Niche ID with Laura Markwardt

Feel the fear. And listen anyway. London-based author Max Lury won the Curtis Brown Prize in 2022 ( No Ghosts ), and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 23/24 ( Santa Fe ). And yet, Max tells me he still can’t quite articulate the haunting feeling of absence and drift that emanates from our current technological moment. Fragments of it are captured through themes and scenes from his debut...

Matt Willocks , Director at Good Sport Magazine and Studio joins me to talk about his recent essay, The Future is Trail . In the piece, Matt uses his background in ecology and the theory of Optimal Distinctiveness to examine how niche outdoor sports are redefining sports culture. The conversation ranges across analogue aesthetics, a complicated relationship with technology, and Matt’s run crew, AM...

Artist and architect, Hanna Benihoud established her own independent North London Studio in 2016. A decade later, she’s made her mark across the city designing large-scale sculptures, murals, and immersive installations. Hanna maintains a prolific, interdisciplinary output by keeping some activities just for herself. Not monetised, off the market and off the main grid. No irony intended, but it’s...

In conversation with Sj Hockett (she/her/they) creative and founder of IRL.Sport : ‘An independent online and print publication exploring sports and movement from an outside perspective.’  Manchester-based Sj resides with her partner Izzi and KhⒶos, the pug cross. She’s worked in apparel design and visual identity for international cycling brand, MAP, as a Creative Director for Knog and Design Dir...

Creative advisor and entrepreneur, Kel Rakowski ( of @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y ) joins me with her dog, Mishka, at home in Brooklyn to talk about her three pillars of focus: creativity, process and taste. A self-identified “late-bloomer,” Kel’s personal story starts with making friends on the internet as a teen, and spans coming out, founding (and selling) a multi-million dollar business, losing her creati...

A special wrap episode sharing my takeaways from the second season, all shaped by conversations with authors, artists and creators across the modern cultural landscape. Themes include: The ecology of the niche Taste, discernment and curation The ambition of ‘the thing’ Acting into significance Defining your own terms of success Gratitude here for everyone who shared their stories and theories with...

"If you haven't seen the humour in something, you haven't seen the truth." That's Sussex-based author, John Higgs , known for his non-fiction books on counterculture, history, and biography. You might know him from The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds (2012) or his follow-up, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the 20th Century . He’s also...

In conversation with Professor Leigh Wilson, in the School of Humanities (English Literature) at University of Westminster. Leigh is co-editor of Contemporary Women’s Writing and works on modernism, the role of publishing in literary culture, and the experimental novel through the 20th century. She also co-runs a project on the Contemporary Small Press at Westminster. This work brought Leigh toget...

In conversation with Alison Williams, the creative polymath behind the Guardian-recommended podcast, War Hall: Theatre of the Mind , starring 96-year-old cinema legend Angela Allen. The first series of War Hall is grounded in the rich social audio history of Walthamstow’s assembly Hall and the words from a 1930/40s brochure of that time via Alison, sum it up: "The bombs were falling all aroun...

Most runners move to a new city, and join their local track club to find their people. Pruzan ’s Jessie Hyman co-founded a whole new brand. Settling in London from NYC, Jessie links Pruzan’s 2022 origin story not just to the search for the perfect pair of marathon shorts , but to her search for a sense of self, and ultimately, a performance running community that moves through the world like she d...

Photographer and director, Ben Rayner started his music zine as a teenager in the halcyon days of 90s Essex/London. He tells me that whole point of the thing wasn’t to make a profit. It was to open up a world that would eventually lead to his “obsession” with taking photos constantly. It was an era that built life-long friendships, and a rich archive of ‘becoming’ that Ben would eventually take St...

While passion might get a print issue started, operational rigour is what keeps the lights on. My latest guest, Megan Wray Schertler has mastered the art of that tension. Splitting her time between Berlin, New York and Reykjavik, Megan spent her early career at cult titles like Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman and Interview Magazine before co-founding her own magazine business consultancy, In Real L...

My latest guest is Oriana Leckert, Head of Publishing at Kickstarter . Alongside helping creators bring their dream literary projects to life, Oriana’s also written and edited for Vice , MTV News Slate and many more. Her first book, Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity , grew out of a multi-year project capturing the rise and fall of under-the-radar creative spaces across New York Ci...

