim. Her most...

Lillian Li joins Neil to talk about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant , which was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist Ben Fergusson joins Neil to talk about An Honest Man , the final book of his Berlin Trilogy. They discuss writing against the backdrop of 1989 Berlin, the summer after leaving school, and the novel's parallels between relationships, infidelity and espionage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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...