In the first installment of our ‘My True Genre’ series, RLF Fellows discuss how writers discover which form of writing suits them best, including considerations such as financial reward, social pressure, personal inclination and happy accidents.
It’s something of a cliché to say that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. But most clichés achieve that status because of a kernel of truth at their heart, and so it is with this one. At least, I certainly recognise it as true in my writing life. To…
William Ryan shares insights into how he writes scenes, Lauren James talks about how she writes and Menna van Praag tackles deadlines.
Catherine O’Flynn – once described as ‘The J. G. Ballard of Birmingham – on broken utopias and the realities behind them.
Marnie Riches speaks with Doug Johnstone about the discipline required to write two books a year, the experience of moving publishers and how she’s found branching out into historical fiction.
My work as a children’s book writer and playwright has definitely been influenced by my Caribbean roots and Yorkshire background. I was born in Bradford, Yorkshire to West Indian parents from the Commonwealth of Dominica. Not to be confused with the Dominican Republic. My Dominica is a small island between Guadeloupe and Martinique. The island…
Michaela Morgan celebrates the power of poetry, Jasbinder Bilan rewrites a classic book and Tom Lee addresses his readers.
I am a writer looking to be re-homed. All I need is a laptop, a table and a chair, and preferably silence or at least, banal noise, nothing too exciting. Lately I have been associating my usual writing space with all sorts of bad karma — a play which didn’t work no matter what I…
RLF Fellows James Attlee, Lesley Glaister, Ruth Dugdall, and Mark Blacklock examine the idea of not fitting in, whether that means being an outsider, moving between genres, tackling loneliness or facing rejection.
I shouldn’t be here. No, I didn’t have a near-death experience; it was Glasgow that almost died, bulldozed into oblivion. This large, lovely, light-filled flat stood in the way of progress, or, more precisely, the path of a proposed motorway approach-road. It was the early seventies and the promised land could be glimpsed just across…
RLF Fellows Adriana Hunter, Simon Robson, and Anna Wilson explore technical challenges they have overcome in their work, such as learning to hear distinct voices in translation, the liberating power of repetition, and dealing with writer’s block.
Elizabeth Cook speaks with Ann Morgan about the experience of seeing your words set in music, the physical craft of writing and the difference between creating poetry and prose.
This episode of the Royal Literary Fund podcast was produced by Ann Morgan.
