Unsound Methods

In this month's episode we're joined by the novelist Sophie Mackintosh, who is the author of 'the Water Cure' (2018) and 'Blue Ticket' (2020). Topics covered with Sophie include (alongside much more): the shift to writing full time, the importance of music and having a bespoke playlist for each book, and writing a synopsis at the very beginning to help visualise the shape of a project. You can fin...

“If Adorno was alive today, he’d be writing about football. I don’t think he’d like it… but he’d be writing about it. And Gramsci for sure” In this, our 40th episode, we've got a special Euro 2020 edition of Unsound Methods, where we speak to writer and academic David Goldblatt. David is the author of non-fiction works which cover sport, particularly football, through a fascinating lens of history...

In this episode we speak with DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little (for which he won the Booker Prize in 2003), Ludmila's Broken English (2006), Lights Out in Wonderland (2010), Breakfast with the Borgias (2014) and most recently, Meanwhile in Dopamine City which was published in 2020. Pierre joined us fresh off a bout of working on a non-fiction work and we discussed how this writing differed...

In this month's episode, we speak to Jon McGregor, whose latest novel Lean, Fall, Stand is published by Fourth Estate on 29th April. Jon joined us in the midst of full fat lockdown to discuss how he constructs his novels, his writing residency in Antarctica and the research with people who suffer from aphasia and their carers that informed Lean, Fall, Stand . Jon's novels include: If Nobody Speaks...

In episode 37 we're joined by Douglas Robertson to celebrate the publication of his brand new translation of Thomas Bernhard's Die Billigesser (the Cheap Eaters) and to discuss our favourite Austrian monologuing misanthrope. Douglas is a writer and translator based in Keystone, Florida. He studied British and American Literature at the New College of Florida and Johns Hopkins University. He has tr...

Something a little different for the first pod of 2021: Lochlan and Jaimie get together (remotely) and have a couple of drinks to celebrate the launch of Jaimie's debut novel 'Siphonophore' - which is out now through Valley Press. The chat covers Jaimie's approach to writing, a bit of his history, sacrilegious suggestions of cuts to Finnegans Wake and a discussion of the fundamental weakness of an...

In this month's episode, we caught up with John Englehardt, author of 'Bloomland' (2019, Dzanc Books). John has also written for Vol.1 Brooklyn, Sycamore Review, The Stranger, Seattle Review of Books, Conium Review, Monkeybicycle , and elsewhere. Bloomland deals with the lead-up and fall-out of a college shooting through three separate narratives, told in the second person. Spanning two decades, B...

In this month's episode we took a wild ride with David Keenan. David 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 three 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, For The Good Times, which won t...

In this month's episode we speak to Gabriel Josipovici. Gabriel's first novel was published in 1968 and his writing career spans over twenty works of fiction, numerous works of criticism and non-fiction, and regular articles in the TLS. Continuing our current coronavirus set-up, Gabriel joined us remotely from Sussex and our discussion covered how his writing has developed over six decades, the pe...

“What you push against is as important as what you reach towards” On this month's episode we speak to Irish-Canadian author Anakana Schofield, author of Malarky (2013), Martin John (2016) and Bina (2020). Anakana joined us from the West Coast of Canada to discuss representations of older women in fiction, the musical score of the novel and missing out on multiple Christmases to complete her work,...

Something a little different this month as Lochlan and Jaimie pause to review how the COVID-19 lockdown has impacted their reading and writing, and to take a look back at the teenage reading paths that led them to experimental/innovative fiction. We'd love to hear about your lockdown reading and writing and the reading path you've taken through the fiction forest. Contact us through Twitter, or em...

In episode 30, we speak to writer, translator and musician, Jen Calleja, author of the short story collection 'I'm Afraid that's All We've Got Time For' (2020, Prototype). We (remotely, respecting social distancing!) discuss bus travel as fertile ground for creativity, writing across different forms - from translation to poetry, novels and short stories, and the insight gained from working with wr...

In episode 29, we speak to writer and broadcaster Hamid Ismailov. Hamid joined us pre-Covid-19-lockdown, on his way to the Faversham Literature Festival. Hamid's novels include 'the Devil's Dance' and 'of Strangers and Bees', both available through Tilted Axis Press in the UK. More info at: https://www.tiltedaxispress.com/hamid-ismailov As a writer who works in Uzbek, Russian and English, our disc...

