Fictionable

We've already heard from Cynthia Zarin, Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard in this Winter series – we'll be welcoming Cynthia Banham and Samuel Rigg on to the podcast over the next few weeks. But this time we're putting Tim Conley on the turntable with his short story Records.While Conley does confess to owning a few vinyls, he's fascinated by the idea that a record can also be "something that we regret". If you look at where the word comes from, he continues, "to record something is to have it by heart, again. That intrigues me, because there are things that we want to forget and things that we want to remember."In Records, the author explains, "Anna's trying to forget and the ghost is trying to remember, or reclaim a past that he once had".As a literature professor who writes on Joyce, Nabokov and Beckett, Conley admits that his own fiction can be a little highbrow, but insists that it's "not without a great deal of feeling"."Thinking and feeling are not opposed to each other," he says. "As AI debates show us, people seem to think that thinking is somehow greater than feeling, and that's not true. They're both a very humane human activities."Conley's fiction is also shot through with humour, but that's only part of the picture."It has to be fluid," he says. "Funny is part of a strategy, but it's not exactly a goal in itself."This kind of variety is what draws Conley to short form fiction."The novel can be swallowed up a lot more by convention," he argues. "In some ways it's more compromised."If the novel is "a little more tyrannical", Conley adds, the short story "is a lot more liberating in a weird, weird way. It also can linger."We'll be hanging around with Samuel Rigg next time and his short story At the Rink. You'll find him here on the site, or from Apple podcasts, Spotify, Acast, Podchaser and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We began this Winter series of podcasts with Cynthia Zarin, who suggested that every single one of us is torn in different ways. We'll be examining those cracks with Tim Conley, Cynthia Banham and Samuel Rigg over the next few weeks, but this time we welcome Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard.According to Urquiola, his short story DYSNEYWORLD is all true. The author says that – just like his character – he grew up in a couple of small rooms on the edge of La Paz and sometimes stayed in the big house where his grandma worked, a childhood he says was like "living in two worlds".The gap between one world and another was hard he continues, but he's "not complaining. When I was a child, that arduous path exhausted me too much. But everything I experienced, when it wasn't sad or painful, seemed fun, full of adventures and discoveries."Other writers might have explored these memories in autobiography, but when Urquiola started writing about a football match it came out as fiction. He compares memory to a bolt of lightning, which suddenly "illuminates everything"."The short story is the genre where this magical feeling can be achieved and left to linger in the mind," he says.While there are always losses when you translate from Spanish to English, Brassard argues that it's worth the heartache to get a flavour of La Paz."Rodrigo's writing captures the rhythms, the poetry, the way that people talk," she says.This reportage is central to Urquiola's project."A writer is simply an observer who reads," he explains. "Writing is a way of reading."But there's still a lot of freedom in the way an author can make these observations."Any genre is useful to say the truth," Urquiola insists, "not just realism. When I read great sci-fi, for example Philip K Dick, he is telling me the truth. He's showing me the world in a way that's possible to see it and I don't think he's lying to me." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's cold, it's wet, it's January. Time for another series of exclusive short stories and another series of podcasts. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing from Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and his translator Shaina Brassard, as well as Tim Conley, Cynthia Banham and Samuel Rigg. But we kick off this winter series with Cynthia Zarin and Housekeeping.Zarin reveals that both the houses in her short story are taken from life, but with a certain amount of embroidery."Everything is drawn from life," she says, "because what else is there?"Her protagonist is torn between New York City and Cape Cod, her heart "in two places at once", the author continues, but that's hardly unusual. "Very few of us live lives that are not full of complication and conflict."After five books of poetry and a glittering career as a journalist, Zarin says she fell into prose fiction almost by accident."I'd started writing, actually, a letter," she explains, "and then that letter just became something I wrote all the time. It started out as a letter to a specific person, but it became absolutely something else."Zarin's novels Inverno and Estate are constructed in layers, with significant moments tolling through them like bells – a natural