Tender Buttons – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, we speak to acclaimed poet and novelist Garth Greenwell about his latest novel, Small Rain. We speak about chambers of mind and body within the architecture of the novel, and touch as something with the power to both connect us with and alienate us from our animal corporeality. We explore the embodied nature of syntax in Garth's work, and the ways in which pain can shatter this. We question the 'arts of living' and discuss the necessity of uncertainty and contradictions within fiction, and the importance of sitting with discomfort. We speak about civility, neighbourliness, political division and the myriad ways in which our lives are dependent on others.

Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His novella Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City.

References

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

Introducing Myself by Ursula K. Le Guin

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Garth's work.

This conversation was recorded in person at Albatross Café in Bristol.

This is a special live episode, hosted at Storysmith to mark the launch of Strange Relations by Ralf Webb.

We think about the contemporary crisis in masculinity through the lives and work of mid-century American writers John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin, considering how their legacies might inform the current moment. We speak about the censorship of radical elements of these writers' work, including elements of their politics, queerness and intimacy, and consider the role of their interpersonal and intertextual relationships in understanding their work. We speak about what it means to reclaim space in the canon and expanding terms such as bisexuality, as well as notions of boyishness. We discuss the relationship between poetry and prose, the use of novelistic techniques in non-fiction and the ethical responsibility involved in writing about well-known literary figures.

Ralf Webb is a poet, writer and editor based in Bristol. His debut collection of poems, Rotten Days in Late Summer was published by Penguin in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. Webb’s poetry and critical writing has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, and The Poetry Review. He currently manages a creative writing mentorship programme in collaboration with Folio and First Story, which supports school-age writers from low-income backgrounds.

References

Strange Relations by Ralf Webb

Late Days in Rotten Summer by Ralf Webb

Warped Pastoral: Ralf Webb and Sam Buchan-Watts in conversation

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ralf's work.

In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Eliza Clark about her novel, Penance. We discuss violence and transgression within fiction, and what this can reveal about wider society. We chat about the satirisation of the true crime genre, and the socio-political context which surrounds violent acts. We examine the role of the internet in writing, publishing and how it effects our experiences of our bodies and desires. We discuss the influence of both mainstream and social media in shaping narratives about people and places, as well as aspects of social class and regional inequality between the north-east and London. We chat about what it means to write difficult female characters and the difference between writing first and second novels.

Eliza Clark is from Newcastle. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North's 'Young Writers Talent Fund'. Her debut novel, Boy Parts, was published by Influx Press in July 2020 and was Blackwell's Fiction Book of the Year. In 2022, Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women's Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five, and she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Penance was published by Faber in 2023.

References

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Penance by Eliza Clark

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In this special live episode, we speak to writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright about her memoir, This Ragged Grace. We discuss the ways in which Octavia's roles as an interviewer, carer and linguist informed her process as an active listener and developed her writing voice. We explore the distinction between the pornographic and the erotic in relation to memoir writing, and discuss the process of revealing and concealment when writing from lived experience. We chat about the importance of images and symbols in articulating trauma, with reference to Louise Bourgeois' 'Spiral Woman' as a symbol which holds contradictions within recovery. We speak about the interweaving of presence, loss, memory and history within writing and discuss the influence of artists and writers such as Louise Bourgeois, Deborah Levy and Marlene Dumas on Octavia's work.

Octavia Bright is a writer and broadcaster. She co-hosts Literary Friction, the literary podcast and NTS Radio show, with Carrie Plitt. Recommended by The New York Times, Guardian, BBC Culture, Electric Literature, The Sunday Times and others, it has run for ten years and has listeners worldwide. She also presents programmes for BBC R4 including Open Book, and hosts literary events for bookshops, publishers, and festivals – such as Cheltenham Literature Festival and events for The Southbank Centre. Her writing has been published in a number of magazines including the White Review, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Wasafiri, Somesuch Stories, and The Sunday Times, amongst others. She has a PhD from UCL where she wrote about hysteria and desire in Spanish cinema.

