Page One - The Writer's Podcast

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Wes Browne lives within the Kentucky River Basin in Madison County, Kentucky. He has practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and public defender in Appalachia for over 25 years. He's also a coach, a poker player, and helps run his family's pizza shops. His book They All Fall the Same won the 2025 Weatherford Award for Fiction, be...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Diana Beaumont is a literary agent with DHH Literary Agency. She started agenting with Rupert Heath Literary Agency in 2011 before moving to TAG and Marjacq Scripts. Before that she was senior commissioning editor at Transworld. Diana was chosen as one of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars of 2012, was a nominee for RNA Agent of the Year 2019, and was shortlis...

On this episode of AIPL, there isn't even a mention of AI! Instead, we talk about how a recent change to Agent ethics guidelines in the US are questionable at best, discuss how publisher's PR promises are often empty (and whether anything could be done to stop that), and dive into a debate about whether memoirs should be fact-checked or should be left to be almost fictional in some cases.....

Watch this as a full video interview on YouTube CL Hellisen, formerly published as Cat Hellisen, is a South African author living in Scotland who writes speculative and fantasy fiction across adult, young adult, and middle-grade genres. Their published works include When the Sea is Rising Red , House of Sand and Secrets , and Beastkeeper , along with numerous award-winning short stories featured i...

Watch as a full video interview on our YouTube channel In this special crossover episode with our sister podcast, Narrative Damage, we chat with the brilliant Jon Gracey! Jon is a writer, actor, producer, games designer and much more! Host of the hugely popular Blood on the Clocktower live, Jon also designs board games and appears regularly on No Rolls Barred as well as other gaming channels playi...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Arvind Ethan David is a writer and producer whose work spans Broadway, television, and film. He was a lead producer of the Tony and Grammy-winning musical, Jagged Little Pill, and has written and produced extensively in television, including Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Anansi Boys, and the Asian Academy Award winner, The Garden of Evening Mis...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. Her third novel, Under Story, will be published in September 2026. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, En...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube On this week’s episode, we are talking about MrBeast & James Patterson’s apparent book flop, and wondering if publishers will learn that social media following doesn’t translate into book sales. Plus, we talk about the Self-Publishing Partnership’s collapse, and discuss how NOT to behave at conventions after stories of a very pushy author came out of Wo...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Doug Johnstone is the author of twenty novels in twenty years, many of which have been bestsellers. The Space Between Us was chosen for BBC Two’s Between the Covers, while six of his books have been shortlisted or longlisted for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year or the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Doug has taught creative wri...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Oli Munson is a leading literary agent with AM Heath in London. He has a list of bestselling authors including Mari Hannah and Nadine Matheson, and is always on the look out for new and exciting commercial fiction. We had a great time chatting with Oli about how he became an agent, hearing about how it has changed since he first joined, and why it's so im...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Ludo Cinelli is an Agent and the Managing Director at Eve White Literary Agency. He joined the company in 2017 and has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. He represents fiction, non-fiction and children’s authors across genres and was shortlisted as British Book Awards Literary Agent of the Year in 2022 and 2026. We had an...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube We're back after a short break, but it appears nothing has changed in publishing as we are still talking about our (least) favourite subject: AI! We go through some listener mail and comments on the subject before diving into Jerry Falade's collapsed $2.4m book deal, wonder if AI detectors are reliable, and have a talk about different methods of book market...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Olivie Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of speculative fiction for adults, including The Atlas Six trilogy, Alone with You in the Ether, Masters of Death, the short story collection Januaries, Girl Dinner, and her most recent novel, Dreamland. With Little Chmura, she is the co-creator of the graphic series Clara and the Devil. As Alexene Far...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Ian Green is a writer from Northern Scotland with a PhD in epigenetics. His biopunk eco-terrorism thriller EXTREMOPHILE was one of Financial Times’ Best Science Fiction Books of 2024 and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Dragon Awards. His debut fantasy trilogy THE ROTSTORM began with the Sunday Times bestseller THE GAUNTLET AND THE FIST...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Corissa Hollenbeck is an associate agent with Janklow & Nesbit. She grew up in Massachusetts and attended Phillips Academy Andover, King’s College London, the University of Freiburg, and the Columbia Publishing Course. She has worked at VICE , Marie Claire , and The Guardian . Corissa has worked with a broad range of prize-winning and bestselling auth...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Camilla Bolton is a literary agent at Darley Anderson, having joined the Agency in 2007 and was named as a publishing Rising Star by The Bookseller in 2013 and shortlisted for Literary Agent of the Year in 2022. She has built the fastest growing new commercial brands in the thriller market with five of her authors having sold over a million copies in the...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Rhiannon Grist is an award-winning Welsh author of Weird, Speculative and Dark fiction, living and writing in beautiful Scotland. Her novella, The Queen of the High Fields (Luna Press), won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella 2023. Her debut novel, Home Sick , is out now. We had great fun chatting with Rhiannon about her writing journey, starting wit...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Aki Schilz is the Director at The Literary Consultancy (TLC), where she co-ordinates partnerships and programmes. She launched the Editing Skills Training Scheme in partnership with the Publishing Training Centre, which trained over 100 aspiring editors from under-represented communities. She has been named as one of the FutureBook 40, a list of people in...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Marco is in a bad mood this week, and doesn’t hold back when discussing the march of AI into audiobooks…! Plus, we chat about the depressing reaction to a book piracy site being taken down, and wonder if Canongate’s new approach to paying authors more regularly will catch on (we aren’t optimistic…) 00:00 Intro 00:54 Here Come The Robots - AI voices taking o...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Chiara Bullen is a Scottish writer and academic living in Glasgow. She spends most of her days researching literature and her evenings writing novels. When she isn’t exploring hills across Scotland, she can be found wandering the fictional mountains of D&D with her party. The Inn At The Foot Of Mount Vengeance is her debut novel. We had a great time c...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Bob Bookman is a Hollywood manager and producer who has worked with some of the biggest authors in the world and helped turn their novels into award-winning movies. He has represented Michael Crichton, Tom Stoppard, Bill Broyles, John Irving, Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Peter Moffat along with many others and has been responsible for bringing movies su...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Matthew Capodicasa is an award-winning playwright whose work has been developed and presented at the Kennedy Center, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the National New Play Network, among many others. A recipient of the Woodward/Newman Drama Award and the Judith Champion Launch Commission, his plays are published by Samuel French. In addition to his exte...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube On this week's episode, we ask if the publishing industry is "blowing the bloody doors off" author rights. From Michael Caine's voice getting cloned for an epic audiobook to Hachette and Studiocanal's book to film deal, plus 250 UK publishers signing a massive AI licensing deal, we ask if any of this is good for authors. 00:00 Intro 01:04 Hachette/Studiocan...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Benedict Anning is a Surrey-born author and short fiction writer living just outside of Edinburgh with his wonderful cat, Penny. An artist at heart and fan of all things eerie, Ben has a special love for twisty horror fiction where the setting is a principal character and things just aren't quite right . Atomic Coffin is his first published novel. We had a...

Watch as full video interviews on YouTube This past weekend, we travelled to London for Capital Crime, London's premier crime and thriller festival and while we were there, we took the opportunity to record some bite-sized interviews with a few authors! We started off speaking with previous guest T.M. Logan, then chatted with Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb, before catching up with Adam Simcox to he...