form for a writer who believes that "everything is about memory".But it's a form that took some time to emerge. When she showed the work in progress to her friends they would say, "OK sweetheart, it's very beautiful, but what is it?"Zarin says that she began to find out what her letter might be when the artist and writer Leanne Shapton told her to "Stop trying to put it together, take it apart." And she identifies a meeting with her agent, Luke Ingram, as another turning point."We started to talk about the structure," she recalls, "and we drew it on a napkin."As a poet and journalist, Zarin says she finds prose fiction something of a liberation."The idea that you can have a character and you can decide that she has red hair – it's fun."We'll be having more fun next time with Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Autumn series of podcasts has already brought us Helon Habila, Caroline Clark and Kasimma. We round it off with Ephameron and her graphic short story <cloud_update>.This enigmatic comic imagines a couple divided by distance but reaching for connection by talking about the weather. So when Ephameron joined us down the line from Antwerp, we began with an update on the skies.Clouds are endlessly fascinating, the author says, "A lot of painters have been interested in painting skies and how you do the textures right."In <cloud_update>, Ephameron uses watercolours, a technique she says she first adopted when she was travelling, pairing it with a font based on the video game Minecraft."I'm an artist," she explains, "so I try and draw inspiration from a lot of different corners of the web."This broad vision, married with a background in fine arts and an ambition to tell "stories that are set in real life, that are talking about real issues", puts Ephameron's work firmly on the boundary between art and story."I really want to push the borders," she says.That's all for this Autumn season. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've already heard from Helon Habila and Caroline Clark in this Autumn series of podcasts, and we'll be rounding out the set with Ephameron in the next couple of weeks. But this time we welcome Kasimma and her short story Mama Taught Me That.This story is set in the 16th century."We are not really sure what life was like then," Kasimma explains. "After colonisation, a lot of our culture was destroyed or merged with the beliefs of the colonisers, so that we don't really – in my opinion – have the original culture and beliefs that we had then, before European intrusion."Some of the most important differences in Igboland – the homeland of the Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria – were around women's rights, she continues. "Everybody was equal. Both male and female owned land, both male and female could do the same kind of jobs. There was no 'A man is better than a woman,' or 'A male child is preferred.' All these things are just debris of colonisation."Many of the details of life five hundred years ago are lost, so there was a lot of freedom in trying to capture that world view."It's mostly just fiction," she says.Our ancestors may have been more connected with the natural and spiritual worlds, Kasimma continues, so there is a lot to learn from them. "But we shouldn't go back. I don't want to go back. I like my phone, and I like my laptop. I like the airplanes, I like the nice hotels. I love how far we've gone, as human beings, to make life easier for ourselves and to bring communication closer."Next time we'll be communicating with Ephameron, discussing the weather and her graphic short story <cloud_update>.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Autumn series of podcasts started with Helon Habila confronting the difficult legacy of slavery in the US. Over the next few weeks, we'll be talking with Ephameron and Kasimma. But this time we welcome Caroline Clark and I Will Go.Clark tells us she isn't really sure where this haunting story started."I could tell you a story about how this story came together," she says, "but it probably wouldn't be the real one."The author explains how she assembles her writing mosaic fashion, instead of a "linear, chronological manner"."I think that's what I have to do," she says, "to get my words out there – come upon something from a different angle."This mysterious process may have served her in poetry, memoir and now fiction, but she isn't hung up about genre, suggesting that her work is "all connected"."When I've written everything you'll have the video game of Caroline Clark," the author adds, "and you can play it."We'll be levelling up with Kasimma next time as we discuss history, equality and her short story Mama Taught Me That. You can find her here on the site or via Apple podcasts, Spotify, Acast and Podchaser and more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here in the northern hemisphere it's getting misty and mellow all over again. Time for Autumn 2025 and another fruitful harvest of podcasts, ripened to the core. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hearing from Caroline Clark, Kasimma and Ephameron. But we launch into autumn with Helon Habila and his story Paradise.Habila tells us how, after twenty years of living in the USA, in this story he's trying to "make sense of America"."History is not past," Habila says, "it's still with us, and we're living the consequences of that history of slavery in America. To even begin to understand the place, you have to grapple with that history."Paradise puts different Black experiences alongside each other – a Nigerian girl living in Northern Virginia, a young woman whose mother is Nigerian and whose father is white, and a vision of the Brazilian countryside "filled with Black people". But at the heart of the story are two twins, whose ancestors were enslaved on the Strout Estate.When they return to the house, there's "almost a beautiful symmetry", Habila says, "a cycle coming to a close"."You can only imagine that, for them, what it must feel like." To be free people, he continues, knowing their ancestors could never have dreamed of the freedoms that they enjoy today, "that's the contradiction, that's the complexity in American history and the American present, where the past is always in conflict with the present".Some people want to erase the evidence, Habila adds, to "rewrite history. They want to claim that the slaves were actually happier being slaves than Black people are today."The pressure on academics, the new boldness of people in power to say out loud what could only be said before in a whisper is "scary" he says, but he has to go on. "The only thing one can do as an artist is just to remind people and historicise these things and try to turn it into art."Next time, Caroline Clark will be talking about the inevitable pain of the writing life and her short story I Will Go. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This summer series of podcasts has taken us from the snow and ice of AL Kennedy's Expedition Skills to the blunt heat of Ali McClary's Proper Magic, and from the staccato fragments of Pete Segall's Bolex Man to the unstoppable momentum of Dafydd McKimm's The Nosebleed.We bring this season to a close with Sheyla Smanioto and the haunting threat of her short story Intruder, translated by Laura Garmeson and Sophie Lewis.Speaking with the help of the interpreter Jaciara Topley Lira, Smanioto tells us that the story came to her with "almost the last sentence", in a dream where "Somebody was holding me by the throat and saying, 'Look how difficult it will be for me not to kill you when I'm choking you'."She had to deliver that sentence so that she could recreate the feeling she had in the dream, she continues, "And so that's why I needed to trick the reader sometimes."The slippery first-person plural, the sudden switches between the present and the past and the abrupt swerves into dialogue that keep the reader on their toes are also a challenge for the writer."So, in a way," Smanioto adds, "both me and the reader are victims of what the text needed."Pito's bar is midway along the great journey from the country to the city that Smanioto charts in her novel Out of Earth."It's a historical movement," the author says. "It's a movement that brought my family to São Paulo. But when you look at it as a movement, it always looks like it is made up of a mass. But it's never a mass, it's made up of people."The people who make this journey are left with a "specific type of loneliness", Smanioto continues, an emptiness that she has tried to fill with her writing by "creating a culture that was a sort of dream, a memory of the past".Even though she calls herself a "very intellectual" writer, dreams are still central to her work."I have studied technique," Smanioto says, "I'm a literature graduate. But I can't create anything if I don't feel it in my skin first." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This summer, we've heard from AL Kennedy, Pete Segall and Ali McClary. We'll be bringing this series to a close with Sheyla Smanioto, but this time Dafydd McKimm steps into the consulting room with his short story The Nosebleed.McKimm tells us how The Nosebleed was a story that came to him with the ending already in place, citing the translator Michael Hofmann and his notion of Kafka time, where it's "already too late".With this type of story, the author says, "You just set the ball rolling and the characters fruitlessly struggle against the inevitability of that ending."Even though McKimm tries to keep politics out of his stories, it's a notion that feels very 21st century."We do certainly seem to be living in a world where, if it wasn't too late ten years ago, it certainly is too late now," he says. "We might be fighting a losing battle."While the sharp divisions in the bookshop between fantasy and surreal fiction are something of a mirage, McKimm continues, there is still a difference of approach."Even though you might write a secondary-world fantasy, where the world is very different to the world we live in," he explains, "it's going to have dragons or whatever, or magic exists, the tone of the world is very similar. Whereas in a surrealist story, or an absurdist story, it's the feverishness of the tone