I chat with Caroline all about the move to digital for the Hay Festival and how much reading means to her and all those visiting the Hay festivals around the world

---

---

---

Show Notes

I have a wonderful chat with Chair of the Hay Literary Festival Caroline Michel all about the festival in all its forms across the globe. We discuss the move to digital online festivals, the succes of the festival in multiple countries, the difficulty in discoverability of events in an online setting, and how wonderful authors and speakers are.
We also chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and books, and how wide ranging the Hay Festival talks and authors are across multiple languages.

Hay Literary Festival

Works and authors mentioned in the podcast:
Agenda magazine
The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heany and Ted Hughes
Donal Óg poem
Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney
W.B. Yeats
T.S. Eliot
John Keats
Robert Frost
Sylvia Plath
Toni Morrison
Tom Wolfe
Rough Magic by Lra Prior-Palmer
Lemn Sissay
Mario Vargas Llosa
Laura Bates
Stephen Fry
Simon Schama
Elif Shafak

---

---

---

Show Notes

I chat with the wonderful Audioverse Award winner and multiple Hugo and BFA finalist pop culture journalist and podcaster Alasdair Stuart all about the therapeutic effects of reading, consuming media, and writing about your favourite things. This is a fun lively chat that goes from magicians Penn and Teller all the way to The Abyss, stopping via Nick Cage and a Dalek Escape Room. All in all a wonderful insight into the perspective of a pop culture journalist writing on very popular IP with steadfast and vocal fans.
Photo credit to ©Edge Portraits 2019

Link to Alasdair’s website
Link to Alasdair’s Twitter
Link to The Full Lid
Link to the Escape Artists podcast website where you’ll find PseudoPod and the Escape Pod
Link to Alasdair’s Twitch

List of things mentioned in the podcast:
Books
Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
More than Meets the Eye  (Transformers comic)
Lost Light  (Transformers comic)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Film, TV, nd Theatre
Red Dwarf
Twilight Zone Theatrical Production
JiuJitsu
The Abyss
Doctor Who
Parks and Recreation
New Girl
Leverage

Awards
IGNYTE awards
Aurealis awards
Sir Julius Vogel Award (The Vogel’s)

---

---

Show Notes
This week I chat with award winning author Diana Evans about the therapeutic effects of reading, why we no longer lend books to people, the emotional connection one has with a physical book, and why audiobooks are wonderful creations.

Link to Diana’s website where you can buy all of her books
Link to Diana’s Twitter profile

Diana gives a whole host of wonderful author and book suggestions which are listed below:
Mary Oliver
Mark Doty
Anne Sexton
Ursula le Guin
James Baldwin
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty
In Search of our Mother’s Gardens by Aice Walker
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
Behold the Dreamers Imbolo Mbue
The Beautiful and The Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald

I chat with the lovely Dr Xine Yao all about literature, the potential harm to be found in reading, and the sense of entitlement often seen when discussing and reviewing books in an ethnographic space.

---

---

Show Notes
I got  the chance to chat with the lovely Dr Xine Yao all about literature, the potential harm to be found in reading, and the sense of entitlement often seen when discussing and reviewing books in an ethnographic space.
Some seriously fascinating thoughts in this episode alongside great recommendations. So many great ideas and topics covered in our short thirty minutes!

Works and authors mentonined in the podcast:
Works:
Indian in the Cupboard by  Lynne Reid Banks
The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende
So Long A Letter by Mariama Bâ
The Heads of the Coloured People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
An American Marriage by Teyari Jones
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki

Authors:
Franz Kafka 
Audre Lorde  
Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton)  

Lisa and I chat with Nigel Beale all about beautiful books, libraries worth visiting, and his love of literary tourism.

---

---

Show Notes
I chat with Nigel Beale and my co host Lisa Dalton all about beautiful books this week. We take a journey into Nigel’s literary critic role, his podcast interviews and how they intersect with his love of literary tourism. Nigel discusses how the very visual nature of a book can be therapeutic in and of itself and how he collects a wide variety of books and book related items, all chosen for their beauty.

Things mentioned in the podcast:

Shakespeare
Bruce Taylor
Martin Amis
JM Coetzee
Cultural Amnesia by  Clive James
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies by Susan Elderkin and Ella Berthoud
Think and Grow Rich by Andrew Carnegie
Harry Ransom Center  in Austin, Texas
Houghton Library at Harvard
Beinecke Rare Books Library at Yale
British Library
Book of Kells at Trinity College Dublin