In Writing with Hattie Crisell – Details, episodes & analysis

In this final episode of the season, recorded in February 2023, I'm joined by the beloved poet and author Michael Rosen. Known equally for humorous children's verse and his poetry and prose for adults, Michael's books for kids include We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake, Michael Rosen's Sad Book and Jelly Boots, Smelly Boots. He's also written a number of more grown-up books, including Many Different Kinds of Love and the memoir Getting Better, about healing and recovery. In recent years he's written and spoken about his experience of spending seven weeks in intensive care with Covid-19, at the peak of the pandemic. In this conversation, we talk about how writing can help us after trauma; how performing poetry for children shaped his work; and how plain, understated language can express great emotion.

Browse Michael's books in the In Writing bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Visit his YouTube channel for kids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7D-mXO4kk-XWvH6lBXdrPw

Watch the short film Many Different Kinds of Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsrSN-OCk8w

Listen to Word of Mouth, hosted by Michael, on BBC Radio 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtnz

Subscribe to the In Writing newsletter and leave your questions about the podcast in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer them: https://inwriting.substack.com/

This season of In Writing is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Use code INWRITING20 for £20 off one of their four, five, six, or ten-week online writing courses. Visit https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more.

This week's guest is the beloved novelist Barbara Trapido, who I met at her home in Oxford in March 2023. Barbara's first novel was 1982's Brother of the More Famous Jack, which was published when she was 41; she followed it with Noah's Ark (1984), Temples of Delight (1990), Juggling (1994), The Travelling Hornplayer (1998), Frankie & Stankie (2003) and Sex & Stravinsky (2010). She's now in her early eighties, and talked to me about finding the energy to write in later life; her playful philosophy of writing; and her memories of introducing a young, then-aspiring novelist Maggie O'Farrell to her first agent.

You can find Barbara's novels here in the In Writing bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Please do subscribe to my newsletter on the writing process, and join me for writing hours on Google Meet, here: https://inwriting.substack.com

Here's the episode of In Writing with novelist Maggie O'Farrell, who talks about Barbara: https://audioboom.com/posts/7835707-maggie-o-farrell-novelist

This season of In Writing is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Use code INWRITING20 for £20 off one of their four, five, six, or ten-week online writing courses. Visit https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more.

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For the last episode of the fourth series of In Writing, Rumaan Alam joins me remotely from his house in Brooklyn, New York. Rumaan is the author of Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and most recently Leave the World Behind – a literary thriller about a family holiday that takes a sinister twist. (Leave the World Behind is set to become a Netflix movie, with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali reportedly in lead roles.)

Rumaan talks to me about the lengthy preparation that allows him to write a first draft fast; how his omniscient third-person narrator helped him to manage the mystery at the heart of his book; and why he thinks most modern novels are too long.

Buy Leave the World Behind and browse other books by guests of this series at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Thank you to The Novelry for sponsoring this episode: https://www.thenovelry.com/

Georgia Pritchett is my very funny guest this week. She's been writing for TV since the early Nineties and has worked on Smack the Pony, The Thick of It, Veep, Succession and, importantly, Spice World. She's also the creator of the new Apple TV series The Shrink Next Door, starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn – and she has recently published a wonderful memoir about anxiety, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life.

Georgia spoke to me in early November about the grain of honesty in every good joke, why Armando Iannucci says that team writing is like making a gravy, and what she's learnt about rich people from working on Succession.

Buy My Mess Is a Bit of a Life here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5954/9780571365883

This episode is sponsored by Scribe Lounge: https://scribelounge.com/

The 40th episode of In Writing focuses on the art of letter-writing. Shaun Usher, who spoke to me last week from his home in Manchester, is the founder of Letters of Note, a blog that led to several very successful books and a star-studded live event (Letters Live). He has dedicated his career to finding the most brilliant, funny, insightful or poignant letters from all over the world and bringing them to a wider audience – whether that's a young Tom Hanks trying to charm the director George Roy Hill, or Albert Einstein's letter to a Sunday school class.

Shaun speaks to me about falling in love with his wife and the letter-writing tradition at the same time; the massive research involved in his job; and the very finest letters he's read.

Shop the Letters of Note series in the In Writing bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Follow Letters of Note on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lettersofnote and make sure you have a look at Letterheady, Shaun's collection of wonderful letter heads: https://www.letterheady.com/

Australian writer Liane Moriarty joins me this week from her family home in Sydney. Liane has written nine novels, including her latest mystery Apples Never Fall, and has sold over 20 million books worldwide. She is perhaps best known as the author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, which were adapted into glossy TV series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Melissa McCarthy. 

Liane talks to me about the dark turn that took her fiction from successful to stratospherically successful, her no-planning approach to plot, and how she and her writer sisters help each other navigate reviews.

Browse Liane's books and buy Apples Never Fall at the In Writing bookshop, where 10% of your money goes towards the making of the podcast: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Today's interview is with the writer and editor Craig Taylor, who dials in from an island shack off the coast of western Canada. Once a Guardian contributor, with his column One Million Tiny Plays About Britain (which became a book and a play), Craig has since become known for oral histories including 2006's Return to Akenfield and 2011's Londoners. For his latest book New Yorkers, he collected and edited over a million words of interviews with residents of the Big Apple; this week it won a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

We spoke in May, when he told me all about his quiet island life, the routines he uses to keep himself productive, and how he pulled together his ambitious portraits of London and New York.

Buy New Yorkers here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5954/9781848549708

Craig is also the editor of the literary magazine Five Dials: https://fivedials.com/

And read the Guardian piece on handwriting vs typing here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/16/cognitive-benefits-handwriting-decline-typing

It's wonderful to have novelist Meg Mason on the podcast this week. On holiday in June, I got more hooked on her novel Sorrow and Bliss than I have been on perhaps any other book of this year. 

Speaking to me from Sydney in August, Meg talked about her complicated feelings about the memoir she published in 2012 and the unpublished novel she completed just before Sorrow and Bliss. She gave some useful advice on characterisation, and shared the daily exercise she used to boost her confidence when writing was a struggle.

Buy Sorrow and Bliss and other books by guests of the podcast here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing

Read Meg's very funny Gift Ideas for the Writer in Your Life at The New Yorker here: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/gift-ideas-for-the-writer-in-your-life

And browse the best of her pinboard here: https://megmason.com/credits

This episode of In Writing is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Use code INWRITING20 for £20 off one of their four, six, or ten-week online writing courses. Go to http://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more.

Not a normal In Writing episode today, but a wholehearted recommendation for something new. This is a guest episode of the excellent podcast The Offcuts Drawer with Laura Shavin, on which successful writers share the contents of their bottom drawer – the bits of writing they never finished, had rejected or just like to hold on to for nostalgic reasons. Actors perform these pieces and the writer chats to host Laura Shavin about the stories behind them. In this episode, Laura meets Chris Lang, writer of the ITV detective drama Unforgotten (and lots more projects along the way).

Do subscribe to The Offcuts Drawer with Laura Shavin – it can be found here: https://offcutsdrawer.com/ – and follow Laura on Twitter at https://twitter.com/laurashav

I'll be back with a new episode of In Writing with Hattie Crisell on Friday.