Season 4 · New episodes every Wednesday
Hosted by Nora Ellis. Long form interviews on craft, revision, rejection and the business of publishing, for authors building a body of work and readers who want to know how it is made.
48K+
Monthly listeners
126
Episodes published
72
Countries reached
4.9
Average rating
Featured episode
Episode 126 · Craft
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Novelist & essayist
Four years, one abandoned narrator and a shelf of Biafran war memoirs. Adichie on research as a cure for fear, the danger of the single story, and why she threw away two years of work.
Play this episodeLatest episodes
Ep. 12503:13Craftwith Kazuo Ishiguro, Novelist, Nobel laureate
On the four week writing 'crash', building a narrator whose feelings are all in the silences, and why he drafts imagining a reader in translation.
Ep. 12402:46Craftwith Margaret Atwood, Novelist & poet
Frame stories, longhand mornings and why she'd rather be called a filing clerk than a prophet. Also: read your contracts more carefully than your reviews.
Ep. 12303:07Revisionwith Colson Whitehead, Novelist
Why he shelved his best idea until he could carry it, how he rationed the research, and building a novel where every state is a different genre of America.
Upcoming live events
38 dates announced, each one counts down and files itself into the archive the moment it starts.
WorkshopUpcomingPachinko · Grand Central, 2017
with Min Jin Lee, Novelist
National Book Award finalist, 2017
Lee brings the 1996 draft of the novel that became Pachinko and reads the opening she threw away.
Loading countdown…
In conversationUpcomingThe Blind Assassin · McClelland & Stewart, 2000
with Margaret Atwood, Novelist & poet
Booker Prize, 2000
Atwood on six decades of bad first pages, and why she stopped waiting for a good mood some time in the 1970s.
Loading countdown…
In conversationUpcomingThe Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989
with Kazuo Ishiguro, Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Ishiguro reconstructs the month in 1987 when he answered no letters and no telephone calls, hour by hour.
Loading countdown…
Reading & Q&AUpcomingOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Penguin Press, 2019
with Ocean Vuong, Poet & novelist
MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
Vuong on writing badly on purpose, keeping the notebook ugly, and the line that took eleven months.
Loading countdown…
In conversationUpcomingFlights · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2007
with Olga Tokarczuk, Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
Tokarczuk and her translator argue in public about three fragments, with the audience voting on each one.
Loading countdown…
In conversationUpcomingDrive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2009
with Olga Tokarczuk, Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
On books built out of fragments, and how a reader learns to hold a shape that is never stated.
Loading countdown…
WorkshopUpcomingThe Underground Railroad · Doubleday, 2016
with Colson Whitehead, Novelist
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
A two hour session on rationing research, timing your own readiness, and structure as a map of genres.
Loading countdown…
Reading & Q&AUpcomingGirl, Woman, Other · Hamish Hamilton, 2019
with Bernardine Evaristo, Novelist & professor
Booker Prize, 2019
Evaristo performs three of the twelve narrators of Girl, Woman, Other and explains where the punctuation went.
Loading countdown…
Recently recorded
2 events on the road so far this year.
Live recordingPast eventAmericanah · Knopf, 2013
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
Nine hundred seats, gone in a morning. The best exchange came from the floor, a history student who challenged the 1967 dinner table scene, and got a ten minute answer.
In conversationPast eventHalf of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
A small online session: one chapter read aloud, then half an hour of questions in the chat.
The archive
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Margaret Atwood
Booker Prize, 2000
Colson Whitehead
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
Every shelf, every continent
81 genres across 8 families, and authors from 6 regions of the world, literary fiction to romantasy, poetry to true crime, and plenty in translation.
The novels that get taught, argued over and re read a decade later.
Writers who move one rule of reality and follow the consequences honestly.
Plot as engineering: what the reader knows, when, and what it costs them.
The most demanding structure in publishing, and the least respected.
Research, argument and the discipline of getting the facts to sing.
Where every writer we interview says they learned to hear a line.
Harder than adult fiction: no reader is more willing to close the book.
Roughly a third of our episodes are with writers read first in another language.
