Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…. podcast

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All About Change

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The Goodwill You Don't Know with CEO Steve Preston 29:53

vor 3 Tagen29:53

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Steve Preston is the CEO of Goodwill Industries. Though Goodwill is known for big stores where people can donate clothes and buy them secondhand, those stores are just the first level of what Goodwill Industries are about. Those stores fund an international organization that provides job training, employment placement services and other community-based programs for people who face barriers in their employment. Steve joins Jay to discuss the ways Goodwill Industries support veterans and individuals who lack job experience, an education, or face employment challenges, such as those people who are formerly incarcerated. Today's episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website Allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. Episode Chapters 0:00 intro 1:02 The Goodwill you don’t know 4:33 The troubling reality of work reintegration for formerly incarcerated folks 10:00 How Steve brings his public-sector experience to Goodwill 11:17 Goodwill’s employment centers 15:51 The interplay between Goodwill’s national and local arms 24:07 The case for minimizing recidivism becoming a cross-party cause 27:05 Goodbye For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/ Looking for more insights into the world of activism? Be sure to check out Jay’s brand new book, Find Your Fight , in which Jay teaches the next generation of activists and advocates how to step up and bring about lasting change. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy your books, and you can learn more about it at ⁠⁠⁠www.jayruderman.com⁠⁠⁠ .…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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The Birmingham Literature Festival Podcast - Welcome to the very first Birmingham Literature Festival podcast, bringing writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.

50 Episoden

#Books #Arts #Writing West Midlands #Literature #West Midlands #Authors #Interviews #Birmingham #Festival

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

updated vor 2 Jahren

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50 Episoden

#Books #Arts #Writing West Midlands #Literature #West Midlands #Authors #Interviews #Birmingham #Festival

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Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 6: "Train Cancellation" by Maeve Deegan 9:32

vor 2 years9:32

9:32

"Train Cancellation" by Maeve Deegan, read by Emma Boniwell. Everything changes. For everyone. Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 5: "Eight Minutes" by Doroti Polgar 7:34

vor 2 years7:34

7:34

"Eight Minutes" by Doroti Polgar, read by Lisa M Billingham. You can put the world right in eight minutes, but the world never listens to you. Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 4: "Apologies for Any Inconvenience" by William Gallagher 10:26

vor 2 years10:26

10:26

"Apologies for Any Inconvenience" written and read by William Gallagher. Anger can keep out the cold, but not forever. Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 3: "The 23:48 to Birmingham New Street" by Lisa M. Billingham 9:29

vor 2 years9:29

9:29

"The 23: 48 to Birmingham New Street" written and read by Lisa M. Billingham. We can hide from ourselves, but not from handsome strangers. Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 2: "Departures" by Erin Oakley 9:16

vor 2 years9:16

9:16

"Departures" by Erin Oakley, read by William Gallagher. Not everyone's intended destination is at the other end of this train ride. Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Wolverhampton Takeover Episode 1: "23:48" by Maeve Deegan 10:12

vor 2 years10:12

10:12

"23:48" by Maeve Deegan, read by Emma Boniwell. An eight-minute train delay is increasingly tense for one young woman -- but what has happened to her tonight? Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story. Produced by William Gallagher. Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing. The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham. You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction from Afghan Women 59:41

vor 2 years59:41

59:41

This week, we’re joined by Lucy Hannah from UNTOLD Stories, and Afghan poet Parwana Fayyaz, who talked to festival team member Olivia Chapman. Lucy and Parwana worked on My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, a new collection of short stories written by Afghan women before and after the brutal resurgence of the Taliban in August 2021. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Writing from a Warzone 1:00:52

vor 2 years1:00:52

1:00:52

This week’s episode is our specially-curated Writing from a Warzone event. The Birmingham Literature Festival team brought together novelist Priscilla Morris, whose family fled Sarajevo during the 1992 siege, with poet Parwana Fayyaz, who is an Afghan refugee. The event also included an interview with Ukrainian novelist Lyubko Deresh, who is still in Ukraine. They were speaking to Dr Amanda Beattie, from the Centre for Migration and Forced Displacement at Aston University. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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The UK Justice System: Wendy Joseph KC and Dr Shahed Yousef 59:58

vor 2 years59:58

59:58

This week’s episode features two people with unique insights into the UK Justice System: Wendy Joseph KC sat on cases in the Old Bailey for decades. In that time, she also mentored young people and tried to demystify the way justice is served in this country. Dr Shahed Yousaf is a prison doctor, who has worked for most of his career in Birmingham prisons with the most violent inmates. They were joined on stage by Olwen Brown. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Hashi Mohamed: The Housing Crisis 55:28

vor 2 years55:28

55:28

This week’s episode is housing lawyer Hashi Mohamed speaking to Guest Curator Otegha Uwagba. Hashi’s family arrived in the UK as refugees from Somalia in the 1990s, and his book A Home of One’s Own is the story of his family, as well as that of every family in the UK trying to carve out their own space in a broken housing system. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Michael Rosen 1:03:10

vor 2 years1:03:10

1:03:10

This week’s guest is one of few who – universally – get referred to as a “National Treasure”. Michael Rosen has written over 70 books, including many of the most-read and most-loved children’s books of the modern day. He’s also a poet and memoirist, and joined us to talk about his book Many Different Kinds of Love, written as a result of his time on an intensive care ward during the Covid-19 pandemic in Spring 2020. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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National Writers’ Conference 2022 - Sharing Experiences: From Writers, For Writers 1:58:44

vor 3 years1:58:44

1:58:44

On 9 July 2022, Writing West Midlands hosted its annual National Writers’ Conference in Birmingham, the first time back to a full programme of events since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through panel events, networking sessions, informal and formal meetings, over 150 emerging writers came together to learn from established writers, producers, editors, agents and literature professionals including Kasim Ali, David Chikwe, Maeve Clarke, Lindsay Davis and Gillian McAllister. Hosted by Jonathan Davidson from Writing West Midlands.…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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2021: A year in review 1:12:42

vor 3 years1:12:42

1:12:42

2021: A year in review Welcome to the last instalment of 2021’s commissioned series of writing. Each month, across the year, we have asked writers and poets to reflect on each month as it has passed. As we say goodbye to 2021, and embrace the start of a new year, we have brought together all those pieces to offer you an insightful, searing and beautiful review of the year. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF 2021: A Year in Review Welcome to the last instalment of 2021’s commissioned series of writing. Each month, across the year, we have asked writers and poets to reflect on each month as it has passed. As we say goodbye to 2021, and embrace the start of a new year, we have brought together all those pieces that offer an insightful, searing and beautiful review of the year. January 2021 My name is Thomas Glave and I wrote this piece for the Birmingham Literature Festival, January 2021 Writers’ Blog . What has this past month, partly a time of Covid-caused lockdown, been like? ‘Weird’, is how a Birmingham friend extremely fond of that word might have described it. But ‘weird’ is too vague, and doesn’t make room for all the specific moments. Moments like a walk I took one chilly dusk through Birmingham’s Brindleyplace, where, amidst all those tomb-quiet buildings, it was easy to imagine the opening scene of the zombie-apocalypse film 28 Days Later , that showed an unnervingly deserted London: ‘Hallo-hal lo - hallo ’, anyone could have shouted that evening, imagining the final-days echo: ‘Is anyone there-there- there ?’ And what about the seagulls that flock through the West Midlands (and all the UK) throughout the year, hijacking unsuspecting people’s lunches? Didn’t they appear to be moving closer to the very few human beings out walking, as the darkness encroached and began to whisper, How’s this, you fancy this? And really, except for maybe one or two runners who darted past (and even they, so thin, might have been just birds or the ghosts of birds), there was almost nobody else about. . .nobody except a lone Brindleyplace security guard, who for a few seconds bent his head over a match’s flare to light a cigarette, before he disappeared behind one of those buildings as if he too had existed in real life only for a moment, then had been drawn back into the realm of dreams where security guards, cigarette in hand, wander alone forever, half-alive and half lockdown apparitions that melt into dusk in this city of hills and tall buildings and twisting stretching canals. . . on lockdown evenings like that one, the dusk always descended in time for the ensuing quiet to gather entirely around and wrap itself, its soft thick arms, all around your shoulders: the quiet of pandemic nights, of people gathered indoors and sometimes also isolated there, sometimes alone. These past weeks were the unaccustomed quietness of pubs shuttered, restaurants stilled, railway stations and airports emptied, and all of us, the living and the waking, wondering what all this meant or could mean, and – often more insistently -- when it was going to end. Simultaneously, if we knew people who had fallen ill, we worried about them, prayed for them, and did all we could to ensure that they wouldn’t leave us just yet: not leave like that. Not so suddenly, so intubated. Not whilst gasping for breath behind some sterile partition, sequestered in a fluorescent-lit hospital ward. Not like that, without our hands to hold and our face to stroke, as we in turn wanted to hold and comfort them. Through it all, as we thought of them and seasonal gifts like the sorely missed brighter-than-bright Birmingham Christmas market, there was always the cloaking dusk, and then the sound of our own footsteps. Our feet that, as the season progressed, began to mutter Slow down, won’t you….please, for goodness’ sake, you simply must slow down. And out of the slowing down, if we listened to those feet, arose a kind of blessedness as well. The kind that might have moved us to put up festive lights a little earlier in the season, aware that the increased lights and colours may have helped to cheer our neighbours. The kind that may even have moved us in an era of global stress and anxiety to speak with neighbours a bit longer when we saw them, and with more solicitous interest than usual, especially the elderly and the vulnerable. . . although hopefully always at a two-metre distance. Our warming planet, meanwhile, began to thank us for lockdown and our decreased travel and traffic. Birds, other creatures, and every tree and bush expressed and continue to express their gratitude, from the Jewellery Quarter to Acocks Green and all the way to Kings Heath, as nature raised its eyebrows at our actual ability to step back and take a breath. Someone told me this week that I should listen carefully, in order to hear the sound of nature politely applauding our efforts. But if we can’t hear it, he said, this will be only because of the silence in between all other occurring things… the silence that assures that in spite of everything else, our hearts really are still in wonderful working order, still fond of us, and nowhere near prepared to stop. February 2021 Hello, my name is Abda Khan and here is a blog I wrote for Birmingham Literature Festival in February 2021 . When I was asked to write about how February has been for me, I started by looking back at photos from the same time last year. It struck me that during the almost yearlong state of lockdown, not only has life changed in ways previously unimaginable, but certain phrases have evaporated from our vocabulary, whilst others have taken hold. As a writer, I am intrigued by this. February 2020; kicked off at a packed restaurant for a family birthday, I gave a talk about my Sidelines to Centre Stage Project at Wolverhampton Literature Festival where I mingled with attendees over tea and samosas, travelled to Glasgow and sat in a mosque full of hundreds of mourners after the death of my uncle, went into Tamworth Radio to talk about my novel Razia with three of us crammed into an airless studio smaller than a boxroom, had lunch with and gave a talk at Solihull Rotary Club, visited mac at Cannon Hill Park for discussions over coffee about a forthcoming project. And there were many more everyday happenings, not documented by the click of a phone camera, all of which are now unthinkable; legal work at the office where multiple clients would attend together, meeting friends in overcrowded coffee shops, enjoying the pictures with my kids (although they tell me that firstly, no one says ‘pictures’ anymore and secondly, as the youngest is now nearly 16, they’re no longer kids). Now, life is Zoom, and Teams, hand sanitiser, and face masks, and everyone knows what WFH me...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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December: Thomas Glave 24:21

