Little Atoms

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels The Life of Objects, The Big Girls, One Last Look, In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties, The Whiteness of Bones, and My Old Sweetheart, and two books of nonfiction, Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i and I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai'i. She lives in New York City. Her latest book is the memoir Miss Aluminium. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. Sophie talks to Neil about her "a bit speculative, a bit dystopian" new novel Blue Ticket. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Douglas Stuart talks to Neil about his Man Booker longlisted, Glasgow set debut novel Shuggie Bain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maria Konnikova talks to Neil Denny about her latest book The Biggest Bluff, in which she sets out to study luck and instead becomes a professional poker player. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Luke Turner is a writer and editor based in London. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio show. He has contributed to the Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, NME, Q Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and Somesuch Stories, among other publications. Out of the Woods is his first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Power lives and works in London. His 'Brief Survey of the Short Story' has appeared in the Guardian since 2007. His fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review and The White Review. Mothers is his first book. This interview first broadcast in May 2018. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to do an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford, and an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths. Her first novel was The Still Point, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize and won the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and her second was Orkney, which won a 2014 Somerset Maugham Award. Her latest novel is Painter to the King. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frances Cha is a former editor for CNN in Seoul and Hong Kong. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia University MFA writing program, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. If I Had Your Face is her first novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist and documentary-maker who has travelled the world finding extraordinary characters to turn into film, print and audio. She writes for the Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times and Tortoise. Sex Robots & Vegan Meat is her first book. In this interview Jenny talks on Neil about... sex robots, plus future technologies around giving birth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Hart is a biologist, broadcaster, academic and author. Professor of Science Communication at the University of Gloucestershire, Adam is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4, and a presenter on BBC2. Adam talks about his new book Unfit for Purpose: When Human Evolution Collides with the Modern World, and how our bodies are not built to cope with the modern diet, stress, social media and "fake news". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Science Writer Emily Anthes on her new book The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behaviour, Health, and Happiness. Emily talks to Neil about designing better hospitals, schools and prisons, "amphibious" homes and building a house on Mars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Stephenson is an author and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. His previous book Let Not The Waves Of The Sea won Best First Book at the Scottish Book Awards. Set My Heart To Five is his debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lars Iyer is the author of the novels Nietzsche and the Burbs (2020) and Wittgenstein Jr (2014). He has also written a trilogy of novels, Spurious, Dogma and Exodus, which has received rave reviews in nearly all major literary publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (UK), The Spectator and The Believer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Atkinson is a publisher who has been behind some of the most successful cookbooks of recent years. He lives in London but has a deep-rooted affection for the north of England, the land of his ancestors. He is the author of Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract: The Story of a Tangled Inheritance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Farrier teaches English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction, and his work had appeared in Eon and The Atlantic. His first book is Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark O'Connell is the author of To Be a Machine, which won the Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. He lives in Dublin with his family. He writes for the Guardian, Slate, the New York Times and The Millions. His latest book is Notes From An Apocalypse: A Personal Journey To The End of The World and Back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Fern Riddell is a historian specialising in sex, suffrage and culture in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. She appears regularly on TV and radio, and writes for the Guardian, Huffington Post, Telegraph and Times Higher Education among others, and is a columnist for BBC History Magazine. Fern is the author of The Victorian Guide to Sex, and most recently Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Garth Greenwell is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was an Arts Fellow. His novella Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. His novel What Belongs to You has been widely acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. His latest book is Cleanness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist. The Mercies is her first novel for adults. Her bestselling works for children include The Girl of Ink & Stars and have won numerous awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and the Blackwell's Children's Book of the Year. They have also been shortlisted for prizes such as the Costa Children's Book Award, the Blue Peter Best Story Award and the Foyles Book of the Year Award. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC Short Story Award in 2018. She read law at the LSE and was a legal academic before taking degrees in fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Prospect and Pree magazines. Her debut novel is Love After Love. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philip Hensher has written eleven novels, including The Mulberry Empire, the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, King of the Badgers, The Friendly Ones and Scenes from Early Life, which won the Ondaatje Prize in 2012. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Bath Spa, and his latest novel is A Small Revolution in Germany. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eimear McBride is the author of the novels The Lesser Bohemians (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing (winner of the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, and others). She was the inaugural creative fellow at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading, and occasionally writes for The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, and The Irish Times. Her latest novel is Strange Hotel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosanna Amaka was born to African and Caribbean parents. She began writing her debut novel The Books of Echoes twenty years ago to give voice to the Brixton community in which she grew up. Her community was fast disappearing – as a result of gentrification, emigration back to the Caribbean and Africa, or simply with the passing away of the older generation. Its depiction of unimaginable pain redeemed by love and hope was also inspired by a wish to understand the impact of history on present-day lives. Rosanna Amaka lives in South London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and won the Paddy Power Political Books 'Satire' Award and Stonewall Writer of the Year Award. Damian writes columns for the Big Issue and High Life and often appears on BBC Radio 4. He is creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. His debut novel You Will Be Safe Here is out now in paperback. