BookBlast® Podcast

The BookBlast® Podcast | LIVE interview: Maggie Gee, author

Maggie Gee is the author of fifteen books, thirteen of which are novels, including her latest, Blood, which is published by Fentum Press.

She talks about being born to working-class parents and climbing into an uneasy place between classes; winning a major open scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she did an MA in English literature and an MLitt on Surrealism in England; breaking into the publishing game; being selected as of the original Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983; why there is still such reticence on the part of the dominant ‘white’ literary establishment to address, through literature, the tensions of race and class in contemporary British society; co-founding the “Empathy and Writing” cross-disciplinary research group at Bath Spa University; and more.

 

Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | A BookBlast® Production

The BookBlast® Podcast (LIVE) | Playing Chinese Whispers with Nicky Harman

Nicky Harman, is a leading translator and promoter of Chinese literature. She was interviewed for The BookBlast® Diary in 2016 and Xu Xiaobin's Crystal Wedding reviewed.

 

Our conversation about writing from a non-English speaking world that is 4,834 miles away from the UK takes in the dark side of socialism and government censorship, what strengths are drawn by Chinese writers from the richness of their cultural background and national identity, issues faced by translators, Chinese women writers, sex and violence in contemporary Chinese literature, the unique aspects of contemporary Chinese literature, the growing popularity of science fiction and martial arts fiction in the West, and much more.

 

Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | A BookBlast® Production | Recorded 14.02.2019

Robert Elms BBC London Radio interview Georgia de Chamberet

Robert Elms talks to Georgia de Chamberet about The BookBlast® 10x10 Tour in association with Waterstones. A carnival of authors, poets, translators and independent publishers visit 9 major cities across England, 11 September to 15 November, holding live talks at flagship stores and  inspiring readers to immerse themselves in authentic, offbeat new writing.

 

Interview date: 01 September 2018

Lesley Blanch, a life remembered, BBC Radio 4

Most famous for the group portrait of four women who escaped the conventional constraints of domestic life, The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch was a scholarly romantic and a bold writer with a lifelong passion for Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East. Her posthumously published memoirs collects together the story of her marriage with Romain Gary, previously published only in French; her journalism on the artistic melting pot that was London between the wars; and a selection of her most evocative travel pieces, to create the story of a fascinating, bohemian – and, at times outrageous - life that spanned the twentieth century.

 

Interview date Monday 19 January, 2015

 

On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life by Lesley Blanch is published by Virago UK and Editions Table Ronde in Paris tr. Lucien d'Azay

 

Visit her website at lesleyblanch.com twitter @lesleyblanch

Lesley Blanch, Twenty Minutes, BBC Radio 3

Celebrated author and distinguished traveller, Lesley Blanch, MBE (1904-2007), talks to Teresa Cherfas about her love of Russia and of the mysterious family friend whom she referred to as The Traveller. Although to some it may seem that Blanch excelled in magnifying her own peculiarities to become larger than life, even mythic, she was always true to herself. Her private life was so inaccessible as to be virtually unimaginable. Blanch gave this interview the day after coming out of hospital, in February 2007. She died four months later.

 

Visit her website at lesleyblanch.com twitter @lesleyblanch