In conversation with Max Leonard , Publisher and Creative director at Isola Press . Max creates award-winning photo books and stories of adventures that explore place, space, culture and history. We discuss the publishing (and self-publishing) industry with reference to Max’s 2024 book with Henry Iddon, Mountain style: British Outdoor Clothing 1953-2000 , and his new book, One Ride Away.. the memo...

London-based Laura Bryan is Insight Director at Spring Studios . With a background in design and luxury fashion communications, she has worked across various research and cultural strategy roles from Jump Innovation to Discover AI. Laura’s essay on the theme of ‘quiet disobedience’ and ‘small acts of rebellion’ for the School of Critical Design was published last year. Those ideas feel like they g...

Steve Watson, Director at Stack Magazines , has been in the “magazine club” business for 17 years. One thing hasn’t changed. Whenever he thinks he’s checked out every Stack-coded indie mag on the scene, “another one pops up,” whack-a-mole-style. And while the print landscape’s been “challenging” for what feels like forever, he admits that’s still a good problem to have. Steve doesn't make valu...

New Niche ID incoming! We’re kicking off Season Two by looking at how print and analogue media anchors us. My first guest is Kaye Symington, CMO at ⁠Newspaper Club⁠ , an on-demand printing service for creatives and brands to build their own newspapers, zines, and print projects, plus design support to get their work out there, in a tactile, tangible format. Kaye understands her audience, and sees...

The first season of the Niche ID podcast wraps for 2025. To celebrate, here's a short episode including some compelling ideas that stayed with me long after each edit. When I started this series, the tagline was, "The choices we make when we build for a creative life." But guest Jozef White, sums it up better by saying, “It’s like doing an ethnography of the thing while you’re inside...

G. Klasek’s journey jumps from Dunning-Kruger to Sisyphus, Hunter S. Thompson to Adam Curtis. Cultish beginnings led to leaving school in 8th grade and a lifetime of exploration. Not your standard desk-based creative – after reinventing herself through “hundreds of jobs,” G found her niche as a global field researcher, consultant and strategist. This conversation spans both the challenges of susta...

London-based Owen Booth, author of  What We’re Teaching Our Sons   and   The All True Adventures...of Daniel Bones , is "low-key obsessed with Frankenstein."  Which, coincidentally, makes this episode perfect listening for spooky season. Owen’s short story (with a long title), Frankenstein's Monster is Drunk and the Sheep Have All Jumped the Fences , took the Moth short story prize i...

Roya Shariet pitched to Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier, on the streets of New York, back in 2018. It changed her world. “I got a job offer for a job that didn’t exist, with no job description, to lead social impact at Glossier.” Don’t you just love it when that happens? She stayed for almost seven years – through the wildly successful launch of the You fragrance and the inception of Glossier’s p...

Alex Morris, is the VP of Strategy at New York’s Day One Agency, author of the Strategy and Planning Scrapbook and the planner’s cult-fave newsletter, Strat Scraps . He’s also an artist and a collector of relics, trinkets, and inspiration from the digital and analog world.  Once described as “Like K Hole but with utility and skin in the game,” I’m hard pressed to put a sharper point on Alex’s inci...

In conversation with Devin Kelly, poet, author, and teacher.  Devin joins me fresh from a hard track session with his New York run club. He’s sitting in his grandmother’s tiny old chair, the exact chair he sat down in every night to pen his latest novel, Pilgrims , a tale of two brothers, one monk, and one racing runaway. The story explores a sibling dynamic, but also a journey “to explore the mul...

In conversation with Emily Ash Powell , writer, creative leader, and brand consultant. Born and raised in South Wales (with the wildly ambitious Welsh-speaking qualifications to prove it), Emily’s career got off to a fashionable start on the Topshop shop floor in Bridgend. In those halcyon days, Emily, just 16 years old in Joanie jeans, watching Friends in the staff room with her excellent boss, D...

In conversation with Jozef White, founder of Tabula Rasa Records , a writer and philosopher. Jozef was born and raised in San Francisco and has landed, for now, in New Zealand. Jozef’s creative output thrives in spaces where people move together – whether that's collating collective works that capture a specific time signature, or curating events in person in Tokyo, Amsterdam, and San Diego.  The...