Featured authors
Novelist & essayist
Half of a Yellow Sun · Americanah · Purple Hibiscus
Read bioNovelist, Nobel laureate
The Remains of the Day · Never Let Me Go · Klara and the Sun
Read bio
Novelist, Nobel laureate
Flights · Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead · The Books of Jacob
Read bio
Poet & novelist
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Night Sky with Exit Wounds · Time Is a Mother
Read bio
Honours & laurels
Two Nobel Prizes in Literature. The Booker won twice by one guest, the Pulitzer twice by another. A MacArthur, a Guggenheim, and a Women's Prize Winner of Winners , all of them recorded in full, all of them talking about the work rather than the trophy.
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
United Kingdom · 4 major honours
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
Poland · 4 major honours
Booker Prize, twice, 2000 and 2019
Canada · 5 major honours
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, twice, 2017 and 2020
United States · 4 major honours
Booker Prize, 2019
United Kingdom · 4 major honours
Women's Prize 'Winner of Winners', 2020
Nigeria · 4 major honours
MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
United States · 4 major honours
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2018
United States · 4 major honours
Behind the Book Awards
August 2026
Kazuo Ishiguro
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Restraint
July 2026
Bernardine Evaristo
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · The Long Game
June 2026
Margaret Atwood
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Research
May 2026
Min Jin Lee
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Persistence
April 2026
Ocean Vuong
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Sentences
March 2026
Colson Whitehead
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Structure
February 2026
Kazuo Ishiguro
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Revision
January 2026
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Winner · 1 of 3
Author of the Month · Craft
In their own voices
Every past guest left a review, written, and recorded in their own voice. Press play, read along with the captions, and jump to any timestamp.
I have done a great many interviews and most of them are about the news. This one was about the work. Nora had read the book twice, including the parts I thought nobody noticed, and she asked me about a discarded narrator rather than a headline. I left the studio wanting to write, which is not how publicity usually leaves you.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Novelist, Half of a Yellow Sun
A rare thing: an interviewer content to let a sentence finish. We talked about restraint, and about the years of failing slowly that came before the four fast weeks. Nothing was hurried and nothing was simplified. I would happily sit down with this programme again.
Kazuo Ishiguro , Novelist, The Remains of the Day
Six decades of being asked the same four questions, and here I was asked something new, about longhand, and about what people do when the systems fail them. Sharp, funny, properly prepared. Writers should listen to this one with a notebook open.
Margaret Atwood , Novelist & poet, The Blind Assassin
Most shows want the moral of the book. This one wanted the mechanics: structure, revision, the jokes that survive a heavy subject. That's the conversation writers actually need to hear, and it is very hard to find anywhere else.
Colson Whitehead , Novelist, The Underground Railroad
We spoke about fragments, how a novel can be a constellation rather than a straight road, and I was not asked to defend that as a gimmick. Being taken seriously in translation is not something I take for granted. A generous, curious hour.
Olga Tokarczuk , Novelist, Flights
Eight books before anybody was looking, and this is the first interview that treated those years as the story rather than the footnote. We talked craft, fusion fiction, and the long haul. If you are early in your career and discouraged, listen to this episode.
Bernardine Evaristo , Novelist, Girl, Woman, Other
The questions were quiet and precise, which is the only way to talk about sentences. I was allowed to think in the middle of an answer. That silence is a kind of respect, and it made the conversation truer than most.
Ocean Vuong , Poet & novelist, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Thirty years of research and rewriting is not a glamorous subject, but here it was the subject. Nora asked about the drafts I abandoned and the reporting I did in Tokyo. Working writers will get more out of one hour of this than a shelf of craft books.
Min Jin Lee , Novelist, Pachinko
After the interview
Every author who records with us goes into a promotion window: newsletter feature, audiogram cuts, bookseller outreach and a month on our promoted books shelf.
What listeners say
“The only interview show where authors actually talk about the work instead of the press tour. I re listen to episodes while drafting.”
“I've recommended this podcast to every student in my workshop. It's a masterclass disguised as a conversation.”
“Nora asks the question every writer is too embarrassed to ask out loud. Essential listening.”
Subscribe free
New conversation every Wednesday, wherever you listen
Never miss an episode
Every Wednesday we send the new conversation with a short written breakdown of the writing lessons inside it. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