that is turned up. You turn up the dial on your paranoia, on your madness essentially, your internal madness."Next time we'll be turning up the dial with Sheyla Smanioto and her short story Intruder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've already heard from AL Kennedy and Pete Segall in this summer series of podcasts, and we’ll be hearing from Sheyla Smanioto and Dafydd McKimm over the next few weeks. But this time we're summoning up Ali McClary and her short story Proper Magic.McClary confesses that the intense friendship between Min and Hazel is drawn from her own experience."I hope that all girls, all women have these kinds of friendships," she says, "that feel a little bit magic, a little bit disgusting."They may not always end well, McClary continues, "but for those brief moments or those long, hot summers, they're really beautiful, and they're the most important thing in people's lives".The trauma buried at the core of Proper Magic emerged out of the writing process. And it was only when looking back at the story and starting to edit that the author says she realised "how dark and how heavy the secret at the heart of the story is"."When grief hits," McClary explains, "or there's a big cataclysmic event in someone's life, I think it's fairly common that people slip out of reality a little bit. Everything becomes slightly unreal, they see everything with an entirely different lens because the world as they have known it for so long has been completely shattered."We'll be looking beyond the real with Dafydd McKimm next time, and his short story The Nosebleed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We began this Summer series of podcasts with AL Kennedy arguing that the empathy which powers fiction makes writing it a political act. We'll be talking fiction – or maybe politics – with Sheyla Smanioto, Ali McClary and Dafydd McKimm over the next few weeks. But this time we're zooming in on Pete Segall and his story Bolex Man.Segall tells us that this series of snapshots emerged after he took up analogue photography. He was wandering around the neighbourhood taking pictures of "the same buildings, the same places" and he began to ask himself "if there are posts in some kind of Facebook group about 'Is there this weird guy taking pictures of your house?'"As his fictional neighbourhood and its inhabitants came into focus, it became clear the story was about "looking and looking back and being looked at," he continues, a feeling that is "very modern"."There's a very ambient feeling of being watched," Segall says, "of being perceived."Bolex Man is a story assembled out of fragments – an accommodating form for someone who "writes in very small bursts" – and it's up to the reader to fill in the spaces between each frame."I don't feel like it's my job as a writer to answer questions," Segall explains. "I feel like it's my job to ask, 'What is going on?' To delineate the experience of not knowing what is going on."After years in which Segall tried to write "conventional fiction" with plot and character, he's embraced his natural rhythm."If that means that a story ends up being four words long," he says, "then a story is four words long. And I am in love with that."Next time we'll be falling for female friendship with Ali McClary and her short story Proper Magic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's raining in London, but it's time for another issue – and another series of Fictionable podcasts. Over the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Sheyla Smanioto, Pete Segall, Ali McClary and Dafydd McKimm. But we begin Summer 2025 with AL Kennedy, and her icy short story Expedition Skills.Kennedy says that the story emerged out of the "very strange day" earlier this year which saw the commemoration of Martin Luther King and the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Upstate New York was covered in snow and ice, she explains and "it seemed good to put people in that weirdness of first snow, because it always looks like a clean start".The author was sitting at home "not watching the inauguration… the most not-watched inauguration in history", and thinking about wealth."It is a time when the wealthy are just inconceivably wealthy," she says, "and other people are always dodging complete destitution."In Expedition Skills, Martin wants to wander across boundaries like kids, who can "go wherever they like". But the limits on our freedoms are never quite as solid as they might look, Kennedy argues, "because a lot of policing and democracy and power is about consent. And if you don't consent, the people in charge, they're always a massively smaller number."If people want to keep politics out of fiction, "you'd have to keep people out," she continues."Writing well, trying to create characters that people can enter into and practise empathy, and reverse the psychological pressure that is online, that's a political act. I'm sorry, it just is. That's why people like Erdoğan and Trump and Bolsonaro and all the variety of dictators who are floating about, that's why they'll arrest you. That's why they'll suppress your work. That's why they like burning books."Kennedy's latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, features a set of major characters who are all damaged in one way or another, but "that's life", says the author. "Very hard to not have trauma. I don't even know if it's entirely healthy to not have any obstacles."And it's either great pain or great joy that delivers the extraordinary emotional spike that fiction requires. Writing about the positive side may be "very difficult", Kennedy adds, but only focusing on the bad things in life would be "psychopathic. It's just, buckle up and try to make the good stuff interesting."Next time, we'll be looking for the good stuff with Pete Segall and his short story Bolex Man. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This spring we've heard from Fríða Ísberg, Bronia Flett, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods already. But we bring this series to a close with Susanna Clarke and her short story The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City.Clarke tells us that it's a story she's been thinking about for some time."I have never really stopped thinking about Strange and Norrell," she says. "It's a world that keeps summoning me back."In the novel, The Raven King was very young when he first arrived in England, Clarke explains, "and I had an idea that he wasn't too happy. And also that he would be surrounded by politicians."Even though The King of the North is not a fairy himself, she continues, "his fairy upbringing has had a massive influence on him, and he's never really quite at home with human beings. He ends up in this middle space, not quite one thing and not quite another. And that's kind of useful to him, but it's also quite lonely."Clarke remembers learning at school that the Norman conquest was a wonderful thing, but it was actually a massive upheaval."Nobody quite realised that of course it's being conquered by the French," she says. "And that, particularly for the north, was an absolutely traumatic thing."Just as in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke found that exploring the differences between her human characters "made a little space to put the fairies in"."In a fantastical story, you've got to play with things being very fantastical and alien, and also try to make them slightly humdrum, so that they become believable."The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City is full of Clarkean weather, the "thick mist" around Durham, the rain falling across the New Castle on the Tyne in "grey, slanting lines", and the author confesses she feels at home in the rain."If you look at Strange and Norrell," she says, "most of it is set in winter. I think, grudgingly, there are a few chapters set in summer."The rain and wind even seep inside the house in Piranesi, another novel poised like its author between Classicism and the Romantics."I like the formality of 19th-century prose," she says, "but I always want to push it out of a 19th-century shape and do something different with it."Clarke found she was pushed to do something different herself, when her long struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome made her put aside the sequel to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and focus on "things that felt feasible". But she hasn't left it behind."I'm still moving towards it," she says, "and I do hope to have the energy and just the brains to write it. It's far from abandoned. It's absolutely what I want to do with my life."Fatigue and brain fog may make it harder to write, Clarke admits, but they don't bring the creative process to a halt."Stories and fiction don't really come from that place," she declares, "at least they don't in me. They come from my imagination, from my unconscious, and those things aren't ill. They're fine." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've already welcomed Fríða Ísberg, Bronia Flett and PR Woods in this Spring series, and Susanna Clarke will be joining us next time. But now we're hearing from Jeremy Wikeley with his short story Kent's Oak.According to Wikeley, his main character's disconnected connection with his neighbours on the estate is just how it felt when he was growing up in the suburbs of a small town."You were very familiar with a lot of places and a lot of things," he says, "and you were at home. But you didn't have many opportunities to express that with other people and therefore were you really at home?"As someone who has "always felt very English and sort of not English," Wikeley explains, Englishness is "a big hobbyhorse of mine – what it is, how it feels".There's an element of disconnection buried in the heart of Englishness, he continues. "Nature writing, which is tied up with Englishness, is often a response to the destruction of the countryside and the destruction of nature. And so the time element of it is always loaded with loss, but also with nostalgia."But for Wikeley these losses are an inevitable part of being human."I don't have a problem with cutting down trees," he says, "which is maybe not what you were expecting from this story… as long as you're doing it for a reason." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've already heard from Fríða Ísberg and Bronia Flett in this Spring series, and we'll be welcoming Susanna Clarke and Jeremy Wikeley on to the Fictionable podcast over the next few weeks. But this time we're going back in time with PR Woods and her short story Our Lady of Sorrows.Woods tells us how Sister Avis came to her after someone wrote to the Guardian about Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall arguing "It's a great story, but it didn't happen like that."In the 16th century, the dissolution of the monasteries was a great upheaval, Woods says, so she asked herself "how did it actually happen? You've got this massive, fundamental change in the landscape of England, the literal landscape – houses and buildings being demolished – but also the religious landscape. I was just interested in the logistics of of it.""An awful lot of the monks and the friars could become what we would essentially think of as parish priests now," she continues. "But that obviously wasn't an option for the women. So where did they all go?"While Woods confesses a fascination with the Tudors, she's no fan of Henry VIII."He was a tyrant," she says, "he was dreadful to women, to all his wives in one way and another."But Woods imagines that Sister Avis would have seen this awful king for what he was."I like to think that she tutted whenever she heard rumours about what Henry VIII was doing, that she was disappointed by him again and again." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fríða Ísberg got this Spring series of podcasts started, with a dialogue on monologues and a reading from her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer. We'll be welcoming Susanna Clarke, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods on to the podcast over the next few weeks, but right here and right now we're talking transformation with Bronia Flett.Flett tells us how her short story Leopard, Spots fell into her lap, and explains why she wanted to put female friendship under the lens."We do form these close bonds," she says, "and more often than not they're our defining relationships in our lives."Women who are very close to each other may tell each other a lot, Flett continues, but "it might not necessarily be positive conversation all the time. And we are still keeping things from each other, and we are still inventing ourselves in the presence of other people."This constant negotiation of the self with others begins at a very early age, she argues, confessing that the argument between two children in Leopard, Spots was plucked from life."We're always telling other people who we think they are and should be," Flett says, "and insisting on who we are and being told, 'No, you're not'."Maybe some of us are predisposed to "brooding on these issues", she admits, but – for the writer – "looking back for those moments where you think 'Oh, why did I behave like that? Who was that person who behaved like that?' That's where you start to get these universal truths." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything is changing, but one thing you can rely on is a new set of stories and a new series of podcasts from Fictionable. Spring 2025 brings us stories from Susanna Clarke, Bronia Flett, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods – we'll be hearing from them all over the next few weeks. But we begin with Fríða Ísberg and her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer.Like much of her work, Ísberg explains, Fingers began with the cadence of a character's thought."You don't need to know what the mother's name is," she says, "or the job description, or where they live. You don't need to know that at the beginning, you just really need the rhythm of that person. It's like knitting a sweater. You just need to know what kind of pattern you are doing and then you can just do the whole thing."The narrator in Fingers is woven from the anxious expectations that surround relationships in the 21st century."It's really hard to meet the standards that we have towards the love match these days," Ísberg says.In western societies, women are shaking off the constraints imposed on them and refusing to "sacrifice their standards"."Power is shifting, absolutely," Ísberg says, noting that "The Icelandic word for marriage is brúðkaup, which is 'bridal buy'."The glass may be half full for gender equality in Iceland – a country currently governed by a coalition led entirely by women – but violence against women is still a reality Ísberg can't ignore."I have three close friends who have had their former boyfriends just completely lose it," she says, "breaking into their apartments or staying outside their house or their car. It's really threatening and they don't see it as a threat, because they see it as a romantic gesture."In a world where people are increasingly demanding simple narratives from their political leaders, fiction can help us navigate the messy complications of real life."For me," Ísberg says, "it's always more trying to understand the two different views." