bloomsbury

Toni Collette and John Leguizamo talk about their roles in new TV series The Power, and a discussion on the enduring appeal of Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides.

Richard Wagner's epic fantasy opera Lohengrin is a fairy-tale romance, but a disconcerting German nationalism lurks beneath its surface. French director Olivier Py confronts the opera's complexities head on in his upcoming production for Opera Australia.

Also, we trace the influence of theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski and his impact on modern acting and theatrical storytelling with Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury).

Find out how she presents the experiences and rigorous training that women go through in her latest army book.

In this Editor Special episode, Tara chats with Tanushree about her experiences as an ‘army wife’ and how she developed the characters of Billi, Lakme, Shiny and Nutty. Tanushree shares why discipline is such an important part of training in the army. Tara shares her thoughts while editing Tanushree’s book and they discuss the dynamics of the writer-editor relationship.

Soon to be a major web series!

Born in New Delhi, Tanushree Podder worked in the corporate sector for eight long years before she quit the rat race to write. Over the years, she has penned eleven novels. Two of her books, Boots Belts Berets and The Girls in Green are soon going to be adapted into web series. She lives with her husband in Pune. Read her book: https://www.amazon.in/Girls-Green-Soon-major-web/dp/9390252814

'Books and Beyond with Bound' is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D'costa of Bound talk to some of the best writers in India and find out what makes them tick. Brought to you by Bound. Read more: https://boundindia.com/books-and-beyond-podcast/ 

We have limited mentorship slots open! Use the discount code BOUNDMENTEE2022 to get a 10% discount on our three month mentorship program. Offer ends on March 1st 2022. More details here: https://boundindia.com/events/writing-mentorship/ 

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

In this podcast we look at the art and techniques of storytelling.  We speak to novelist Zoe Gilbert about the ways in which she uses folklore and folk tales as inspiration and backdrop for her storytelling and actress Tiffany Clare about telling stories through characters and narration.

Our first guest in this edition is Zoe Gilbert.  Zoe won the Costa Short Story prize in 2014.  He debut novel Folk was published to considerable acclaim and featured on BBC Radio.  Zoe's second novel Mischief Acts will be published in 2022.  She co-founded London Lit Lab with novelist and memoirist Lily Dunn who we'll be featuring in part two of this short series.

Find out more about Zoe and her work by visiting her website here
http://zoegilbert.com/
You can follow her on twitter here https://twitter.com/mindandlanguage

 Find out more about London Lit Lab and sign up for their courses and workshops here https://www.londonlitlab.co.uk/

 You can buy Folk as paperback, e-book or audiobook through all the usual outlets.

 Tiffany Clare is an actress working on stage, screen and in audio drama.  She has appeared in many Alternative Stories dramas being nominated for two audio verse awards for her appearances in our dramas The Adults in The Room and No Words.  The latter represented the UK at the International Radio Drama Festival in 2020.  Tiffany works as a voice artist in commercials, presents podcasts and has worked as a voice actor for video games. 

 If you would like to work with Tiffany you can contact her via her website https://www.voicebytiffany.com/

 In this podcast you can hear extracts from the following 

•  Two extracts from Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert read by Sally Walker-Taylor
• An extract from Folk by Zoe Gilbert read by Tiffany Clare
• An extract from The Seeing Trees by Kaitlin Felix featuring Tiffany Clare and Charlie Richards 
• An Extract from The Adults in the Room featuring Tiffany Clare and Catherine D’Addario

 We would like to thank Bloomsbury, Zoe Gilbert’s publisher for permission to recreate extracts from her books for this podcast.  You can visit Bloomsbury here 

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
And follow them on twitter here https://twitter.com/BloomsburyBooks

 
In our next podcasts you’ll be able to hear 

·      Storytelling Part Two featuring Lily Dunn

·      Real Boy, a new audio drama by Cailean Steed 

·      A folklore special edition about creatures, beasts and familiars in folklore guest-edited by Signe Maene

·      Midwinter Monologues – our Christmas 2021 edition featuring short seasonal monologues from a variety of writers. 