References

This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright

Living Autobiography series by Deborah Levy

Louise Bourgeois

Marlene Dumas

As always, listen for the discount code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Octavia's work.

In this episode, we chat to Isabel Waidner about their new novel, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility. We discuss the notion of 'liberating the canon' and the role of formal innovation in representing marginalised perspectives across gender, sexuality, social class and race. We explore the queering of the Bambi figure in Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, the radical importance of acknowledging references and transdisciplinary approaches to art-making. We discuss the role of football and music as traditional ways for working-class people to access 'social mobility' and consider how literature might fit within this. We explore the queering of time and history within the novel and highlight the necessity of balancing a critique of society with the liberatory potential of queer imaginaries. We dicuss the gatekeeping of the literary establishment, the false promises of meritocracy in awards culture and the commodification of art, exploring the limitations of neoliberalism.

Isabel Waidner is a writer based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They won the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.

References

Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature by Isabel Waidner

We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner

Sterling Carat Gold by Isabel Waidner

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabael Waidner

An Alternative Art History of the 1990s by Isabel Waidner (Frieze)

All Us Girls Have Been Dead for So Long by Linda Stupart and Carl Gent

Nicole Eisenman, Bambi Gregor, India ink on paper, 1993

John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears, 1978

Loot by Joe Orton

As always, listen for the code and visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Isabel's work

In this episode, we speak to investigative journalist Siân Norris about her new book, Bodies Under Siege. We discuss the rise of far-right ideology across the world, and the ways in which fascism and the struggle for reproductive rights are inextricably linked. We consider the ways in which global anti-abortion networks are connected to movements which are underpinned by white supremacy and hostile to LGBTQIA+ rights. We think about the influence of these movements across the world, including their access to funding, their co-opting of feminist language and tactics used by the far-right to secure the support of women in their world as mothers, such as tradwifes and gender critical feminists. We discuss the possibilties of reproductive justice for women across the world, and consider the ways in which we might build a better world through the international reproductive justice movements, centered on resistance and solidarity.

Siân Norris is a writer and investigative journalist who has covered far-right movements and their relocation to the mainstream for a range of publications, including the UK's Byline Times and openDemocracy. Norris is a leading voice in the UK feminist movement and her writing on issues ranging from men's violence against women, to migrant rights, and poverty and inequality, has been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, the i, and many more publications. In 2012 she set up the Bristol Women's Literature Festival, which she ran for eight years

References

Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global by Siân Norris

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi

Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis

Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys

Happening by Annie Ernaux

As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Siân's work.

In this episode, we speak to Preti Taneja about her brilliant book, Aftermath. We discuss the ways in which individual actions are mapped onto societal, national and global histories and inequalities. We consider the paradoxical limits of language and writing to articulate grief, as well as a return to other radical writers and thinkers. We discuss the oppression of the prison industrial complex system and its relationship to racism within the UK education system. We speak about the use of shame to denigrate marginalised people and the erasure of colonial and imperial history within schools. We discuss the role of fictions, both within literature and within society, and the ways in which particular narratives have the potential to imprison or empancipate people. We consider the gatekeeping within contemporary literary culture and wonder what literature could look like in a more equitable world.

Preti Taneja is a writer and activist. Her debut novel We That Are Young (Galley Beggar Press, 2017) won the Desmond Elliott Prize for the finest literary debut novel of the year and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski, Europe's premier award for a work of world literature. Her second book, Aftermath (And Other Stories, 2021) won the Gordon Burn Prize in 2022 and was a New Yorker notable book, a New Yorker best book of the year, a White Review book of the year, New Statesman book of the year in 2021 and in 2022, and shortlisted for British Book of the Year - Discover. Her writing has been published in The White Review, the Guardian, Vogue India, the New Statesman, Granta, INQUE and in anthologies of short stories, essays, literary criticism and prose poetry. She has taught writing in prisons, worked with arts practitioners around the world mediating their own conflict and post conflict zones, and with young people across deprived parts of the UK who want to get published. She is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA). In 2022 Preti was named winner of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in Languages and Literatures 'for her work on combining ethics, politics and aesthetics; developing pioneering hybrid creative forms, including via literary prose to advocate for minority rights.' She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review magazine, and for the multi-award winning independent press And Other Stories, for which she accepts submissions of full manuscripts.