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After hearing from Helga Schubert, Ben Sorgiovanni, Julian George and Rachida Lamrabet, we bring this Winter series of podcasts to a close with Joanna Kavenna and her short story Notes on the Future.Kavenna tells us how this story was born from an obsession with patterns and a robust detachment from her characters."I like to have quite questing narrators," she says, "who are desperately trying to find meaning in a world that keeps depriving them of meaning. Which is probably quite autobiographical."When you’re writing, Kavenna continues, you’re constantly forced up against the gap between language and the world. But it’s a question that none of us can avoid."All of us are in this," she explains, "whether we like to be or not. And it’s this strange illogic logic that we’re all existing within."While the characters in Kavenna’s novel A Field Guide to Reality are in pursuit of a book that will answer all their questions, Notes on the Future begins when a book which promises to reveal the future is found. But according to Kavenna the future is "a massive area of complete, unknowable fiction" for us all."There’s something quite powerful about the predictions of the future that we all make," she says, "because we’re more likely – potentially – to unravel things towards them."Even if we could conjure a world in which we know everything, it’s not clear that we would want to take that path."Would we want to know the full remit of the future," Kavenna asks, "or would that be actually the most horrifying nightmare of all?"The AI-driven future imagined in the author’s novel Zed takes her characters dangerously close to that precipice."I felt really sorry for them," she admits, "because I put them in this dystopia, which seemed really unfair after spending so long with them."Five years after Zed hit the shelves, that future is coming down the track with alarming speed."If you’re going to be compelled to live in a certain reality," Kavenna says, "it would be nice to be asked. And I think that’s the major political question that we now have." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this Winter season we've already heard from Helga Schubert, Ben Sorgiovanni and Julian George. Joanna Kavenna will be rounding off the series next time, but right here and now we welcome Rachida Lamrabet and her short story Two Girls on Bicycles, translated by Johanna McCalmont.Lamrabet recalls how this story was set in motion by a chance encounter with an old friend, which brought back memories of pedal-powered escapades while she was a teenager."Everyone had a bike," she remembers. "If you didn't have a bike you'd steal a bike…"Her character decides to leave her childhood behind, a choice that always comes "with a cost", Lamrabet says."We're living in a society, especially in western Europe, where apparently it isn't possible to have a compromise between different worlds, different backgrounds. Very often we are led to believe that you cannot have both, you have to make a choice."The unequal society in which we live is marked by divisions of class and race which could only be addressed through radical change, she continues. "Those who want to maintain the status quo, they are not in favour of that movement."There are signs that Belgium is beginning to confront its colonial past, but according to Lamrabet "we still have difficulty facing what we did"."This country cannot continue to hide itself," she says. "It must confront that history."Perhaps fiction, which is powered by empathy, can play a part."It will not change the world overnight," Lamrabet admits, "but I think it's important to take that platform, to introduce these different stories and to tell your perspective." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So far we've heard from Helga Schubert and Ben Sorgiovanni in this Winter season. We'll be welcoming Joanna Kavenna and Rachida Lamrabet over the next couple of weeks, but for this feature we present Julian George and The Movie Lovers.George tells us how this short story emerged from the classic 1950s sitcom, The Honeymooners."I just thought of the character played by Audrey Meadows, Alice," he says. "Sometimes that character wanted something else, or there were moments of unexpected poignancy."The cinema on East 14th Street where his two movie lovers meet was a "real picture palace", George continues. "I don't know if Charlie Chaplin or Al Jolson or Jimmy Cagney ever went there, but I like to think they did."There may be plenty of gaps in the history of the Imperial for the writer of fiction to explore, but George was determined to find room to experiment in his novella Bebe, a fantasia on the life of Richard Nixon's friend, confidant and fixer Bebe Rebozo."I could have written this rather straightforward book," he explains, but "I have to keep myself entertained. I like to have a laugh."Writing may be fun, but as a poet George is keenly aware of the need to measure out his prose, beat by beat."I want it to sing," he says, "but the song might be a darker one." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.