Find out how she captured the red-light district of Lahore and wrote a compelling and nuanced love story in her debut novel, ‘Skyfall’. 

Saba shares how her writing is inspired by her father and why she decided to explore the exact opposite through the villainous father figure in her novel. She tells us why she made her main character Rania a tour guide to show women accessing public spaces. 

Tara edited her book and knew it was going to be a bestseller. Michelle loves how Saba captures the love and friendship between the two countries. How did Saba include her own experiences in this story? Why did she ask her mother to read the book? What does the publishing industry in Pakistan look like? Tune in to find out! 

Book Recommendations:

• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro 

Saba Karim Khan holds a postgraduate [M.Phil] degree from Oxford University and currently teaches at New York University's international campus in Abu Dhabi. She has taught two creative writing courses and led four creative writing workshops for undergraduate MFA students. Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, DAWN, Express Tribune and ThinkProgress, Washington. She has also been commissioned to write the memoirs of a classical music artist in Pakistan, whose repertoire focuses on ghazals by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mirza Ghalib. Find the book here: https://www.amazon.in/Skyfall-Saba-Karim-Khan/dp/9390252385 

'Books and Beyond with Bound' is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D'costa of Bound talk to some of the best writers in India and find out what makes them tick. Now trending in 9 countries! Read more: https://boundindia.com/books-and-beyond-podcast/ 

We can pitch your book to publishers! Send your manuscript and bio to connect@boundindia.com or DM us @boundindia on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve joined #PodForChange to raise donations for Covid relief. Donate here: www.auwa.in/podforchange

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Tara and Michelle talk to Rituparna Chatterjee about how she uses magic realism to explore the heavy theme of child abuse in her memoir ‘The Water Phoenix’.

We’ve joined #PodForChange to raise donations for Covid relief. Donate here: www.auwa.in/podforchange

Rituparna recounts how real-life events inspired her to start writing this book as a fictional story and how her editor convinced her to turn it into a memoir. She shares how readers have reached out to her with their stories of abuse. Tara enjoys the refreshing way in which Rituparna’s stepmother is portrayed in the story. Michelle loves how she has managed to keep the essence of childhood alive throughout the book. We discuss why memoirs are becoming increasingly popular among readers because ‘People love real stories’.

Why does she call herself a reluctant memoirist? How did she come up with the idea for the book cover? And did her son really edit her book? Tune in to find out! 

Book Recommendations:

• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco

Rituparna Chatterjee is a writer, journalist, columnist and a former foreign correspondent for The Economic Times. For the same newspaper she writes California Dreaming, a column about her life as an immigrant mother in America. Her short stories for children have been published in various anthologies. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her son, husband and Quoisey, their samurai fish, and the dogs they puppysit. Find her book here: https://www.amazon.in/Water-Phoenix-childhood-healing-forgiveness/dp/9389000556

'Books and Beyond with Bound' is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D'costa of Bound talk to some of the best writers in India and find out what makes them tick. Read more: https://boundindia.com/books-and-beyond-podcast/ 

Follow us @boundindia on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. 

Check out our Meditative Writing class! https://boundindia.com/events/meditative-writing-workshop/

Looking for a writing mentor to make your characters memorable? DM us or send us an email at connect@boundindia.com. 

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Ginny is a neuroscience expert and science communicator. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, but her main passion and expertise is in psychology and neuroscience, so she focuses on helping kids and adults understand our complex minds. Ginny says that “Science is fun and fascinating and ever changing, and I want to help everyone share in the joy of curiosity and exploration.” 

  ​Some of the things that Ginny said in this week’s chat that stood out for me:

“I find it amazing how much we still don’t understand about this thing that controls everything we do”

“Science can come across as something that’s finished – it’s this body of facts that we know about the world and I think telling kids and adults that there’s so much more to be discovered can be really inspiring.”