vor 3 years24:21

24:21

Writer and Professor Thomas Glave wrote our very first commissioned piece in January 2021, describing a quiet, reflective post-Christmas Brindley Place in the midst of lockdown. In December's offering, he reflects beautifully on that experience in a piece that moves fluidly through dancing and writing and the way that stories move us. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Newsletter Podcast Transcript: Episode 12, December: Thomas Glave Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading Hi, I’m Thomas Glave. This is December 2021 and I’m about to read a piece entitled A Keynote in Three Parts . FALLING AND WRITING (A KEYNOTE IN THREE PARTS) Unafraid of Falling: A Dancer’s Approach Once, not so long ago, in that part of the world far across the sea, there lived a young girl who dreamt of dancing – in fact dreamt of growing up to become someone who danced constantly, as if no other way of being existed. During those early years, she never envisaged herself as a ‘ballerina’, so to speak, but simply as someone who yearned to, and was always beautifully capable of, moving her long limbs to music, and actually surrendering herself – surrendering what she would have called her ‘soul’ – to music. This girl grew up to become the great ballerina Suzanne Farrell, internationally renowned star of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet company, and the foremost interpreter, in the late twentieth century, of his ballets. At one point, in 1965 when she was twenty years of age and he sixty-two, she almost became his sixth wife. (Balanchine’s previous five wives had all been ballerinas.) But marriage and romance mattered far less in Farrell’s life, a life dedicated almost exclusively to her art, than her holy pursuit of dance, and to what dance critics and Balanchine himself, as well as other choreographers, began to observe and refer to admiringly, and often with utter astonishment, as her style of ‘off-centre’ dancing. In Farrell’s vision, ‘off-centre’ dancing was a means of attaining ultimate generosity and daring onstage, a supreme gift to the audience but also a gift to and from the art form itself. It presented moments in which the vulnerable performer, dancing out her heart and very being across an enormous stage, and ostensibly completely uncaring as to whether she might be taking risks that could hurl her directly into a disaster such as falling off her dangerous balances or worse, became something like a true force of nature, unrestrained by gravity or fear. As one critic familiar with Farrell’s work and Balanchine’s choreography for the New York City Ballet understood the dancer, Farrell’s off-centre dancing involved ‘astonishing pirouettes, during which...she showed not an eyelid flicker’s worth of concern over whether her partner would be there to catch her at the end. As a rule he was, though there close calls, and a few terrifying occasions when we thought that...she was truly going to pitch herself into the orchestra’. Farrell’s wildness and even recklessness onstage, especially in startling contrast to her deeply taciturn, even aloof personality, beguiled countless people, myself included, all of whom wondered at and reveled in the utter freedom and daring of her artistry: a freedom from the self-consciousness that we all know as both writers and human beings, known and experienced by all artists. This self-consciousness includes the often gnawing fear that at some point, whilst working on this or that project, or having completed this novel or that play or poetry collection, we may end up making fools of ourselves in front of them : the people out there , actual or imagined (or both): the individuals ever ready, we often fear, to hold our work up not only to cold scrutiny but also inevitably to scorn; the people out there who will surely regard us not with the care and earnest concern for which we yearn, but with cold contempt; the people whose moist breath we can always feel just over our shoulders as we begin writing on a new blank page. What will they think , those disapproving faces both imagined and real. . . Yet perhaps, like daring ballerinas and other artists, we eventually realise that our work, like the work of dancers risking everything on a stage before an unseeable audience enshrouded in darkness, always involves the greatest daring of our most secret imagining selves. In such vulnerability there can be – and there invariably is – the possibility for humility, our embracing of humility, as we grapple with the fact that such deeper giving in art always requires the jettisoning of our egos in service to the art form’s discipline and demands. A ballerina may indeed fall out of the next sequence of pirouettes or fouettés , but was she giving us all of her energy and soul when she did? We may stumble over a sentence or a stanza, or find that our hands were wrapped too possessively around a character’s throat in this chapter or that poem, or we may mis-hear the lyric’s begging us to reach for a smoother rhyme, but it always seems – at least until the final loss of our faculties or simple end of our existence – that we do have time to work and re-work, and re-work again, anticipating in calmness the inevitability of falling without engaging any fear of falling. And again, and again. We certainly have more time than ballet dancers, who daily strive for beauty and grace against the ticking clock of their aging bodies. As for the patience required for the doing and re-doing, trying and re-trying, the pandemic has impressed upon us nothing if not an understanding of the importance of patience. During the numerous hours I’ve gritted my teeth whilst thinking of the great difficulty, at least for me, in patiently working to inculcate patience, I remembered Farrell insisting that her pre-professional female ballet pupils take an entire ballet class, not only the class’s second half, wearing pointe shoes – ‘Because’, Farrell often told those eager teen-agers, ‘you don’t learn to dance on pointe by not dancing on pointe’. Like those dancers in their ballet studio or rehearsal hall, we know that we don’t become writers by not writing. Yet I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that tomorrow morning, like so many of us having to face that awful blank page, I remain fearful of falling, and of what ...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: Sathnam Sanghera in Conversation with Sara Wajid 36:08

vor 4 years36:08

36:08

April 2021’s online event featured author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera discussing his latest book Empireland . In conversation with Sara Wajid, the co-CEO of the Birmingham Museum’s Trust, he discussed the ways in which legacies of empire permeate everything from the NHS to our national museums and how the events of the past year have demonstrated the urgent need for us to understand and reckon with our imperial past. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 11: Sathnam Sanghera Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . April 2021’s online event featured author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera discussing his latest book Empireland . In conversation with Sara Wajid, the co-CEO of the Birmingham Museum’s Trust, he discussed the ways in which legacies of empire permeate everything from the NHS to our national museums and how the events of the past year have demonstrated the urgent need for us to understand and reckon with our imperial past. Sara Wajid Good evening, everyone. I'm Sara Wajid. I'm the co-CEO of Birmingham Museum Art Gallery, and I'm here this evening to talk to Sathnam Sanghera about his book Empireland . I'm speaking to you from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. This is the industrial gallery. As this is Birmingham Literature Festival. No doubt many of you will recognise the museum, so I thought I’d give you this treat to be able to peek inside the museum when you haven't been able to for so long now in lockdown. As I said, I'm the co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. And I'm really delighted to be having this conversation with Sathnam. He's such an important person, not just as a UK journalist, but particularly for the Midlands. And this is quite a special conversation. We were talking just now in the virtual green room about whether we've met before. And clearly Sathnam doesn't recognize me or remember me from the early 2000s but he was very much on my radar when I was a journalist, not nearly as good a journalist as him, which is why I'm now museum director and no longer a journalist. For those of you who may want to refresh as to Santhanam’s biog, he was born to Indian Punjabi parents in 1976 in Wolverhampton. He's been a Times columnist and feature writer since 2007 and his memoir, The Boy with a Topknot , a memoir of love, secrets and lies in Wolverhampton, was adapted for BBC Two in 2017. I’m a big fan. His novel Marriage Material was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. And he's also presented a range of TV documentaries, including The Massacre that Shook the Empire on Channel Four. Sathnam, welcome. Good to see you. Congratulations on the book, it’s a wonderful book and its been received extremely warmly. I must say I was a bit surprised to see you writing on this topic. When I first heard about the book I was like what's this, he's not a historian. You know us in the museum and history world can be a bit snobby like that, like, right, like what right does this fella have to come into our territory and start writing about this stuff? Doesn't he interview celebrities? Isn't that his domain? Then I read the book and obviously I was very impressed, which is why we're talking now. But firstly, I wanted to ask you a bit about identity. As much as this book is about public understanding of history and Empire, I guess what makes it stand out from historians is your reflections on your own identity and how Empire has shaped you and your journey in writing this book and how it's affected you. There's a bit in the book where you're reflecting on this and describe it saying ‘on embarking on this journey, I'm making an effort to decolonise myself.’ I wanted to know what you meant by that, and how it's going. Sathnam Sanghera It’s an ongoing process. And I guess the phrase decolonisation, you know, a lot of people are allergic to it. Actually, I was allergic to because I didn't feel like I needed decolonising because when you've had a very good education, where everyone tells you you've had the best education in the world, you just think there's nothing wrong with what you've learned and what you've looked at, and the way you've focused on certain things. But it was probably three quarters of my way through this book that I realized that actually I had been colonised. I think that what made me realise it as I was reading about the way Indian kingdoms were taken over by the British. And one of the ways they conquered these Indian royal families was by putting the children through a British education. The Sikh Empire wasn't lost on the battlefield, it was lost in a school room, where Maharajah Duleep Singh was turned into an English gent, you know, was sent off to Britain and became a kind of toy for Queen Victoria. That ended the Sikh kingdom. And later in life he realised what had happened and he tried to reconnect with his Sikh heritage, and I really related to that. And I think, at a similar age in my 40s, I realised I had been coloniSed. And I'm trying to do something about it. But you're right, in that it was a bit weird that I'm writing about this subject. You know, I did a reading about 18 months ago, to some friends in a restaurant, it was a small event. And the general reaction was one of complete confusion, because they couldn't quite work out whether it was history or memoir. And it was quite an esoteric subject then. But then suddenly, six months later, we had Black Lives Matter. And suddenly, I was turning on the news and there was, you know, a mainstream news item about how British Empire created modern notions of racism, how we exported racism to America. And suddenly, this niche thing I was writing about, became of international concern. So, it's only accidentally timely to be honest, and there was no certainty that it was going to work. Sara Wajid I just want to draw you out a little bit more on what you were saying there about your education. In your earlier memoirs, when you refer to your schooling, and the grammar school, I hadn't registered it as a kind of quite posh school. And that, and that tells you something, doesn’t it because I went to a minor public school, so I'm like grammar school? He's not a posh boy. But actually, when you were kind of reflecting on quite how colonial the ideologies were in your school, because you wen...…