References

We That Are Young by Preti Taneja

Aftermath by Preti Taneja

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

Adrienne Rich

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Angela Davis

Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Preti's work.

In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking to the very brilliant Bhanu Kapil about the UK publication of her collection Incubation: a space for monsters. We discuss what it means to return to earlier work in new contexts, and why the figure of the monster or cyborg is so crucial to her work, in relation to migration and border politics. We chat about the role of the body within her work, and the language of flesh and bones. We discuss the relationship between performance, writing and memory and what it means to make work which refuses categorisation.

Bhanu Kapil is the author of six full-length poetry collections and a recipient of a Windham- Campbell Prize and a Cholmondeley Award. Her most recent book, How To Wash A Heart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. For twenty years, she taught creative writing, performance art and contemplative practice at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She is currently based in Cambridge as a Fellow of Churchill College. She also teaches for the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, as part of a practice- based Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability.

References

Incubation: a space for monsters by Bhanu Kapil

Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil

entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil

The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil

Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil

Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil

How to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil

Plot by Claudia Rankine

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

As always, listen for a discount code for 10% discount on Bhanu Kapil's work at Storysmith.

In this week's episode, we chat to writer and Japanese translator Polly Barton about her new book Porn: An Oral History. We discuss the necessity of sitting with discomfort and ambivalence and the role of unknowingness within a divided contemporary society. We speak about he nature of oral histories and the links between translation and transcription. We consider the importance of intergenerational conversation, as well as the role of nuance, contradiction and sensitivity within non-fiction. We consider what it means to leave space for desire and pleasure within discourse on sex and gender and think about Pamela Paul's notion of the pornification of society under capitalism.

Polly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and her debut book, Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021. In 2022, Fifty Sounds was shortlisted for the 2022 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders and her full length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury). Her new book, Porn: An Oral History, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and is forthcoming from La Nave di Teseo in Italy.

References

Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde

Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families by Pamela Paul

In this episode, we speak to author and essayist Ellena Savage.  We discuss hierarchies of power within the arts and the precarity of writing for a living, as well as what it means to work both within and in opposition to literary and academic institutions. We address ideas of consumption and capitalism, as well as the dream of a classless society which makes space for beauty and pleasure. We explore the experimental essay form as a means of capturing the fractured nature of memory and time, and the subversion of catalogues and archives as a feminist tool. We discuss what it means to write 'memoir' or 'anti-memoir' and the intersection of these ideas with gender and social class. We also chat about complex notions of home and belonging, amidst gentification and colonial histories.

Ellena Savage's debut essay collection, Blueberries, was published by Text Publishing and Scribe UK in 2020. It was shortlisted for the 2021 VPLA and long-listed for the Stella Prize. She has written essays, stories and poems for Sydney Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, Meanjin, Overland, Cordite, Mirror Lamp Press, Kill Your Darlings,The Big Issue Fiction Edition and The Lifted Brow (where she was an editor). She has also written for periodicals such asThe Age, Guardian Weekend and Eureka Street, where she wrote a monthly cultural politics column between 2011-2016, and in the anthologies Open Secrets (2021), The Cambridge History of the American Essay (forthcoming), Choice Words (2019), The Best of the Lifted Brow: Volume Two (2017), Poetic Justice (2014), and The Emerging Writer (2013). She has written for gallery and performance contexts via Darebin City Council, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, and  ArtsHouse. She also published a chapbook, Yellow City with The Atlas Review in 2019.  

References

Blueberries by Ellena Savage

Little Throbs (newsletter) by Ellena Savage

Memnoir by Joan Retellack (Chain #7: Memoir/Anti-Memoir edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr)

Bhanu Kapil

Crabcakes: A Memoir by James Alan McPherson

Poetry is not a Luxury by Audre Lorde

As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ellena's work.