“It’s actually behavioural change that can have a bigger impact on our lives at the moment than neuro science but it feels like neuroscience is the sexier option so anyone who is selling something tends always badge it as neuroscience.  And balance your hormones, take this supplement, we’re going to retrain your brain. Just take anything that makes big claims on neuroscience needs to have big evidence and a lot of the time if they’re trying to sell you something there’s not.”

The second edition to my award winning book Defining You – Build Your Unique Personal Profile and Unlock Your True Potential is now out: 

https://bit.ly/DefiningYou2ndEd

If you are curious about who you are, your brain and the influences in your life then please dip into my more recent book Mirror Thinking – How Role Models Make Us Human. 

https://bit.ly/MirrThink

https://bit.ly/MirrorUSACan

https://bit.ly/2ylrc7H

Follow on:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/fiona_murden

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fionamurden

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fionamurden

And for Ginny: 
ginnysmithscience.com

Socials: @GinnySmithSci

braintasticscience.com

Socials: @BraintasticSci

Amazon Book link: Overloaded: How Every Aspect of Your Life is Influenced by Your Brain Chemicals: Amazon.co.uk: Smith, Ginny: Books

Links to non-amazon shops here: www.ginnysmithscience.com/overloaded

Grace Lindsay is a computational neuroscientist currently based at University College London. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University, where her research focused on building mathematical models of how the brain controls its own sensory processing. Before that, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh and received a research fellowship to study at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Freiburg, Germany. She was awarded a Google PhD Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience in 2016.

To find out more about Grace, her book and her work click on the following link:

tinyurl.com/h9dn4bw7

To find out more about me, my books and my work go to:

www.fionamurden.com

As Wesley Enoch wraps up his five years as artistic director of the Sydney Festival, he reflects on his decades-long commitment to Indigenous storytelling, the legacy of his directorship and what comes next.

Also, we hear a performance from Black Brass at the Perth Festival, inspired by stories of resilience from Perth's African communities, and discuss the enduring popularity of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

This week Rumaan Alam presents us with a wholly ambiguous end of the world. Rumaan’s new novel, Leave the World Behind has taken the publishing landscape by storm. Reviews are everywhere and critics are shouting its name from the rooftops, with good reason.

Leave the World Behind is a strange, uneasy tale of the world going wrong. What begins as a family getaway to Long Island spirals into fear as strangers arrive, bringing news of a blackout in New York City. From there, things only get worse as the possibilities of what is actually happening become terrifyingly limitless.  

We spend a good hour talking crises of masculinity, why kids are better equipped for apocalypse than their parents, and why literary fiction needs to get the chip off its shoulder a little. We also both realise that we’d be functionally useless in any kind of real crisis.

A few books mentioned in this episode include:

•  Swimming Home (2011), by Deborah Leavy. 
• Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Pet Sematary (1983) by Stephen King

 Enjoy!

Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.

Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.

From migrant workers to British expats, from the hills of Uttaranchal to the heart of Mumbai's metropolis, find out how Udayan captures India's lockdown experience in his timely short story collection.

Tara and Michelle talk to Udayan Mukherjee about his short story collection, “Essential Items: Stories from a Land in Lockdown”, recently published by Bloomsbury. Udayan shares how writing during the pandemic kept him sane. He finished the book in three months and Tara had the pleasure of editing it!

We chat about Udayan’s life in the hills: the people he meets and how they have influenced the stories in his collection. He talks about the importance of capturing our experiences with the lockdown while it is happening. Michelle is inspired to start writing about the pandemic herself! Why does he prefer to write fiction? How has he never owned a smartphone? And does he share writing tips with his brother, the author Neel Mukherjee? Tune in to find out!

'Books and Beyond with Bound' is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D'costa of Bound talk to some of the best writers in India and find out what makes them tick.

Udayan Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. For two decades, he was the face of the Indian financial markets, as anchor and Managing Editor of CNBC. He is the author of the novel Dark Circles and the crime novel A Death in the Himalayas. He has recently published Essential Items: Stories from a Land in Lockdown, a short story collection with Bloomsbury.