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Season 2: Lisa Blower and Emma Purshouse 41:05

vor 4 years41:05

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May 2021’s online live event brought together two writers whose books are rooted in the Midlands, Emma Purshouse and Lisa Blower. In conversation with author Kit de Waal, they discuss their latest novels Dogged and Pondweed , making space for more working-class writers and characters in contemporary fiction and capturing a variety of Midlands dialects on the page. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 10: Lisa Blower and Emma Purshouse Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . May 2021’s online live event brought together two writers whose books are rooted in the Midlands, Emma Purshouse and Lisa Blower. In conversation with author Kit de Waal, they discuss their latest novels Dogged and Pondweed , making space for more working-class writers and characters in contemporary fiction and capturing a variety of Midlands dialects on the page. Kit de Waal Hello, everyone, its my pleasure this evening to introduce you to two friends and two great writers, two great women, who both have books out - these two books - which we're going to hear a lot about this evening as well as more generally talking about accents, dialect and snobbery in literature, which obviously is one of my pet subjects. Just to introduce who we're talking about this evening, first of all, we've got Lisa Blower. Lisa is the author of the short story collection, It's Gone Dark Over Bill's Mother's which came out in 2019 and a contribution to Common People which was the anthology of working class writing that came out the same year. Her fiction has appeared in The Guardian , Comma Press anthologies, New Welsh Review , Luminary Short Stories Sunday on Radio 4 and her debut novel Sitting Ducks was shortlisted for the inaugural Arnold Bennett prize and longlisted for The Guardian Not the Booker prize. She's also a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Wolverhampton University. Emma Purshouse left school in the early 1980s at the age of 15. She's got an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Met and her passion is writing about working class communities she's lived in, often making use of Black Country dialect within her work. In 2017, she won the international Making Waves Spoken Word Poetry competition, she's also Poet Laureate in the city of Wolverhampton and she's also one of the writers in Common People, the anthology of working class writing, and she teaches poetry in schools and community groups. Hello, both of you. We've all got the short vowels tonight, which I'm very happy about it, so to speak to you, and speak to you about two very, very funny books. First of all, it's such a comfort to read these books, because it's about worlds that are so familiar to many of us. And I just want to talk to you, Emma, first about Dogged . And I don't believe I've ever read a book before that revolves around a win on the bingo, which I love. I mean, it's just so fantastic to read. In fact, you tell us, what is the book about and who are the main characters? Emma Purshouse Like you say, it's sort of about a bingo win initially and the two main characters are women in their late 70s. You got Nancy Maddox, and you've got Marilyn Grundy, and it's Marilyn who has this bingo win, but nobody's quite sure how much it's for. And really, the idea behind the book is about how Marilyn has to protect the bingo winnings. And then Nancy gets enlisted into this and it's the adventures they have as they try to protect the bingo winnings, which are stashed in a shopping trolley. Kit de Waal And so not only have you rooted it very much in the working class, but you've rooted it in an area, you've rooted it in the Black Country. How does the Black Country feature in this story and more generally, in your work? Emma Purshouse I think in this story, it's where it's set, but they're ingrained in the landscape. Everything's kind of, you can’t have one thing without the other. And when the dialect comes in, it's as much a part of it as the characters in the landscape. They say, write what you know, it's what I know. So that's why I've set it there. In my poetry, again, it's what I'm living in so I kind of want to respond and show people what it is and talk about it and share it because I love it. Kit de Waal What I think that does come through both of these books is a massive sense of pride and no apology about who we are and where we're from, there's a real sense of pride in this. Do you want to just read us a bit Emma. Emma Purshouse I’ll read the prologue which kind of introduces the two women really. ‘Nancy stands on the step. Her shoulders have been aching all night. Years of scrubbing quarry tiles up at the Dartmouth are taking their toll. She rolls her shoulders forward and twists her head to peer over towards her back. A lump has started to form under her overall. “Wot now? If it ay one thing, its summat else.” As she watches, the lump starts to bulge, move, and rupture the skin. She hears Mr. Maddox’s voice. “If God’d uv meant uz to fly, e’d uv givun uz wings.” The voice is accompanied by the sound of a trickle of whiskey being poured into a glass. Her emerging wing - just the one - unfurls itself in a grand gesture and then flails against her back. It is large and black. It is oily, tarry, nicotine-stained, and the feathers are stuck together. It hangs like wet washing in a back yard on a windless day. “Sort of bost,” says Nancy. “Shit!” she thinks, as Marilyn comes out onto her step and waves. Nancy tries to wave back without showing her new wing. “Is that…?” says Marilyn screwing up her orange lips into the shape of a cat’s arse. “No!” says Nancy, cutting her off in mid question. “It ay!”. The conversation is ended. “Bloody dreamin agen,” she thinks as she awakes.’ Kit de Waal Oh, that's great, that's good. ...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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November: Annabel Brightling 4:15

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Solihull based scriptwriter Annabel Brightling has written November's piece for the festival blog. In it, she reflects on the excitement of the premiere of drama SeaView at the Belgrade Theatre, a show she wrote the first episode of, and the need for large production companies to expand their cultural horizons into the regions across the UK. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Newsletter Podcast Transcript: Episode 11, Annabel Brightling Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading My name is Annabel Brightling and I’ve written November’s piece for Birmingham Literature Festival. Seaview is a supernatural drama set in Coventry centred around a guy who lands his dream job at a law firm, only for his night of celebrations to go awry and change the lives of his loved ones, forever. The show premiered the first three episodes at the Belgrade Theatre on 10th November with further showings on the 11th – 13th November. I was hired as a staff writer for episode one. SeaView took a chance on first timers, both in front of and behind the camera who worked alongside seasoned professionals. There was an open call for a writers' room. New writers are often told to “Apply to the BBC writers' room or 4Screenwriting. Go on the Screen Skills website. Have you tried the BFI?” All brilliant and necessary companies. But sometimes, you just want to get paid to write. Without the SeaView writers' room callout, I would still be creditless, applying for these four opportunities on loop. Or alternatively, told to get an agent to get staffed in a writers' room and we know how that catch-22 scenario goes. I doubt open calls for writers will become industry standard, but I’m thankful to the producers for making that choice. Seaview is also proof that there is room for a TV & Film industry to exist outside of London. There should be more stories coming from across the UK. There are places I’ve never visited and will not get the opportunity to see. That’s why I want to watch stories from different towns. Despite being born and raised in Edmonton, North London and I will never give up that identity (currently at war with my fading accent), I’ve always been curious about this little Island. The curiosity stems from my parents. They were always keen on my siblings and I travelling outside the M25. They wanted us to explore landscapes, historical landmarks, and food. Even though Mum would be up half the morning making jollof, chicken and stew to take with us “just in case”. That curiosity about other towns and cities has helped with the type of topics I cover in my original scripts. I still have a way to go in terms of my writing skills. Because of my personality type, I will always compare myself to other’s progress. But getting the ‘yes’ after years of ‘no’ or folks just straight-up ghosting my emails, has reassured me. The fact that I got to play a small part in a project which means so much to the Midlands, is even more rewarding. Who knows if SeaView will be the start of the norm or a blip in the Midlands cultural zeitgeist. It's a win for the Midlands, which showcases the area to a wider audience. I hope for investors, the Midlands will be unskippable. It will soon reach a point where you won't be able to hear an advert anywhere in the UK without a Midland accent penetrating through the speakers. So, in conclusion, invest or lose out...Alright, Bab? Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents …podcast . Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: Caleb Azumah Nelson in conversation with Casey Bailey 33:18

