Meera Syal with Richard E. Grant

What are the best books get you out of a reading slump? How did Snakes on a Plane inspire a literary sensation? What did James Joyce and Pakistani rap teach one of our debut novelists? And does a writer need to be completely delusional to finish writing a novel? This week on Ask ...  Show more

How does artist Kae Tempest inspire Dawn French? Do editors always know best? What is the impact of grief on those we love most? And what really happened when Dawn French came face to face with a hippo while filming Harry Potter? In this episode of Ask Penguin, Rhianna Dhillon si ...  Show more

Launching the Bookshop's inaugural World Literature Weekend, Hanan al-Shaykh gave a lively reading from her memoir of her mother, The Locust and the Bird, as well as discussing the book with novelist Esther Freud. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn ...  Show more

With her new memoir, The Critic's Daughter (Norton), Priscilla Gilman explores her relationship with her father, Theater Critic and Yale Drama professor Richard Gilman (as well as with her mom, literary agent Lynn Nesbit). We get into the perils of literary-kid memoir, the NYC bo ...  Show more

This week, the ladies are joined by Finding Freedom author and ABC royal correspondent Omid Scobie as he revisits his Sussex biography one year later by re-releasing the book with a new epilogue. Plus, it’s been 24 years since Diana’s untimely death. There’s also a deep dive into ...  Show more

In this episode we hear from female foreign workers about their experiences of love, marriage and childbirth in Jordan. One of them tells us of being forced to leave her child in her home country and another talks to us of her struggle to pay rent and live with her children in Am ...  Show more