Mentions: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Muhammad Hanif, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin, Akhil Sharma, Raymond Carver, P G Woodhouse, John Cheever

You can get your copy of his book here: 

https://www.amazon.in/Essential-Items-Stories-Land-Lockdown/dp/9390252210 

Tune in every Wednesday for a new episode.

Follow Bound on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter: @boundindia

Follow our podcast on Instagram: @boundpodcasts

You can check out our website at https://www.boundindia.com/podcast/

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Kate Summerscale is our first guest working in the realms of non-fiction. Her back-catalogue proves that the real world is every bit as dark and terrifying as the inside of Stephen King’s head. She’s covered murder in the famous The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008) and now she’s back with a more spiritual crisis in The Haunting of Alma Fielding. 

The book examines a very odd case of poltergeist activity in the London suburbs between the wars. Famous ghost hunters get involved, much crockery is thrown, jewellery is stolen (all by ghosts honestly!) and terrapins are manifested out of thin air. If all that sounds truly bizarre to you, then trust me, it’s the tip of a very spooky iceberg.

Kate is definitely the one to take us through the story. Her research is meticulous, and her historical contextualisation paints a compelling portrait of a nation, a household, and a woman under threat of attack. 

Books mentioned in this episode include:

• “Chemical”, in Shocks, by Algernon Blackwood (1935)
• Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, by Colin Dickey (2017)
• The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and our Obsession with the Unexplained, by Colin Dickey (2020)
• The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959)

Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.

Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.

Want to learn how to tell better bedtime stories to your kids? 

Gillian McDunn is an acclaimed children’s book author, mother of three, and the perfect guide to teach you the art of the bedtime story. She talks about how to make your stories entertaining, encourage interaction and connection with your kids, why “what if” is such a powerful tool, and how introducing problems defines our stories characters and teaches our kids powerful lessons. 

We also talk about Gillian’s book writing process, what it’s like working with editors and publishers, how it feels reading reviews of her own work, and we discuss the themes and characters of her first two books “Caterpillar Summer” and “The Queen Bee and Me.” 

Whether you’re an aspiring writer yourself, have children you’d like to tell better stories to, or just want a fascinating peek behind the scenes to understand how a writer goes about writing and publishing a book you’ll love Gillian’s stories and insight. Enjoy!

Links:

Caterpillar Summer on Amazon:

https://amzn.to/308Ckzg

The Queen Bee and Me on Amazon:
https://amzn.to/2FWOlB6

Gillian’s website:
https://www.gillianmcdunn.com/

Twitter:
twitter.com/gillianmcdunn

Instagram:
instagram.com/gillianmcdunn

Gillian’s article on bedtime stories:
https://bit.ly/331fmfj

Caterpillar Summer Reviews: 

“An engrossing, heartwarming, beautifully written debut.”
-Kirkus Reviews

“This absorbing, heartfelt novel seamlessly blends the challenges of life with a neurodivergent child into a story of one tween’s burgeoning self-awareness as she figures out how to reclaim her childhood.”
-New York Times

Want to win a book by Gillian?

Tag @ignorantcurious on Twitter or Instagram with your bedtime story breakdown. We’ll mail a copy of your choice - Caterpillar Summer or The Queen Be and Me - to our favorite. 

Got feedback for the podcast? Guests or topics you’d love to hear? Let us know!

Twitter.com/ignorantcurious

Instagram.com/ignorantcurious

ignorantcuriouspod@gmail.com

Are you ready for the #MeToo era read you didn't know you needed (or in T's case, were reading?)

This week we read the rich,  (dollar bill bookmarks anyone!) imaginative retelling of the lesser known Greek witch, Circe by Madeline Miller. In this read, Miller questions the portrayals of women in Greek myths and leads us to ask some questions of our own, such as:

Why is the theme of the week #DisappointedAndUnsurprised? (Hint: starts with m ends with en)

What character does T see as a little, blue man?

And which characters do we #ship?

Find out the answer to these questions and why we may have subconsciously changed a lyric in our theme song as we discuss Circe by Madeline Miller!