vor 4 years33:18

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In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water . In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 9: Caleb Azumah Nelson Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water . In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability. Casey Bailey Hi, guys, I hope you're all good and blessed. I'm really excited about this conversation that we're about to have and I hope you all are too. I am Casey Bailey, Birmingham Poet Laureate and a writer from Birmingham and far more importantly than that, I will be talking to Caleb Azumah Nelson. Caleb is a 27-year-old British Ghanaian writer and photographer who is living in Southeast London. His photography has been shortlisted for the Palm* Poetry Prize and won the People's Choice Award and his short story Pray was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2020. Open Water , which we'll be discussing today, is his debut novel. Caleb, how are you? Caleb Azumah Nelson Good. I'm good. How are you? Casey Bailey I'm blessed. I can't complain. This a real privilege to be having this conversation really. The first thing I wanted to talk about and really get into is around the reception of the book. I first became aware of the book, I was on a podcast with Yomi Sode and Que from Dope Readers who I'm guessing you're aware of, and Que has done a feature on the Dope Readers Instagram page, where he had taken the book Open Water out into water, and took this like amazing photograph. And at the time, it was the first I'd heard of the book. And I thought, what a big response, like what an outlandish response to this book. And actually, it was just kind of like the seed of all of the responses to this book, because it has really taken the literary world by storm, and people are talking about it and can't stop talking about it. And the first thing I really want to ask is, how has that been for you as the author? Firstly, congratulations on writing the book, then congratulations on the book being published. And then this response, how's that feeling for you? Caleb Azumah Nelson It’s really something, especially in the current climate of the world, to have this sort of response and to really have the energy that I spent a good amount of time putting into work reciprocated, you know. You can really feel it when someone feels the emotions and the feelings that I put into the book like you when someone really feels the texture and when they reply, that was something that I felt, without even being prompted. Yeah, I'm grateful for it, I think gratitude is the thing, I'm overwhelmed even. Casey Bailey Were you taken aback by how broad that response was? It’s definitely deserved but I'm sure you know, that sometimes you feel like something is going to get that response and it doesn't quite, you know, how does it feel getting that kind of, wow, yeah, this has been heard the way that I heard it when I came up with it. Caleb Azumah Nelson Yeah, it's amazing. I can really see the moment when I first started putting pen to page and I'm like, in a similar process in my next work and having this going on at the same time is such a wonderful reminder of where the work starts. And it is the page, us being present and really like bringing ourselves to the page and being vulnerable and being disciplined. There was a moment when I was writing Open Water where I quit my job and that was the only thing I was doing. Like I really like gambled and really was like, I need you to trust yourself in this moment because what you need to say right now needs to be expressed. I don't know, it's not that I expected that there would be this sort of reception, but for me, the writing of the thing was the prize. I was reading this book last week and there was a sentence of it that I don't think I'll ever forget. And the guy said ‘love is both the practice and the prize’. And I think this was a real act of love. Like everything I write feels like an act of love and like the prize is the practice. Casey Bailey I’m kind of like obsessed with process and how we process things, how we process our emotions. So many heavy themes are dealt with in the book, and you could have dealt with them through photography, I'm sure you probably have, you could have dealt with them through poetry, through theatre. Why do you feel like this particular thing came out as a novel, had you always had this idea of writing a novel or did something make that happen? Caleb Azumah Nelson You know, through the different art forms that I straddle, I always think of myself as a writer, despite the fact that language can be so limiting. And we often, I know you know this, but often find ourselves like trying to like bend language to our will, it’s something that I think I'll forever just be trying to get closer to the true expression of how I'm actually feeling. I think when I started writing Open Water , I had just connected with my literary agent and she had come to help with nonfiction actually, I was writing a lot of nonfiction about photography and music and about love. And I was just consistently writing, and she was the one who was like, I think you have the voice for a novel, I think that you could write a novel and it was something that I'd always wanted to do. And I think it was that moment where it's like, okay, I can do this. It was also that moment where I asked myself - I want to write a novel, but what could the novel be like? What could it contain? I know that some of my favourite work is very subversive, or that it kind of straddles different...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: Elizabeth Day in conversation with Sathnam Sanghera 39:21

vor 4 years39:21

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This week, bestselling novelist and acclaimed podcast host Elizabeth Day, talks to Sathnam Sanghera about her new novel Magpie . Join them as they talk about writing thrillers, and a novel that tells a gripping and unsettling story about power, motherhood and envy. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 8: Elizabeth Day Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . This week, bestselling novelist and acclaimed podcast host Elizabeth Day, talks to Sathnam Sanghera about her new novel Magpie . Join them as they talk about writing thrillers, and a novel that tells a gripping and unsettling story about power, motherhood and envy. Sathnam Sanghera Hello, I'm Sathnam Sanghera. I'm a journalist and author originally from the Midlands and I'm talking to my friend Elizabeth Day today, who's also an author and a journalist but she's originally from Northern Ireland, aren't you Liz? Elizabeth Day I am. Well, I was born in Epson, but we moved to the north of Ireland when I was four, but I do have a Midlands connection because I went to school there, I went to school in Malvern from the age of 13. Sathnam Sanghera Oh yeah, I always forget that. Anyway, I should say who you are although everyone knows who you are. You are the author of four novels and the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, How to Fail . Your debut was Scissors, Paper, Stone , which famously won a Betty Trask award. And Homefires was Observer Book of the Year. Your third book, Paradise City , was named one of the best novels of 2015 in the Evening Standard , and The Party , which was your last novel, was a Richard and Judy book club pick. You're also an award-winning journalist and you present BBC Radio 4 Open Book and the Sky Arts Book Club. And you're also the creator and host of the chart-topping podcast How to Fail . So, I feel very self-conscious, because you're a pro at this, aren’t you? Elizabeth Day Well, I think I'm an amateur who's learned through experience, and you were one of my first ever guests. And so, I'm so grateful to you for taking a punt on How to Fail when no one really knew what it was about. But it's nice having the table's turned, it's very nice hearing you introduce me. Sathnam Sanghera It's quite surreal for me, yeah, I mean I think I was very relaxed in that podcast, because I thought it would fail, ironically. And then it became a massive thing. Elizabeth Day You have so little faith in me. Sathnam Sanghera It's huge faith now, huge faith now that you're successful. And your novel Magpie , which I actually only just finished reading this morning, it's so good. You know, when people hype things, I'm so contrary, I'm inclined to believe its not true. But it's really addictive, unsettling, I didn't know what was going to happen until the last few pages, and totally original. I mean, it's a thriller, based in the world of fertility, I guess. Is that too reductive? Elizabeth Day No, that's absolutely what it is. And also, can I just say, thank you so much for that compliment. Because listeners might not know, the recurring trope of our friendship is that I'm the emotional gusher and you're the one who's quite cynical and sparse in your compliments. So, for you to say that carries so much meaning. Sathnam Sanghera Yeah, just don't ever mention it. I said it and I’m kind of stabbing my leg with a fork as I say it. Elizabeth Day Well, thank you. But yeah, you're right. It is a book that uses the architecture of thriller writing, without it being a kind of police procedural about a grizzled detective with a complicated personal life. And I love reading those, but I find them very complicated to write. So, I use the architecture of a book that I hope is compulsive to read. And I hope is slightly sinister, slightly claustrophobic, and you don't really know what's happening as a reader. And then there's a big twist in the middle. So that's why I'm talking in such vague terms. But the themes that I explore are fertility, motherhood, the pain and battle that can go into becoming a parent, what that does to you as a human being and mental illness and the human condition. So just those tiny, superficial topics I thought I'd put into what is hopefully an accessible and readable format, and that's Magpie . Sathnam Sanghera Yeah, I mean, that's a really rare skill to be able to deal with those really heavy subjects in such an accessible way. I guess your last book, The Party , your last novel, that was a literary thriller, but this feels like more of a deliberate genre thriller. Am I right or wrong? Elizabeth Day You're right, in the sense that I knew that I wanted to write a book with a twist because I find that enormously satisfying as a reader. And I pride myself on being able to spot most twists either in books or on screen. And so, I knew that I wanted it to be a really, really good one. And it was from there that the rest of the book came about. And so, it was a deliberate choice to have that kind of reading experience. And the other thing that I think draws together a lot of my novels is that I really enjoy, as a writer and also as a reader, the experience of a kind of unreliable narration, and never quite understanding whether what you're being told is the full truth. So, Magpie opens from the perspective of Marisa, who is a woman in her late 20s, who's had, as many of us have, the dispiriting online dating experience. And she finally meets this man called Jake, who's a bit older than her, who seems to tick every single box, who seems decent and straightforward and kind, and it moves quite quickly. And they move in together quite quickly into this house where most of the action takes place. And they decide to start trying for a family together. And at this point, Jake's business isn't going that well. So, they take in a lodger, Kate. And she seems to act in quite a kind of intimate and possessive way around the house...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: This Is The Canon 36:06