This episode is a little different to our usual output as we speak to Jonathan Simons: publisher, writer, editor, musician, occasional translator, and the person behind the Analog Sea Review. The Analog Sea is an 'offline publisher of printed books', but there's much more to it that that - as you will hear, Jonathan's entire approach involves shunning the online world, almost as a revolutionary ac...

In episode 27 we speak to Caleb Klaces, poet, academic and author of 'Fatherhood' (2019, Prototype). Caleb is also the author of 'Bottled Air' (2013), winner of the Melita Hume Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, as well as two chapbooks: 'All Safe All Well' (2011) and 'Modern Version' (2018). He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at York St John University, and runs the Yo...

In Episode 26, we speak to Vesna Main, author of Good Day? (Salt, 2019) which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize last year. Vesna has previously published A Woman with No Clothes On (Delancey Press 2008) and The Reader the Writer (Mirador, 2015). Temptation: A User’s Guide , a collection of her short stories, was published by Salt in January 2018. https://www.saltpublishing.com/collections/a...

In episode 25, we speak to Tony White, author of ‘The Fountain in the Forest’ (Faber, 2018) as well as ‘Road Rage’, ‘Satan Satan Satan’, ‘Charlieunclenorfolktango’, ‘Foxy-T’, ‘Shackleton’s Man Goes South’, the non-fiction title ‘Another Fool in the Balkans’, and many other short stories, novellas and collaborations. He was writer in residence at the Science Museum, and his novella with artists Bla...

In Episode 24, we speak to Yara Rodrigues Fowler, the author of Stubborn Archivist (Fleet, 2019). We spoke to Yara about publisher demands to make her novel at least twice as long, the power of white space, developing a two-headed bildungsroman, the challenges facing contemporary Brazil and how writers are facing them. You can buy Stubborn Archivist via this page: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/tit...

In Episode 23 we speak to Mazin Saleem, the author of 'the Prick', published as part of Open Pen's series of novelettes.   We speak to Mazin about discovering that you're not really a night-owl, using software to improve your writing productivity, and the freedom of jumping around the manuscript while editing to keep things fresh.   You can buy the Prick here: https://www.openpen.shop/store/p9/the...

In episode 22, we speak to Shiromi Pinto, the author of 'Plastic Emotions' (2019, Influx Press) and 'Trussed' (2006, Serpent's Tail). You can order Plastic Emotions here . We spoke to Shiromi about her use of real letters to produce fiction; what she does with her writing offcuts; how far 500 words a day can get you; and losing faith, spiking a project, and then finding the courage to pick it up a...

In episode 21 we sit down with Mathias Énard, winner of the Prix Goncourt, to speak to him about his process, the line between history and fiction and the benefits of a good pair of slippers. Mathias' work includes the novels ‘Zone’, ‘Compass’, ‘Street of Thieves’ and ‘Tell them of Battles, Kings and Elephants’ which he was promoting when we spoke to him towards the end of last year. All of these...

This month we speak to Norwegian author and artist Edy Poppy. Edy's debut novel Anatomi. Monotoni. won the Gylendal Prize in 2005 and was recently published in English as Anatomy. Monotony. by Dalkey Archive. Tr. May-Brit Akerholt. Anatomy. Monotony. is available at Dalkey Archive Press, who will also publish the collection Coming. Apart. (containing the 'Dungeness' short story that we discuss)  M...

In this episode we speak to novelist, bookseller and publisher Samuel Fisher.  Sam's debut 'the Chameleon' was published by Salt in 2018. You can buy the Chameleon here: Salt - the Chameleon As we mention at the beginning, there were some technical issues with the sound on one of the microphones in this episode - apologies, but it should sound ok if you're listening on earphones/headphones. You ca...

In episode 18, we speak to Marc Nash, most recently author of 'Three Dreams in the Key of G', published by Dead Ink in 2018. Marc joined us in London to discuss choosing the playlist to write to, intense bursts of writing during the summer holidays, using the editing process to add material rather than remove, playing through language, writing across gender and plenty more. You can follow Marc @21...

Welcome all to the first Unsound Methods of 2019! This month, we are delighted to be joined for a second time by Eimear McBride. In episode 12 we spoke to Eimear alongside Noémi Lefebvre but we didn't have much time to speak to them before that evening's event, so Eimear was kind enough to come to the studio for a more extended chat. Among other subjects in this episode we discuss Eimear's process...