Anna discusses her love of southern gothic, how reading aloud gives her great pleasure, and how mental health is affected by reading and writing.

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Show Notes

I chat with the lovely author, teacher, mentor, and mental health advocate Anna Vaught all about bibliotherapy, southern gothic, reading aloud, and mentoring. We discuss her love for poetry and horror stories, mental health and the myth of recovery, and the difficulties involved in being editied.

There’s a small trigger warning as we lightly discuss trauma in this episode

Anna’s Twitter
Anna’s website
Anna on The Bookseller

Things mentioned in the episode:
Out of the Darkness anthology
Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison by Dorothy Rowe
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
William Faulkner
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Influx
Galley Beggar
Charles Dickens

Jordi talks all about bibliotherapy and his new book, Book Therapy. Lots of beautiful deep thoughts about the power of books on the mind and soul.

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Show Notes

I chat with fabulous publisher and author Jordi Nadal all about bibliotherapy and his new book, Book Therapy. Jordi is incredibly eloquent on the subject and if you aren’t quite sure what bibliotherapy is this really does strike right at its core. A beautiful, thoughtful episode I hope you love as much as I do.

Jordi’s new book, Book Therapy

Authors and books mentioned in the episode:
F Scott Fitzgerald
James Salter
Elena Ferrante
The First Man by Albert Camus
Man in the Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Chekhov
Natalia Ginzburg
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Octavio Paz
Groucho Marx
Virginia Woolf

In celebration of UCL’s wellbeing festival Replenish Dr Rayner chats with Cathy all about her book Dear Reader and how Cathy has turned to reading and books for comfort and therapy during her life.

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Show Notes

Dr Samantha Rayner talks with Cathy Rentzenbrink about her book Dear Reader, and the therapeutic effects of reading on mental health and wellbeing. It’s a lovely episode that travels through time with books that affect multiple generations, how books are enjoyed for what they are not who they are marketed at, and how writing can be hard but the satisfaction of finishing is worth the difficulty.

Cathy Rentzenbrink’s books
Everyone is Still Alive debut novelThe Last Act of Love
A Manual for Heartache
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books
and her debut novel Everyone Is Still Alive is released in July 2021

Authors and works mentioned in the episode:
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Agatha Christie
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Georgette Heyer
Jean Plaidy
Harriet Evans

Cathy’s book recommendation
Humankind by Rutger Bregman

In celebration of UCL’s wellbeing festival Replenish Dr Rayner chats with Cathy all about her book Dear Reader and how Cathy has turned to reading and books for comfort and therapy during her life.

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Show Notes

Dr Samantha Rayner talks with Cathy Rentzenbrink about her book Dear Reader, and the therapeutic effects of reading on mental health and wellbeing. It’s a lovely episode that travels through time with books that affect multiple generations, how books are enjoyed for what they are not who they are marketed at, and how writing can be hard but the satisfaction of finishing is worth the difficulty.

Cathy Rentzenbrink’s books
Everyone is Still Alive debut novelThe Last Act of Love
A Manual for Heartache
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books
and her debut novel Everyone Is Still Alive is released in July 2021

Authors and works mentioned in the episode:
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Agatha Christie
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Georgette Heyer
Jean Plaidy
Harriet Evans

Cathy’s book recommendation
Humankind by Rutger Bregman

John and I chat about the therapeutic benefits of humour in books, why Austen and Dickens are so brilliant, and how the crime thriller can be such a comfort in times of stress

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Show Notes

A lively and entertaining interview with Professor John Mullan about theraprutic reading and his very favourite authors Charles Dickens and Janes Austen.
John takes us on a deep dive into what we can enjoy in literature and how he finds humour to be the very best comfort read possible. We travel through literature from Shakespeare, stopping at 18th century literature, then right though to modern day authors and thrillers.

John’s most recent books:
The Artful Dickens
What Matters in Jane Austen?

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Charles Bukowski
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Dante’s Inferno
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son
Great Expectations
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Vladimir Nabokov
Agatha Christie
P.D James
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Lie with Me by Sabine Durrant
Emma by Jane Austen
Moby Dick by  Herman Melville
A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
Symposium by Muriel Spark 

I chat with Joanne about her new book Honeycomb, the therapeutic effects of reading whilst undergoing hospital treatment, and how important good translations are.

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Show Notes

I chat with the wonderful Joanne Harris MBE, an author across an incredible number of media. We chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and writing, how personifying illness can be beneficial and the ups and downs of translations. We have a very interting chat about reading as a bilingual, the joy of graphic novels, and sneaking those books your mother doesn’t want you to read at the library.

Works and authors mentioned:
Lee Child
Georgette Heyer
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Gustave Flaubert
Andre Gide
Guy de Maupassant
Alexandre Dumas
Francoise Mauriac
Stephen King
George R.R. Martin
Mervyn Peake
Agatha Christie
Laura Grandi Italian translator and author
P.G. Wodehouse
John Mortimer
Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Brian Vaughan
Becoming Unbecoming by Una
Chi’s Sweet Home by Kanata Konami
Inkblot by Emma Kubert and Rusty Glad
Wayfareres Series by Becky Chambers

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

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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

I chat with Kiernan all about Shakespeare’s ongoing draw, why tragedy is therapeutic, and how skillfully the Bard creates empathy with both characters and the audience

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Show Notes
This week I have the delightful job of chatting to my old Shakespeare professor, Emeritus Professor Kiernan Ryan, all about the therapeutic effects of his sonnets, speeches, and plays. How Shakespeare has remained relevant four centuries after first being performed, and what there is to be gained and lost in watching, listening, and reading his work.
We discuss rhetoric, the draw of tragedies, how Shakespeare mirrors both the audience and the characters themselves, the importance of empathy, and how gender fluid many of the comedies are.

Do check out Kiernan’s books available from Bloomsbury here
Kiernan’s new book, coming out in August 2021

The  Shakespeare works most mentioned and quoted from are:
Sonnet 29
The Tempest
The Merchant of Venice
Hamlet
King Lear
Much Ado About Nothing
Twelfth Night

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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.

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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)