vor 4 years36:06

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This is the Canon , written by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a book that aims to decolonise what we think of as the literary canon, which is all too often dominated by white authors. In this week’s episode the authors talk to writer Thomas Glave about disrupting the accepted norm, highlighting different cultures and stories and their favourite books to add to your bookshelves. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 7: This is the Canon Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . This is the Canon , written by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a book that aims to decolonise what we think of as the literary canon, which is all too often dominated by white authors. In this week’s episode the authors talk to writer Thomas Glave about disrupting the accepted norm, highlighting different cultures and stories and their favourite books to add to your bookshelves. Thomas Glave Hello, welcome to another episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents. Today we're very thrilled to have three fantastic guests discussing their new book, This is the Canon: How to Decolonise Your Bookshelves in 50 books . Our guests today are the co-authors of this title, Professor Joan Anim-Addo, who is Professor Emeritus of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, and the co-founder of the world’s first MA in Black British literature. Also Dr Deirdre Osborne, who is a Reader in English Literature and Drama at Goldsmiths University, and the co-founder of the world's first Black British literature MA. She is also associate editor of the journal Women's Writing , and she edited the Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian literature . Our third co-author is Kadija Sesay, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kadija Sesay is a writer and editor of several anthologies, and is the founder of Sable literary magazine, and Afro poetry app. She is also co-founder of the Mboka Festival in The Gambia, and as a co-editor of IC3 published by Penguin, which will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary. We're very happy to tell you that This is the Canon is now out and available in bookshops and online everywhere. Welcome to our three guests. Thank you very much for joining us today. I'd like to start by asking you in sequence some questions just about this idea of decolonising. Starting with you, Professor Anim-Addo. What is decolonising exactly in the context of this book project? Joan Anim-Addo Thank you very much, Thomas. I think that decolonising has been a subject on the lips of lots of people and it's always seemed as if it's something that someone else is doing. And as readers, it seemed to us that we have a task also too. As readers, it seemed important for us to read a range of books, and insist on reading a range of books with different ways of storytelling, different characters, different rhythms from different spaces, not just Britain, for example, but to read as well as we possibly could. So, decolonising the canon, in a way opens up the way for the reader to take on that possibility, equips the reader to find a range of books to begin thinking about reading much more widely. Thomas Glave Thank you, Professor, very intriguing, very provocative indeed. And Dr Osborne, could you expound on this question as well? What is decolonising for you as a co-author of this book? Deirdre Osborne Well, I guess what's so wonderful about the book is that Joan and Kadija and I work from three very different locations in terms of perhaps how we were raised, when we were raised, where we were raised, and where we ended up living. And so decolonising is something that we have had, I think, to embrace really with all our work in literature and academia and also in a sort of literary activism that we've all been pursuing throughout our careers. And so, for me, I think it's an unquestioningly transnational idea of the capabilities of literature, that we need to open up our horizons because one person's canon, which is the sort of agreed list that gets consolidated throughout education - everyone must read these books to be an educated or learned person, which as we know, has had quite a limited framework around it - so one person's canon in another part of the world is an unknown book. And so, what we're doing with our work is to sort of make that more porous, to bring that together. So, something that might be canonical in Britain or in Senegal, and isn't in either of the other spaces, that we understand that actually, they can be read and enjoyed and also, they can serve as an inspiration to just how pluralized human beings are in the way they create and represent their experiences. So, decolonising, for me, is very much I suppose, opening up those borders of reader awareness. Thomas Glave Thank you, Dr Osborne. Excellent, really fascinating. Then Miss Sesay, I'd like to ask you as well. What is, for you, decolonising? Kadija Sesay What's been interesting, as I've just been kind of finishing up my own research for my PhD as well, which has been around Black British publishing, I actually think of it very much in a publishing context, as well. So, working with a major publisher, on such a book, when my whole work has been around decolonising publishing has been very interesting, as I'm sure you could imagine. But also, I won't go over what Joan and Deirdre have said, but I think one of the things that really, that came out of working on this in terms of an extension of thinking around decolonising, which is very easy to forget, is that this is just the first step. I think, as Deirdre mentioned, this is just a selection of books, that could be decolonising your literature, but it goes past the selection of books, it goes past showing your guests who come to dinner how decolonised you are by showing them what's on your bookshelf, it goes then to the reading, how are you reading this work and interpreting it? You have to then start shifting your mind about how you interpret it, yes, you're going to come to it from your own background and your own understanding of literature. But then you have to start thinking ...…

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Season 2: Jackie Morris in conversation with John Mitchinson 34:35

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This week’s episode brings together Birmingham born writer and artist Jackie Morris with her long-time friend, and the co-founder of the publisher Unbound, John Mitchinson. They talk about Jackie’s two new books, East of the Sun, West of the Moon and The Wild Swans, using feminist fairy tales to give voice to the voiceless, the beauty of snow and how it is impossible to draw during labour. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 6: Jackie Morris Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . This week’s episode brings together Birmingham born writer and artist Jackie Morris with her long-time friend, and the co-founder of the publisher Unbound, John Mitchinson. They talk about Jackie’s two new books, East of the Sun, West of the Moon and The Wild Swans , using feminist fairy tales to give voice to the voiceless, the beauty of snow and how it is impossible to draw during labour. John Mitchinson Hello and welcome. My name is John Mitchinson. I’m the publisher of Unbound , the crowdfunding publisher, and I am here today with the author and illustrator Jackie Morris. Jackie tell us where you're, as they say, calling from. Jackie Morris I’m in my roost, my lair, whatever you want to call it, which is a studio in an attic in a small and very tatty house which cl ings to the cliff tops just outside St. Davids, which is in Wales by the way. John Mitchinson Which is in wales, and this is the room in which, people who know your work may know both The Lost Words and The Lost Spells , the two books that co-wrote with Robert Macfarlane, but also The Unwinding which we published last year at Unbound and a couple of books that are coming out later on this year that we're going to talk about. Jackie Morris East of the Sun, West of the Moon and The Wild Swans and all of these were created here because 30 years ago I came to St Davids for the weekend, and I’ve never been able to find my way out really. It's a really strange place that some people say it gathers flotsam and jetsam from the world and we kind of swirl around in this little microenvironment. I very seldom took a holiday, I used to live in Bath which is a beautiful city, and I came here for a weekend, and I walked down the high street and I just got this incredible overwhelming feeling, which I now know is called hiraeth, which is that feeling of belonging. Hiraeth is more a kind of homesickness, and the homesickness was recognizing that this is where I should have been always, so this is where I was going to be. I didn't want it to be a place I came to on holiday, I didn't want to live my life to go on holiday a couple of times a year, I wanted to live here, and I wanted to work here and I wanted to raise children here and that's what I’ve done. John Mitchinson It’s amazing and it’s a very ancient bit of the world as well that Pembrokeshire coast, isn't it? Amazing rocks and beautiful beaches and, I think, can't you see from your studio window the top of St Davids cathedral in Fishguard? Jackie Morris I can and when the wind’s blowing in the right direction, I can hear the cathedral bells. I can also see Ramsey Island which is a very old and spiritual place and Skomer and I can see the sea and then if you walk up the hill behind my house there's a long ridge of granite rock that bites out of the sea and then down the other sides there's an old village that used to be inhabited years ago, it's all ruins now, there's hut circles, there's old standing stones, there's beaches where the seals come ashore to breed this time of year, there are raven’s roosts, there’s peregrines, I don't know why I wanted to live here really. John Mitchinson Nature is all around you. You have your own menagerie of animals as well. Jackie Morris Yeah, I do, I have four cats that share the house with me and are destructive to many things, including the house, often to my peace of mind, but they also come for walks. They're not allowed in the studio because they’re terrible critics of my work, they like to sit on paintings and knock things over and then I have three dogs, one of which is Rosie who is my daughter's dog, Ivy the beautiful and Pie who is just crazy crazy crazy. John Mitchinson Let's talk about the two books that are coming out in October, East of the Sun, West of the Moon and The Wild Swans . They're both really retellings of, I think, they're both Hans Christian Andersen tales originally, old folktales, Norwegian folk tales, certainly. But you take the stories, and you completely reinvent them, don't you? Jackie Morris Not completely, I changed the endings really. And more so with East of the Sun , than The Wild Swans . I did try very hard to change the ending of The Wild Swans . Yeah, the plot spoiler for that one is, for some reason, at the very end of it, Eliza, who is the heroine of the book, is on a pyre about to be burned as a witch. But she is rescued by her brothers arriving as swans. She then chooses to marry the prince who had sentenced her to death, I still don't understand that really, you know, I wouldn't be quite so forgiving myself. But then if I had brothers who were turned into swans, I would just think fantastic. I've got swans now, not brothers. So, I wouldn't spend years of my life weaving shirts out of nettles for them. John Mitchinson Yes, I mean, and you describe weaving shirts out of nettles and painful bloody fingers and painful bloody feet for stamping the nettles into fibres. Two things that strike me about the way that you tell these folk tales is that there's a lot of very strong, visceral, sensual writing in the books. That's one case, Eliza, you know, shredding her fingers and stinging her fingers with nettles. But it's full of delicious, they're always full of delicious foods, and incredibly kind of com...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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October: Brendan Hawthorne 5:15

