Emma Smith interviews Claire McGowan

Shahnaz Ahsan is Emma's guest to discuss her debut novel, Hashim & Family. They talk about Bangladesh, about the personal and the political, and about the classroom experience that has seared itself into her fiction.

Emma Smith chats with Alex Preston about Hertford, his career in finance, bees, and his new historical novel Winchelsea - Emma also teases Alex about the label of Mr Nice Review in Private Eye.

Louisa Reid's Young Adult novels in verse have been widely praised: join Emma Smith for a discussion of the challenges and responsibilities of writing for teens, as well as Louisa's experience as a teacher.

Memories, genre fiction and writing under a different pen name are all on the agenda for this podcast with Northern Irish crime author Claire McGowan (and her alter ego Eva Woods). Intro/outro music: Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet, Danzi: Wind Quintet Op 67 No 3 In E-Flat Major, 4 Allegretto. Cover photograph by Edmund Blok. Produced by Hannah Bironzo and Nathan Stazicker.

This week’s guest is children’s picture book author and illustrator Anya Glazer. We talk dinosaurs, sisters, merchandizing and how she riffed on her Modern Languages degree for her first book, Thesaurus has a Secret. Intro/outro music: Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet. Danzi: Wind Quintet Op 67 No 3 In E-Flat Major, 4 Allegretto

James Hawes, novelist and micro-historian of The Shortest History of England and The Shortest History of Germany, talks about agents and editors, his role in the worst film ever made, and playing the French horn on the roof of Hertford’s library. Intro/outro music: Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet, Danzi: Wind Quintet Op 67 No 3 In E-Flat Major, 4 Allegretto http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Soni_Ventorum/Franz_Danzi_Wind_Quintet_Opus_67/08_-_Danzi-_Wind_Quintet_Op_67_No_3_In_E-Flat_Major_4_Allegretto