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephen Moss is a naturalist, broadcaster, television producer and author. In a distinguished career at the BBC Natural History Unit his credits included Springwatch, Birds Britannia and The Nature of Britain. His books include The Robin: A Biography, A Bird in the Bush, The Bumper Book of Nature, Wild Hares and Hummingbirds and Wild Kingdom. He is also Senior Lecturer in Nature and Travel Writing at Bath Spa University. Originally from London, he lives with his family on the Somerset Levels, and is President of the Somerset Wildlife Trust. His latest book is The Accidental Countryside: Hidden Havens for Britain's Wildlife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a novelist from South London. She is also a trustee of Latin American Women's Aid, an organisation that runs the only two refuges in Europe for and by Latin American Women. Her debut novel Stubborn Archivist was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and is now out in paperback. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Halls is a London-based writer and journalist. He worked in pubs, off licences and several minimum wage jobs before deciding to return to school to pursue his passion for writing. In 2014 Ben completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston, MA, and completed his Master of Fine Arts at Kingston University in 2016. The Quarry is his debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Swanson's novels include The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, nominated for an LA Times book award, The Kind Worth Killing, a Richard and Judy pick and the iBooks store's thriller of the year in 2015, and, most recently, Before She Knew Him. His latest novel is Rules For Perfect Murders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosamund Lupton is the author of Sister, a BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime", a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, winner of the Strand Magazine critics award and the Richard and Judy Bookclub Readers' Choice Award. Her next two books Afterwards and The Quality of Silence (also a Richard and Judy pick) were Sunday Times bestsellers. Her books have been published in over thirty languages. Her latest novel is Three Hours. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. Her latest book is Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize, and one work of non-fiction, Rain, which was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She is a nature writer, critic and columnist for The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian, among others. Her latest novel is All Among the Barley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lauren Groff is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels – Fates and Furies (named by Barack Obama as his favourite book of 2015), The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia – as well as the story collection Delicate Edible Birds. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Groff’s fiction has won the Pushcart Prize and the PEN/O. Henry Award, among others, and has been shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2017, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her stories have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, the Atlantic, One Story and Ploughshares, and in several of the annual The Best New American Stories anthologies. Her latest story collection is Florida. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eoin Colfer is the author of the internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl series, which has been translated into over forty languages. A Disney film adaptation will be released in 2019, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Dame Judi Dench. Eoin's books have won numerous awards including The British Children's Book of the Year, The Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and The German Children's Book of the Year. Born in Ireland, Eoin was educated at Dublin University and qualified as a primary teacher, before turning his hand to writing in 2001. Highfire is his first adult fantasy novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York at NYU. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English. Braised Pork is her debut novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ziya Tong is on the board of WWF International and was formerly the Vice Chair of WWF Canada. She presented Daily Planet, Discovery Channel's flagship science programme, until its final season in 2018. Tong also hosted the CBC's Emmy-nominated series ZeD, PBS' national prime-time series, Wired Science, and worked as a correspondent for NOVA scienceNOW. She is the author of The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain, which was made into a film by Netflix. Her latest book is The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Romesh Gunesekera is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction including Reef, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Sandglass, winner of the inaugural BBC Asia Award, and The Match, the ground-breaking cricket novel. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages and he is the recipient of many awards including a Premio Mondello in Italy. He was born in Colombo and lives in London. His latest novel is Suncatcher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Meek is the author of six novels including The People's Act of Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Award. It has been published in more than thirty countries. Meek's last novel The Heart Broke In was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and he has also written two collections of short stories and two books of non-fiction, Private Island, which won the 2015 Orwell Prize and Dreams of Leaving and Remaining. He is a Contributing Editor to the London Review of Books and writes regularly for the Guardian and New York Times. His latest novel is To Calais, In Ordinary Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Padraig Reidy hosts this episode, joined by Caleb Klaces to discuss his debut novel Fatherhood. They talk about the place of being a father today, the value of home and the novel as an adult bildungsroman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emma Forrest has published three novels, an essay collection and the memoir Your Voice In My Head. An Anglo-American currently based in London, she recently wrote and directed her feature debut, Untogether. Her latest novel is Royals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Neil speaks to Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman. She was named journalist of the year (Press Gazette) and won the 2018 Paul Foot journalism award for her reportage on the Windrush scandal, which led to the downfall of the Home Secretary and the government loosening its ‘hostile environment’ policy for migrants. She tells Neil about her new book The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author of two novels, the cult classic This Is Memorial Device, which won the Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and For The Good Times which won the Gordon Burn Prize. He is also the author of England's Hidden Reverse, a history of the UK's post-punk/Industrial underground. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger's Wife, winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest novel is Inland. She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Hunter College. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Padraig Reidy hosts this week, speaking to Guardian journalist and author Henry McDonald about his novel Two Souls. They talk punk, football and paramilitary activity in 70s and 80s Belfast, and how a few wrong choices changed the path of young men's lives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Neil speaks to Sarah Perry, author of the bestselling The Essex Serpent, which won Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and Book of the Year 2017 at the British Book Awards. Her latest novel is Melmoth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elle Nash is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, NAILED, Reality Beach, Hobart, and other places. She was a member of the Denver Press Club and now lives in Arkansas. Occasionally she reads tarot in exchange for money. Her debut novel is Animals Eat Each Other. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and her work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Republic, among other publications. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author and music journalist David Stubbs joins Neil to talk about his latest book Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music. They chat about the evolution of synthesisers, the women who pioneered electronic music and where the genre is now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, was long listed for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the memoir about her father’s life and assassination, Songs of Blood and Sword, was published to acclaim. Her most recent novel is The Runaways, and her latest book is New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lillian Li joins Neil to talk about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.