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This month's piece is written by singer songwriter and Wednesbury Poet Laureate Brendan Hawthorne, reflecting on the changing seasons and the cosiness of autumn as the leaves and weather change around us. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT October: Brendan Hawthorne Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading Hello my name is Brendan Hawthorne, I’m a singer song writer, poet, playwright and I’ve written the blog for October for Birmingham Literature Festival. October has become a signpost month in many ways for me. New directions and opportunities have presented themselves. New challenges to keep the old mind alert and the heart full. Creatively I have had the script of a play published, a new collection of work readied for publication and signed new commission contracts. I am also recording songs with Kerry, my musical partner, for our new CD. Written pre-lockdown, it’s only now being given performance form and life. A photographer friend has offered to take a series of Autumnal photographic portraits of me for promotional use and I’ve bought Lynn, my wife’s, Christmas present. All good I hear you say, but, as October signals a seasonal change … I realise the world has changed from the world I once knew Changed into one that appears to be more guarded and tentative mindful of the tragic consequences in retaining liberty, democracy and relative freedom Many things are now ‘considered’ The atlas shrinks again through traffic light travel changes to a greater global awareness I personally love to feel the chill in the night air of the country of my birth. The way … our homeward journey is streetlight lit by autumnal sunsets directing us to log burner warmth Witness the magic of flickering shadows that tell different stories each time planet saving briquettes are ignited Smokiness taints the air with comfort atmospherically blending with the smell of tomato soup heated on a dancing gas ring accompanied by warm crusty bread fresh from the oven Then I wonder if the cost of gas will become more than the cost of tinned soup, but for now the concept is too great to stem the flow of intoxicating relaxation. My mom is 87 this month… She was 27 when she brought me into the world with the help of the NHS A system of healthcare that has cradled many since birth but I wonder for how much longer? Stories of elderly people falling and having to wait for 6 to 10 hours for ambulances to attend because there aren’t enough vehicles freed up by corridor queues in overcrowded A & E’s With all these cuts, I wonder why queues aren’t included? I spoke to a young police officer yesterday who told me he had thought he’d found his dream job by helping people feel ‘safe and secure’. He told me of attending drunken injuries taking 6 hours out of his shift to sit with someone waiting for medical attention. I felt his pain, his frustration and career dislocation. I do, however, laugh at the things I’ve said to myself, expecting answers that never come. With age, does the skill of asking yourself questions become more important? I’ll let you know. On the news today I saw a polar bear clinging for dear life to a tiny ice flow berg Hugging the chill to its bones it appeared to cry out in anguish at its predicament They know the importance of existence I thought Why don’t we? Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents …podcast . Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.…

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Season 2: Torrey Peters in Conversation with Shantel Edwards 49:06

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In this week’s episode Festival Director Shantel Edwards talks to debut novelist Torrey Peters about her Women’s Prize longlisted novel Detransition, Baby . Described as ‘a uniquely trans take on love, motherhood and those exes who you just can’t quit’, Detransition, Baby follows three characters as they navigate creating a new version of family for themselves. Join us as we talk about the politics of motherhood, misconceptions about transitioning and writing complex female characters. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 5: Torrey Peters Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . In this week’s episode Festival Director Shantel Edwards talks to debut novelist Torrey Peters about her Women’s Prize longlisted novel Detransition, Baby . Described as ‘a uniquely trans take on love, motherhood and those exes who you just can’t quit’, Detransition, Baby follows three characters as they navigate creating a new version of family for themselves. Join us as we talk about the politics of motherhood, misconceptions about transitioning and writing complex female characters. Shantel Edwards Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. I'm Shantel Edwards, the Festival Director and I'm really excited to be in conversation today with Torrey Peters, talking about her debut novel Detransition, Baby . Described as ‘a uniquely trans take on love motherhood, and those exes who just can't quit’, Detransition, Baby is a top 10 bestseller and was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021. Torrey lives in Brooklyn, and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Master's in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. She is the author of two novellas, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker . Torrey, welcome to the podcast, thank you for being here. Torrey Peters I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. Shantel Edwards I just wanted to start by asking how this last year has been for you really, I mean, there's been a pandemic, you've released a book in a pandemic, how has it been this past year? Torrey Peters I mean, I think that a lot of people who released books had a pretty difficult time. And I sort of feel bad being an outlier to that, where I, in some ways enjoyed releasing a book in the pandemic, in that most of my writing career has been hyper local, like, it's been part of like a scene of trans writers in Brooklyn. And so, where we read was like, at the local bar, and I saw the same people and there was a way in which I expected this book release to be, you know, have like a two mile radius of interest, maybe around it. And instead, partly because of the pandemic, you know, I would do an event and people from the UK, from Europe, sometimes from South America, Australia, there are people coming to these events from all over the world. As a result, I think, this experience, this book launch ended up being international for me in a way that it couldn't have possibly been, if it wasn't for the pandemic. And I expect that my next book will sort of return to kind of local, you know, a local way of doing it. The book is very Brooklyn. And so in some ways, I find myself lucky. I mean, it seems horrible to say I'm lucky there's a pandemic, a global pandemic, but the timing in terms of finding readers who I otherwise wouldn't have ever come into contact with, I think it was just sort of a fluke of all these things. And there's obviously a lot of dark sides to the pandemic, but for me, it ended up having these unexpected bright sides. Shantel Edwards And I guess you've gotten to see the different, was there a different reaction in different parts of the world to the novel? Torrey Peters Yeah, I mean, you know, the United States, like, sort of even the conversations about gender in different countries and around trans issues, they're really different. And they're different in different places, like, you know, in New York, for like, kind of trans women in New York, where things are oftentimes more radical and things like that, my book was almost like assimilationist in that it was like, you know, involved with children and family and motherhood which are considered conservative in some places, you know, some scenes. Whereas, you know, if I was talking to like a book group in Indiana, it was radical, it was this wild idea that a trans woman could be part of a nuclear family, or that the nuclear family might not be working. That was like a radical idea. And then, you know, in the UK, it was much more - it wasn't particularly politically polarizing in the US, that wasn't sort of the valence along which readers approached it. But in the UK, I think it had, just in the way that the conversation is there, it was a book that was interpreted politically. And, you know, the pushback was a lot stronger, there was more kind of stereotypically bigoted responses to it. But also, there was a more, I would say, vehement degree of support, you know, the book really was important to people, because there was, I think they felt that there was something very deeply at stake politically, in letting trans women tell their stories in unvarnished ways, and that really mattered. So, the book was, the book got on bestseller lists in both countries, but it got higher in the UK than it did in the US, simply because I think people felt like they had a lot riding on it. Shantel Edwards I was reading about your earlier work and I think a lot of your earlier work was very much about writing within the trans community and I wondered what that shift had been like to go from, you know, writing for a particular audience who you know, is going to understand and receive the work in the way it's intended, and then shift into being, I guess, published by a really big publisher, and what that shift was like, and if you felt like there was a, I guess, almost like a lack of control about how the novel might be received. Torrey Peters I was lucky while I was writing it, because I didn't know that is was going to be published by a big publisher. And so, I...…

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Season 2: Sarfraz Manzoor in Conversation with Will Buckingham 35:31

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In this week’s episode, writer Will Buckingham talks to journalist, screenwriter and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor about his latest book, They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other . Join them as they talk about the deep divisions in British culture and the way that stories can connect us and promise a much more hopeful future. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2 - Sarfraz Manzoor Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . In this week’s episode, writer Will Buckingham talks to journalist, screenwriter and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor about his latest book, They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other . Join them as they talk about the deep divisions in British culture, the history of Muslim Britain and stories that promise a much more hopeful future. Will Buckingham Hello, and welcome to this Birmingham Lit Fest podcast. I'm Will Buckingham, and I'm your host for today's show. I'm a writer and philosopher originally from the UK. I'm currently an immigrant to Sofia, Bulgaria. And today's guest; I will be talking to Sarfraz Manzoor whose brilliant book They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other has just been published. Sarfraz is a journalist, an author, broadcaster and he's written and presented documentaries for BBC Radio and Television and is a regular columnist for The Guardian , the Sunday Times and The Times . His first book, a memoir called Greetings from Bury Park, was published to critical acclaim in 2007. And it was adapted for the big screen in 2019 and released as Blinded by the Light which I've just added to my to watch list. Sarfraz lives in London, he's married with two children and a cat called Socks - I'm hoping that Socks will also call by to have their say in this podcast at some stage. Sarfraz’s book They is an insightful journey across and between cultures, an attempt to cut through what sometimes seems like the clamour of mutual misunderstanding and to take a long and intensely personal view into relationships between Muslims and Non-Muslims in today's Britain. So welcome on board Sarfraz. Sarfraz Manzoor Hi Will, good to talk to you. Will Buckingham Very nice to chat to you. I thought a good place to start talking about your book was about your own experience as somebody who is a living example of the complexity of identity and belonging that you explore in the book. So, the title of your book might suggest to readers that Muslims and Non-Muslims are kind of distinct blocks of people. But in reality, things are much fuzzier, more interesting and more tangled. So, I'd love you to start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how, throughout your life, you've navigated these complexities. Sarfraz Manzoor Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because I always think with identity, there are two sides to it. One is how you identify yourself. But there's also how others identify you, you know, and so it's interesting. So, the book title is They: what Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other , but growing up, the Muslim part wasn't really a big part of my identity. So, I grew up in working class Luton, in the 70s, in the 80s. My dad worked at the Vauxhall car factory; I went to a bog-standard comp. And if you would ask me at that point, what my identity was, it would have been Pakistani, really. It was much more about that, my dad never really talked about religion, but he talked about Pakistan, he talked about it in opposition to England, even though we happened to live in England. So, my identity was Pakistani, and then I guess it was also working class, you know, I wouldn't have used those words necessarily, because that was all I knew. But, certainly, when I went to university, I was really aware about, you know, the things that weren't available to me, the social networks that weren't available, that was all about class. So, I think class, and nationality were my identities. And I really, to be honest, didn't think about the religion stuff until other people started thinking about it for me. You know, with the Rushdie affair in the late 80s, that obviously was a big moment. And then obviously, since 9/11, as well. And that's when those identities start becoming more prevalent, and so, then you get into different sorts of lives. And so now, I would say, frankly, my identity is more husband, father, you know, middle aged man, all those kinds of things. But this is the part that I was interested in, when I walk down the street, most people still don't see those things, they still see skin colour, they still see ethnicity, they still think maybe religion. And so that's the thing is what I'm fascinated by: whatever narrative we have of ourselves compared to what others have. So, for example, you're in Bulgaria right now. Now, because of the fact that you are white skinned, if you were walking down the street in Sofia, nobody would know that you were British, would they? And so, the identity that you have of yourself, versus what anybody will see of you will be totally different. And it's only when you open your mouth that might get revealed. Whereas if you come from a background like mine, people are always projecting their ideas of what they think you are. And so that's part of the story in the book as well. Will Buckingham Which is, I suppose, in a way why the book is called They , because it's about that ascribing identity to other people. Sarfraz Manzoor Exactly. And it's also this idea about otherness that we talk about, you know, otherness is quite a fashionable word. But I'm always fascinated by what is it that allegedly binds us and doesn't, you know, and so, we can talk about the structure, but what I try and do in my book is sort of imagine I was sitting opposite an Islamophobe. And I was asking them, so what do you think Muslims are like, and I imagined that they would have a list of all these kinds of things. That they only live amongst themselves, they only want to marry other Muslims, they hate Jews, they hate gay people, their religion is extreme. And I just thought I'd go through each one of those, and...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: On This Day She featuring Jo Bell, Tania Hershman and Ailsa Holland 34:06

