Ourshelves

Audrey Osler is Professor Emerita of Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds. Her latest book, Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From? will be published by Virago in November and looks at the British Empire through the history of one family. 

This week, join us as Audrey and Lucy dive into ‘Britishness’ and the conflict between identity and belonging; the varied research meth...

Victoria Belim is a writer, journalist, and translator of Persian literature and poetry. She speaks eighteen languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Indonesian. Her memoir, The Rooster House, was published earlier this year by Virago and explores her search for the truth behind an unmentioned family secret - and the Ukrainian people's complex relationship with their Soviet history.

In this episode, Victoria and Lucy S...

Natasha Walter is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist and human rights activist. Her books include The New Feminism and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, which was reissued as one of Virago’s 50thAnniversary Five Gold reads this year. On this episode of Ourshelves, Natasha and Lucy Scholes discuss the continued relevance of Living Dolls in terms of the unfinished revolution of femi...

Are families a refuge or a prison? Join Veronica Raimo as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the line between fiction and auto-fiction, drawing the curtain back on the creative process, and the many idiosyncrasies of language that arise during the translation of fiction.

Veronica Raimo is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, Lost On Me (Niente di Vero) was a huge bestseller in Italy, that was shor...

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Shahrukh Husain, editor of The Virago Book of Witches, who says it represents ` womanhood in all its complexity’ is not at all surprised to see a resurgence of interest in `all things witchy’. The witch knows her strength, defies authority and embodies our current fears of injustice. Shah tells Lucy how the witch can be playful but also terrifying, particularly to men, and about a childhood fascination for the witch. The writer she...

In this special bonus summer episode Sharma Taylor, author of What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You, takes us to the heated demi-monde of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1980s, a turbulent time in politics and gangland crime. She tells Lucy Scholes about writing in patois; the Caribbean authors right now who are representing the strength of women in society; and what her mother sacrificed to buy her books as a child.

On the nightstand:...

Clare Chambers is the author of nine novels including Small Pleasures, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She joins Lucy Scholes to rave about the inimitable Barbara Pym, a Virago Modern Classic author whose love affairs shocked sixties society and who wrote about vicars’ tea parties with waspish humour and moving brilliance. (Tea: ‘a drink she did not much like because of the comfort it was said to bring to those whom she...

How does writing about your life change the way you see it? Cathy Thomas talks to Lucy Scholes about her first book, Islanders, interlocking short stories set on her childhood home, Guernsey – the  pleasure of joining the dots and how playwriting informed her structure. Discovering a shared love of Annie Ernaux’s essays, they dive deeply into whether difficult experiences – from publisher rejections to trauma – may be reframed...

How can men approach their role as feminist allies? Lucy Scholes meets Stuart Evers, award-winning author of four books including Your Father Sends His Love and The Blind Light as they discuss his introduction to the new Virago Modern Classic edition of Anna Seghers’ brilliant novel Transit, and how its depiction of people caught in the Second World War reminded him of Ukrainians caught in the complex British visa system. He argues...

 What does it take for a woman to migrate thousands of miles across prairies and mountains? Join Katie Hickman, author of Brave Hearted and She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the unique voices of the women who made the Wild West, the strength of oral storytelling and the damage that was done to abortion rights in the USA by religious organisations. From the Americas to Indonesia, the...

What happens if you don’t fall in love with your baby at first sight? Join Kate Maxwell and Lucy Scholes as they challenge silent taboos about motherhood, from Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter to Kate’s first novel Hush, about a woman who struggles with her decision to have a child on her own.

Kate’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt and The Bread the Devil Knead, Lisa Alle...

If you spend 288 pages deep in the life of a disabled person, can that experience shift your concept of disability? Join Chloé Cooper Jones, journalist, Pulitzer nominee and author of the new memoir Easy Beauty, as she talks with Lucy Scholes about how beauty can create a powerful mental shift. They discuss the social and political act of making the disabled body visible, the meaning of staring and ask Lewis Hamilton to teach Chloé...

How does food connect us to our cultural identity? Get hungry listening to Claire Kohda talk to Lucy Scholes about her debut novel Woman, Eating, which follows a mixed-race vampire in contemporary London. Claire admits she avoided reading Dracula, explores the yōkai of traditional Japanese mythology and explains how listening to Asian recipes reminds her of her mother.

Claire’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: W...

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