Page One - The Writer's Podcast

Helen O'Hara is best known for her work at Empire magazine, where she is currently editor-at-large and features regularly on their renowned podcast. She has also been published regularly in newspapers such at The Guardian and The Telegraph, and has written a number of books, the most recent of which is Women vs Hollywood. We had great fun chatting with Helen about her career and hear how she lande...

Miranda Malins is a writer and historian specialising in the history of Oliver Cromwell, his family and the politics of the Interregnum period following the Civil War. She studied at Cambridge University, leaving with a PhD, and continues to speak at conferences and publish journal articles and book reviews. She also enjoys being a Trustee of the Cromwell Association. Given her love of that period...

D. V. Bishop is the author of the Cesare Aldo mysteries set in Renaissance Florence, and published by Pan Macmillan. Before his debut as an author, David had a varied career, from journalism to editing some of the UK's biggest comics at Judge Dredd The Megazine and 2000AD, before becoming an award-winning screenwriter and TV dramatist. City of Vengeance won the Pitch Perfect competition at the Blo...

Jeff VanderMeer’s  NYT -bestselling Southern Reach trilogy has been translated into over 35 languages. The first novel,  Annihilation , won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and was made into a movie by Paramount in 2018. Recent works include  Dead Astronauts ,  Borne  (a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award),  The Strange Bird . These novels, set in the...

Charlie Jane Anders is an award-winning author and journalist who was a founding member of the popular site io9 and whose latest novel, Victories Greater Than Death, is out next week and kicks off a new YA trilogy. She's also the author of  All the Birds in the Sky , which won the Nebula, Crawford and Locus awards, Choir Boy , which won a Lambda Literary Award, and The Cit...

Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age , and the novels The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous , which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times , and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The...

Margaux DeRoux comes from a family of painters, and writes historical fiction that centers on art and artists. Before turning to fiction, she was a teacher, a waitress, and a marketer in Silicon Valley. Her debut novel, The Lost Diary of Venice, features two impossible love stories which are fatefully connected by one artistic legacy that leaps between the mysteries of late-Renaissance Venice and...

Peter Moffat is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written shows such as Silk, Criminal Justice (which was adapted into The Night Of for HBO) and most recently, Your Honor, which stars Bryan Cranston. We had great fun chatting with Peter, learning about how his previous career as a criminal barrister has helped with his writing, and hear how he moved into TV work after writing pl...

Robert Dinsdale is the author of novels including The Harrowing , Little Exiles , The Toymakers and most recently, Paris By Starlight . The magic-infused worlds he had created with his last two books have led to comparisons with Erin Morgenstern and Neil Gaiman. We enjoyed chatting to Robert about his writing journey and hearing about his time as a literary agent, before he flipped sides and becam...

Helen Whitaker is author of the acclaimed comedy, The School Run , and most recently, I Give It A Year . She is also an accomplished journalist, writing for publications such as Glamour, Marie Claire, Women's Fitness and more, and is currently deputy editor of British Airways' in-flight magazine, High Life. We had a fun chat with Helen, learning about how she moved into journalism, and how writing...

Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including High Fidelity and About a Boy , and his latest, Just Like You , along with several works of non-fiction including his ground-breaking debut, Fever Pitch . He has written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn , Wild and, most recently, State of the Union . We had a great chat with Nick hear...

Multi-award winning Mari Hannah is the author of the Kate Daniels series of police procedurals, the Ryan and O'Neil crime series and the Stone and Oliver series. Her latest book in the Kate Daniels series, Without a Trace , is out now and won Capital Crime Book of the Year in 2020. We had a great chat with Mari, hearing about how she moved into writing and her path to publishing - a tale which inc...

Cherie Jones' debut novel ‘ How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House ‘ has been receiving rave reviews from the likes of Bernardine Evaristo, who called it "A hard-hitting and unflinching novel from a bold new writer". Her short stories have variously been published in  PANK ,  Cadenza ,  Eclectica, The Feminist Wire  and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She’s a fellow...

Allie Reynolds is a former professional snowboarder turned author whose debut thriller, Shiver, is out now. We chat to Allie about her long route to publishing, hearing how she found her agent, and learn about what it felt like when Shiver became the subject of a ten publisher auction. We also hear about the importance of revising your work for submission, as well as how she is coping with that di...

Helen Lederer began her career in stand-up comedy at London’s famous Comedy Store, as part of the early 80s comedians including French & Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmonson and Harry Enfield and became famous for portraying Catriona in all six series of Absolutely Fabulous. She has also developed a prolific writing career, writing for radio, TV and more recently books, including Losing It, whic...

Sharon Bolton is the bestselling author of mystery crime novels such as Sacrifice, Blood Harvest and the highly successful Lacey Flint series. Her most recent book, The Split, is a tense twisty thriller which was chosen for Richard and Judy's Book Club at the end of 2020. We had a great chat with Sharon, hearing about how she almost became a Mills and Boon writer before swerving to mystery thrille...

Back in the summer of 2020, we recorded this episode of the Page One Sessions with Laura Lam and Adrian J Walker. We discussed all manner of things, including whether living through a real-life pandemic would alter the way they tell their future-set stories, how they had been writing during the COVID-19 lockdown, heard about their latest projects, got reading recommendations and much more! This ep...

Earlier this year, we chatted with friends of the podcast Sarah Pinborough and Tim Lebbon about how they have been writing during the COVID-19 lockdown, heard about their latest projects, got reading recommendations and much more! This episode is also available as a video podcast on our YouTube site:  https://youtu.be/gmE6iCDYn-s . Be sure to tune in to The Page One Podcast every week for in...

Jennie Fields received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the author of the novels  Lily Beach ,  Crossing Brooklyn Ferry ,  The Middle Ages,  and  The Age of Desire . A Chicago native, Jennie was inspired by her own mother’s work as a University of Chicago-trained biochemist in the 1950s for her latest novel, Atomic Love . We had a great chat with Jennie a...

Matt Ruff is the author of books such as   Fool on The Hill ,  The Mirage , and  Lovecraft Country , which has just been turned into a successful TV show on HBO and Sky Atlantic. His latest novel is 88 names, a cyberpunk/romance mashup set in a virtual world. We had a really interesting chat with Matt, hearing about how he was always destined to be a writer, and why doing creative w...

Alex Garland is the critically acclaimed writer and director of movies such as Ex Machina, Annihilation and, most recently, the TV series Devs. His career began with the bestselling novel, The Beach, before he moved on to writing screenplays for films such as 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. We had a really enjoyable and fascinating chat with Alex about why he ended up returning...

Daniel Abraham is a bestselling science fiction and fantasy author who has written books including the bestselling The Expanse series of books (along with Ty Franck, under the joint name of James SA Corey), which is now a smash hit series on Amazon Prime. He has also written screenplays for The Expanse, written graphic novel adaptations of George R R Martin's Game of Thrones books. We had great fu...

Joe Abercrombie's debut fantasy novel, The Blade Itself , was a huge hit when it was published in 2006, and was swiftly followed by the other books in what became The First Law Trilogy . Since then, he's never really stopped writing, with a series of acclaimed standalone and young adult novels. Most recently, he has returned the the world of the First Law with the first two books of the Age of Mad...

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where she rode horses and trained in classical ballet, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and Las Vegas. Her first novel, The Book of M , won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amaz...

Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief of Random House US. He has overseen books by writers including Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub, and Calvin Trillin. He has copyedited books by authors including EL Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich and Elizabeth Strout. He has also recently written Dreyer's English , a bril...