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Join us for a dinner party with 6 amazing women across history – plus our wonderful dinner party hosts Jo Bell, Tania Hershman and Ailsa Holland, authors of On This Day She: Putting Women Back Into History, One Day at a Time. Find out which historical figure was fond of geese at a dinner party, as we add six important figures back into a story of the past that unfairly confines women to the margins. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: Hanif Abdurraqib in Conversation with Casey Bailey 35:26

vor 4 years35:26

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In this week’s episode we welcome American essayist, cultural critic and poet Hanif Abdurraqib, who talks to our very own Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey about his latest book, A Little Devil in America . Hanif’s book offers a beautiful insight into the history of black performance and culture in America, including cultural icons such as Josephine Baker, Aretha Franklin and Dave Chappelle. Join Hanif and Casey as they talk about the process of writing a book that combines memoir with history and that is a real love letter to black cultural art and performance. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 2: Hanif Abdurraqib Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . In this week’s episode we welcome American essayist, cultural critic and poet Hanif Abdurraqib, who talks to our very own Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey about his latest book, A Little Devil in America . Hanif’s book offers a beautiful insight into the history of black performance and culture in America, including cultural icons such as Josephine Baker, Aretha Franklin and Dave Chappelle. Join Hanif and Casey as they talk about the process of writing a book that combines memoir with history and that is a real love letter to black cultural art and performance. Casey Bailey Hello, wonderful people. My name is Casey Bailey. And I am blessed and privileged to be here with Hanif Abdurraqib to talk about his latest book, A Little Devil in America . Now, Hanif is a prize-winning poet, essayist, cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, is the author of the highly praised poetry collections, The Crown Ain't Worth Much , and A Fortune for Your Disaster , the essay collection, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us , and the New York Times bestseller Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest . Hanif, how are you today? Hanif Abdurraqib I'm good, Casey, thanks for hanging out. Casey Bailey It's an absolute blessing and a pleasure. So, I mean, it's great for me being able to have this conversation with you. I always joke, I've done a couple of interviews now for Birmingham Literature Festival. And I get the kind of pleasure of asking you these questions that really are just secretly things I want to know before anybody else gets to hear the answers. And hopefully they enjoy it, too. So, I'm going to kind of jump in with what might be quite a big question or quite a complex question. But it's the one that kind of circulates in my head, thinking about this book, is how would you define this book? And I'll tell you why I ask before I put the pressure on you to answer it. Having read this book, it's one of those books that instantly there are people who I know, I feel like need to read this book. And so, when I say to them, you've got to read this book and they say, what’s it about or what is it, it's actually about so much and it is so much. I wonder how do you define what you've created here? Hanif Abdurraqib Oh, yeah, that's very kind. Thank you. I mean, I think for me, the best way to define the book is that it's a multitudinous exploration of performance, and what performance is in the very ways of performance, the many ways that performance shows up. Not on a stage or not on a screen, or not necessarily for an audience of anyone, but an audience of the performance I'm making, which is why there are essays in the book about spades or about complicated performances of affection or these kinds of things. I want to think about every route I've ever taken to a type of performance. For better or worse, sometimes for worse. Casey Bailey Yeah, so, one of the things that really struck me, having read the book, I went in and started kind of thumbing through the acknowledgments and stuff. And in the acknowledgments, you credit two people in particular that I noticed. You credit Maya Millet for, you say, steering the book in - and I apologize because I'm paraphrasing – in a new or better direction. And Ben Greenberg, and everyone at Random House for sticking with the book while it shifted, I think, is the word you use. What I'd really love to know is how much of a journey has the book been on from kind of the inception in your mind to what it became? And could you maybe map out some of that journey for us? Hanif Abdurraqib Yeah, I mean, initially, the book was going to be about, or the book was going to at least kind of revolve around appropriation and blackface in the history of minstrelsy. But I very quickly realized that that was not a pleasurable experience, like writing about that. I was centring whiteness more than I wanted to, and I didn't really find myself too keen on centring whiteness at that level. So, I began to ask myself a better question, which is a question of, what would this book look like if I extracted that desire to kind of make sense of - or tried to unravel the desires of whiteness as its projected upon black performers and black performance. And if I did that, could I get to a more pleasureful examination of what I have loved about performing and performances and watching performances. And I think that is essentially what ended up happening. You know, that's what ended up kind of, when I sat down Maya, who edited the book with me, and we began to ask questions of who the book was for and what the book wanted to celebrate. That became, you know, a lot clearer to me. And it made the book easier to edit. And it made the book a more exciting book to write, when I decentred the actual history of whiteness. Casey Bailey Amazing. And I think that it's interesting that you say that process wouldn't have necessarily been a pleasurable one, or wasn't a pleasurable one, kind of looking through that lens of how has whiteness impacted, or how has whiteness appropriated what we see of black culture. But what's interesting is, even having said that, the book is not just a collection of happiness, either. It has so many sombre and heavy notes, but it's carried by, you know, this real kind of idea of joy, which really is kind of like the metaphor for what you were just saying flows through the book of these punches of real happiness. And the...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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September, Rupinder Kaur 5:59

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September, Rupinder Kaur This month's piece is written by poet Rupinder Kaur and reflects on a September filled with family, poetry and inspiration from female writers. She talks about the joy of leading a ghazal poetry writing workshop and the sadness of hearing about the murder of South London Schoolteacher Sabina Nessa, who was killed on her way to meet a friend, just minutes from her home. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Newsletter Podcast Transcript: Episode 9, Rupinder Kaur Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading Hi, I’m Rupinder Kaur and I wrote September’s piece for the Birmingham Literature Festival’s monthly blog. “Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn't comfortable. I dare you...” —Michaela Coel. I have been thinking a lot about Michaela’s speech, she won best writer at the Emmys for I May Destroy You. Across the past two years, this pandemic gave me the time to reflect on my own life, life around me from my family to the world. As a writer what scares me the most is writing about myself, my actual true and innermost feelings. Until last year I had never written anything that is truly personal and now in my writing I always try to write what is truthful to me. September always reminds me of new starts, new beginnings possibly because the academic year starts again in September. It brings warmth and hope that yes the year is almost over but it's not exactly over yet. I have been trying to go on my daily walk almost everyday, something which I have been doing for the past year. Connecting with nature and seeing how nature changes over the months from spring to autumn, hearing the crunchy-ness of leaves when you are walking is a sound I particularly love along with seeing the colours of orange and deep reds. It was Mum's birthday on the 16th, so we went to the Botanical gardens. Mum's the biggest nature lover and she talks to plants, thinks they understand her. I wonder what language they actually understand or do they actually have a language. Then we had a nice evening meal at Asha’s and no, Tom Cruise was not there! Here is an excerpt from a poem ‘Trace’ I have been working on: There’s this dream I had where I flicked seeds on the garden shed roof until white doves spoke to peach trees. One peach tree was Mum. I am losing parts of Dad from my face. I am becoming Mum, just taller, so I can watch the doves fly for both of us. Over September I have been reading The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahaway and Luster by Raven Leilani. Mona quoted some of June Jordan’s poetry which intrigued me, so I went and brought her collection Directed by Desire which I have been devouring. It was also super nice to run a poetry workshop in person for the Desiblitz Literature festival! Sharing my love for South Asian poetry and teaching the basics of ghazal writing. If you truly want to understand South Asian poetry and ghazals you have to listen to music, the rhythms. Almost all poetry in South Asia has an oral tradition, it is to be performed such as ghazals, qawwalis, folk songs. To top it all off I went to Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan concert. It was such a magical experience to be immersed in live qawwali music. September has had a range of emotions and now towards the end it’s getting cold and dark. I can’t help but think about Sabina Nessa, a young Bangladeshi woman that was murdered. She was literally minutes from home. Is any part of the world truly safe for women, I really don’t know. Iconic Indian feminist Kamla Bhasin passed away this month and she wrote: “The first feminist must have been born the day patriarchy was born…” Feminism in simple terms just asks for equality, to be understood. Until patriarchy gets dismantled across the entire world, we still have a long way to go. But I still have hope that maybe, just maybe, one day this entire world will become kinder and safer for all. Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents …podcast . Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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Season 2: Kate Mosse in Conversation With Alison Jean Lester 44:33

