Unsound Methods

In this episode we caught up with Canadian writer Sarah Bernstein (featuring occasional contributions from her then newborn child). Sarah is the author of the novels 'the Coming Bad Days' (2021) and 'Study for Obedience' (2023) and the poetry collection 'Now Comes the Lightening' (2015). Recorded back at the beginning of 2024, our chat covers, amongst other things, the relative importance of voice...

This month we are speaking with international prize-winning novelist and former Edinburgh Makar / Poet Laureate (2008-2014), Ron Butlin. In 2009 he was made the first-ever Honorary Writing Fellow (together with Ian Rankin) at Edinburgh University. Much of his work — novels, short stories and poetry — has been widely broadcast and translated. In addition to his plays for BBC radio and theatre, he h...

This month's episode features our chat with novelist and short story writer Amina Cain, the author of the novel Indelicacy , a New York Times Editors’ Choice and finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux , and two collections of short stories, Creature and I Go To Some Hollow . Her latest book, A Horse at...

This month’s episode is our chat with the late Christopher Priest, who sadly passed away on 2nd February 2024. In what will have been one of his last interviews, we spoke to Christopher on 3rd November 2023, where he talked us through his development as a writer, his skepticism about using notebooks, dealing with dreadful editors,  not writing for nine years, and how writing is like walking to Don...

This month we return to our first in-person recording for way too long, as we sat down with writer, musician and all-round cultural agitator Bill Drummond. As half of the KLF, Bill produced some of the finest singles of the 1990s, before dumping a dead sheep at the door of the Brit Awards, deleting the group's back catalogue and burning a million quid on a Scottish Island. But he has a writing lif...

This month, we are speaking to the Egyptian poet and author Iman Mersal. We talk about the genesis of ideas, structure and form when writing in Arabic, and the importance of urgency in directing your writing. Iman's work includes the creative non-fiction work Traces of Enayat (2023, And Other Stories https://www.andotherstories.org/traces-of-enayat/ ), and her poetry  has been featured in numerous...

Episode 60 with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams This month, we are speaking to not one but two authors as we discuss collaborative writing with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams. Natasha and Luke are the joint authors of Diego Garcia , winner of the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize. We talk about their unique approach to crafting a novel and the differences between empathy and solidarity, as well...

We're opening 2024 with our chat with David Shields: David is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics...

In this episode we're joined by Johanna Hedva, a Korean American writer, artist, and musician who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Johanna is the author of the essay ‘Sick Woman Theory’, originally published in 2016, which has now been translated into ten languages. Hedva is also the author of the novel On Hell, which was one of Dennis Cooper’s favo...

For episode 57 we caught up with the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, author of 8 novels, 3 collections of short stories, numerous plays and pieces of non-fiction and 5 memoirs. An indefatigable defender and promoter of African literature and language, Ngũgĩ’s writing spans from the early 1960s onwards. He talked to us about his journey to becoming a writer, from having friends who proved he didn’...

For episode 56 we're joined by Daisy Hildyard, the author of two novels – Emergency (2022) and Hunters in the Snow (2013) – and one work of nonfiction, The Second Body (2017). Daisy’s first novel, Hunters in the Snow , received the Somerset Maugham Award and a ‘5 under 35’ honorarium at the USA National Book Awards. Her essay The Second Body , a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundari...

This month marks the fifth anniversary of Unsound Methods - thank you to everyone who's joined us along the way, and hello to any new arrivals... In this episode we speak to Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey about the writing of their collaboratively composed novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (available from Boiler House Press, here: https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/macbeth-macbeth-by-ewan-fernie-sim...

In a slight shift from our literary fiction focus, we caught up with writer and script editor Jenny Landreth - one of the driving forces behind the brilliant children's animated TV show 'Hey Duggee'. Having both become fathers only weeks apart in the summer of 2018, Hey Duggee was one of the most joyful discoveries in the often barren wastelands of our young daughters' TV choices... We learnt abou...

In this episode with chatted with Etgar Keret, writer of short stories, comics, a children's book and a memoir. Etgar's books have been published in fifty languages. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope. He is currently a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He has received the Book Publishers Association'...

Our guest in this episode is Australian writer Daniel Davis Wood, author of Blood and Bone (2014) which won the Viva La Novella Prize and At the Edge of the Solid World (2020), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Our chat with Daniel covered unconventional composition techniques derived from artistic practice, the difference between writing novellas and novels, reading your work ou...

Episode 51 with Claudia Durastanti. This month we speak to writer and translator Claudia Durastanti. We cover the importance of travel and geography in writing, mapping fictional spaces, translation and the overlap of metaphor between languages. Claudia is the author of Strangers I Know and Cleopatra Goes To Prison, translated to English, as well as well as Un giorno verrò a lanciare sassi alla tu...

Hitting the half century, we speak to British-Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Cullen, author of collections including Wave Caps (2014), Paranoid Narcissism! (2017) and, most recently, Hologram (2022). Miguel's work has involved integrating sound chips and video-screens into the bound collections, raising some interesting blends of form. He has been published by Caught by the River, Abridged,...

This month we speak to writer and artist Sara Baume. Sara is the author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015), A Line Made by Walking (2017), the non-fiction handiwork (2020) and Seven Steeples , which is released this month on Tramp Press, who have published all of her work so far. Amongst much else, we cover: living a creative life that combines writing and visual art; learning narrative from art...

In this episode we speak to writer Richard Beard. Richard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead , Dry Bones and Damascus , which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and he is the author of five works of narrative non-fiction. His memoir The Day That Went Missing won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiog...

In our latest episode we had a chat with novelist Sam Byers, author of Idiopathy (2013), Perfidious Albion (2018) and last year's Come Join Our Disease . We talked about needing to write ideas down and how they eventually demand it, using a journal while writing a novel, getting the voice right before venturing too far and the vast gulf between dialogue on the page and in the real world. Sam has a...

Our first guest of 2022 is the novelist Keith Ridgway, author of, among other works, 'the Long Falling' (1998), 'the Parts' (2003), 'Animals' (2006), 'Hawthorn and Child' (2012) and, most recently, 'A Shock' (2021), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Keith was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2001. Our chat with Keith took us through the daily fight with the concept of routine, specificity...

Our guest this month is Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy (2009), Cold Light (2011), The Friday Gospels (2013), Fell (2017) and the non-fiction work Notes Made While Falling (2019). Her latest novel is Ghosted: A Love Story out now with Sceptre. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University. Amongst much else we talk about: getting through lockdown with th...

This month we are joined by Lucie Elven, short-story writer and author of the Weak Spot, the debut novel published earlier this year by Prototype in the UK. Lucie has written for publications including the London Review of Books, Granta and NOON.   Our chat took us on an Alpine tour through topics including: how notes demand to be put into short stories or novels, developing a long-term relationsh...

As we roll into autumn, we're joined by Rebecca Watson, novelist and arts writer. Rebecca's debut novel, Little Scratch, grew from a short story that was shortlisted for the White Review short story prize and the novel itself was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize.  Among all the other talking our chat took us through: expanding a short story into a novel. Investigating how writing...

For our August '21 episode we're joined by Natasha Brown, the author of Assembly, which is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and will be released in the U.S. on 14th September 2021 by Little, Brown . Our discussion with Natasha includes workshopping at different stages, making speech real on the page, liberal use of index cards, and being in the enviable position of having a novel translated...