Write-Off with Francesca Steele

I find this interview so inspiring. Matt Cain is a successful arts journalist and at the time of his first book submission he was Culture Editor for Channel 4, praised in particular for his coverage …

Welcome back! Clare Chambers is kicking off this season. Clare has written nine published novels - her first when she was just 26 and her latest, Small Pleasures, a wonderful book long-listed for the…

What do you do when you've written an entire book you hate?

Martha, the narrator or Sorrow and Bliss, is intelligent, critical, loving, cruel: an incredibly nuanced unforgettable character. She suffe…

What a year the Booker prize winning author Douglas Stuart has had. Born on a housing estate in Glasgow Douglas and his siblings were raised by a single mum who died of alcoholism when he was 16. In …

The Booker longlisted, Women’s Prize shortlisted Michèle Roberts is, like her books, wonderfully erudite, perceptive and expressive. Michèle has been writing professionally for more than 40 years and…

The British novelist Alex Wheatle has such an extraordinary backstory that when he was working in the writers’ room for Steve McQueen’s BAFTA winning film series Small Axe, McQueen ended up making on…

Ann Napolitano is the author of three novels, including Dear Edward, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and which is the heart-breaking story of a boy who loses his parent…

Julian Fellowes is, of course, rather well known for creating a little TV series you might have heard of called Downton Abbey. And that wasn’t his first screen success either, having already won an O…

My guest this week is Phoebe Morgan, the author of four books and Editorial Director at HarperCollins. Phoebe's first book, The Doll House, was published just five years after she left university, an…

My guest this week is Harry Parker, a writer and artist who had a very interesting route to becoming an author.

Harry is an army veteran who lost his legs following an IED explosion while on tour in …

My guest this week is Katherine Heiny, who I’m happy to report is as funny in person and she is on the page. When I first approached Katherine for this podcast she told me that she had 9 million inse…

Andy Weir is best known for his novel The Martian, a very clever and funny book about an astronaut stranded on Mars, which was made into a (2015) Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon.

Andy had two f…

Anna Hope has written three very successful novels, the last of which, Expectation, was published to much fanfare in 2019 and which has been optioned for film. But before that Anna experienced plenty…