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Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to be able to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. This week’s episode features bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, author of eight novels and newly published non-fiction book, An Extra Pair of Hands , her personal story of becoming a carer in middle age. In conversation with author Alison Jean Lester, Kate talks about her experience of caring for her father through Parkinson’s, supporting her mother during widowhood and living, and caring for, her mother-in-law Grandma Rosie, as well as the need to celebrate, and better support, the 8.8 million of invisible carers across the UK holding families together. This episode supports Age UK Birmingham. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT BLF Series 2, Episode 1: Kate Mosse Intro Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast . We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond. You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest . All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . This week’s episode features bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, author of eight novels and newly published non-fiction book, An Extra Pair of Hands , her personal story of becoming a carer in middle age. In conversation with author Alison Jean Lester, Kate talks about her experience of caring for her father through Parkinson’s, supporting her mother during widowhood and living, and caring for, her mother-in-law Grandma Rosie, as well as the need to celebrate, and better support, the 8.8 million of invisible carers across the UK holding families together. This episode supports Age UK Birmingham . Alison Jean Lester Hello, everyone. This is Alison Jean Lester, novelist and author of the memoir Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying . Absolutely delighted to be here talking with Kate Mosse, novelist, playwright and author of An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring, Aging, and Everyday Acts of Love . Kate Mosse is an international best-selling novelist, playwright, and nonfiction author, with sales of more than 8 million copies in 38 languages, renowned for bringing unheard and under heard histories to life. She's a champion of women's creativity. She's the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sits on the executive committee of Women of the World and is a visiting professor of contemporary fiction and creative writing at the University of Chichester. Her latest novel, The City of Tears , was published in January 2021. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and mother-in-law. And she's there right now ready to talk with us. Hello, Kate. Kate Mosse Hello, good morning. Alison Jean Lester Good morning to you, I am so pleased to have been paired with you and to have had the chance to read An Extra Pair of Hands . It's very close to my heart as it is to I think a lot of us in our 50s and, I think you said in another interview, you're approaching 60? Kate Mosse I am, yes. 60th birthday in October. Alison Jean Lester Right and I remember very palpably when my parents’ parents were dying, and thinking, they're talking to their friends all the time, their friends are also going through this. And my friends and I will also be going through this at the same time. The first thing that struck me in reading, very early on, right in the first pages of this book, where you said the many things that it's about, and the one that really pierced me was trying and failing simultaneously. Can you see that? Can you see that very human duality, that tension in your fictional stories as well? Or was that very palpable to you in talking about just your own life? Kate Mosse That's a great question, actually, Alison because one of the key things for all of us who write in different genres, is how similar the skill is for writing each different type of book. And there is, for me, it was very liberating writing nonfiction. I've written some nonfiction before, but this is by far the most personal book I've ever written. But actually, the skill and the way that I went about writing it was the same as the way that I go about writing a novel, which is you need to put characters on the page, you need to put emotions on the page. And so that particular thing about trying and failing, and succeeding simultaneously, everything existing in the moment is at the heart, I think of any human experience, in that we all are, whether it's a made-up character or us in our own lives, mostly we're trying to do our best. And often you can have that wonderful feeling that you've got it right. You know, you did the right thing, at the right time. But particularly when you're writing about care, when as you say, there is no alternative ending. The ending, if you're a carer, is almost always going to be in the death of the person you care for. You know, living well and dying well are the same story, you know dying well is part of living well, you know, and it will come to us all, doesn't matter who we are, how immortal we feel, in the end it will come to us all. So, I think that that is at the heart of what it means to be a carer. But obviously in a piece of fiction, I can decide the ending, I can change the ending, I usually finish before my characters die, you know and certainly the lead characters unless, that's part of the story. And so, I wanted to have that sense that whatever you do, will never change things. You know, all you can do is make a - horrible word and it's been much overused at the moment, I'm obsessed with the Olympics, and, you know, it's the word appears on every interview, the journey . But all you can do as a carer is make the journey, as brilliant as it can be for the person you're caring for. And by association yourself. Alison Jean Lester Exactly. Because you're not the doctor, you're the comforter and the lifter. Kate Mosse And, you know, the book is full of lite...…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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August, Elizabeth Lee 4:27

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Episode 8: August, Elizabeth Lee This month's piece is written by author Elizabeth Lee, whose debut novel Cunning Women was published earlier this year. Her piece considers the juxtaposition of the hope and promise of a new school year and restrictions lifting with the terrifying news of wildfires, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and rapidly escalating climate change, ending on a hopeful note of how it felt to realise a dream and have her debut novel published in 2021. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading Hello everyone, my name is Elizabeth Lee and I wrote August’s piece for the Birmingham Literature Festival. August has been a month of sunlight and storms, both literal and figurative. As I walk the canals and fields I’m lucky enough to live by, the air is sometimes bright and hot, sweet with pollen and busy with insects, sometimes filled with needle-sharp rain and biting winds. Always, somewhere, the shouts and laughter of children enjoying freedom from school can be heard. On a larger scale, the news feels like a series of earthquakes. I wonder whether we will, like the children preparing for a new school year as summer wanes, at last be shaken from lethargy and compelled to act. As wildfires rage in Greece and Turkey, we are warned that this planet we are the custodians of teeters on the brink of a disaster of our own making. We watch the terrible, terrifying events in Afghanistan take place. In my own home, we celebrate GCSE results that enable the next step on a journey. Exciting times, full of possibility and hope. Nationally, more students than ever end a difficult year by celebrating good results. But there is also a growing gap between North and South, between state and private schools. Those already at a disadvantage have been further failed in the Covid crisis. But there is also hope. Most of the adult population are now vaccinated against Covid, and we tentatively break free from the past months of isolation and fear. The world might be changed. But it is still here. Personally, I’m emerging from a post-publication haze as my debut novel was published in April. The fulfilment of a life-long dream that still has me pinching myself, and giving thanks for every piece of luck that passed my way. Set in 17th Century Lancashire, the book is a tale of persecution and superstition, but also one of love, in all its forms. Between parents and children, between siblings, between a man and a woman. Turning my mind to a new project, similar themes emerge; a historical setting that explores the struggle of those trapped by poverty and prejudice. But there is kindness to be found in the chaos. There is hope. These themes remain relevant, I think, to our world today. A world where women are raising their voices to say Me Too. A world that must address structural racism and respond to calls for collective action on climate change. Where Covid highlighted the danger of isolation, and the importance of community. But there is always sunlight in among the storms, there is always kindness in the chaos, and perhaps we will turn with new vigour, like a child returning to school in September, to protecting this world and valuing all that live in it equally. Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents …podcast . Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.…

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

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July, George Bastow 6:35

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Episode 7: July, George Bastow This month's piece is written by freelance writer George Bastow and considers both the highs (the unity of sport, echoed by the unity at the start of the pandemic) and lows of July (the racism following the Euros Final and the lack of protection for our disabled and vulnerable communities after so-called 'Freedom Day'), urging us all to continue to choose compassion and empathy over division. Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/ . For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/ Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest Credits Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director) Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands TRANSCRIPT Intro Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year. We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website , where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events . Reading Hello all you lovely listeners. My name is George Bastow and I’m a freelance writer, journalist and blogger who is also a full-time wheelchair-user with quadriplegic cerebral palsy. July 2021 has been a funny old month, although there has seldom been anything to laugh about. It’s been a month of exciting highs and abysmal lows with displays of uplifting unity and stark division that have reminded me England is a Jekyll & Hyde nation. A deeply complex country that can flip as easily as any of the coins of its realm. At the beginning of July, I could smell optimism in the air, as fragrant and hazy as the smoke drifting from summer evening barbecues; the Euros were in full-swing and if the countless tunelessly triumphant renditions of Baddiel & Skinner’s anthem I heard daily were to be believed football was definitely coming home. In the weeks leading up to England’s history-making championship final against Italy, my heart was lifted by the widespread love for Gareth Southgate’s squad and the refreshing examples of inclusivity they were setting, from the diversity of the players themselves to their decision to take the knee in support of Black Lives Matter and Harry Kane’s rainbow captain’s armband worn in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ Community. The whole country was inebriated by hope, progress and of course the occasional shandy as we cheered the home team towards their first piece of silverware since 1966, but the dreaded hangover kicked in sooner than anyone expected. In the moments after Rashford, Sancho and Saka missed their penalties my spirits sank as I saw the national coin flip from its shiny, positive side to its insidiously tarnished reverse. The appalling racist abuse the players were subjected to from brutally bigoted so-called fans was truly disgusting. Over the following days however, the country’s coin of conscience turned again as legions of true supporters showed their love and admiration for Saka, Rashford and Sancho and condemned the hatred from a small-minded percentage of the public. Just as the country rejoined as one in appreciation of three footballing heroes another polarising storm cloud appeared over the horizon… Freedom Day. Boris Johnson (a popular tousle-haired Vaudeville clown, famous for his Prime Minister impressions) announced that from Monday, 19th, all legal COVID-19 restrictions would be lifted despite rapidly rising cases of infection. For many a long-awaited return to the Old Normal is hugely welcome but for folk like me with disabilities and compromised immune systems life without masks or social distancing is a dangerous prospect. Even after receiving two vaccinations, to immunocompromised people risking exposure to COVID and the reality of new variants will prove deadly. I understand that to some wearing a mask is an inconvenience they are happy to ditch but for vulnerable communities masks are vital weapons in a daily war to maintain our health. I appreciate the people binning their face-coverings are doing so with optimistic intentions but the virus isn’t going anywhere soon, so by wearing our masks we can help stop it spreading further and save lives while we’re at it. As July draws to a close and the coin of England’s conscience summersaults in mid-air, we must choose which side it lands on. Is it heads for fairness, empathy and compassion or tails for intolerance, division and misunderstanding? It’s your call. Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents …podcast . Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.…

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