
Meet the Writers
Georgina Godwin in conversation with top authors. Explore their inspirations, writing processes, and the stories behind their books.
Latest Episodes

Sarah Bakewell
The award-winning UK author tells Georgina Godwin about a childhood family road trip through south Asia, the US and Australia, working in a tea factory and her new book ‘Humanly Possible: 700 years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope’.

Gary Younge
Gary Younge is an author, an academic and one of the UK’s most celebrated journalists. He joins Georgina Godwin to discuss his remarkable career in international reporting, his teenage years as a Trotskyist, reporting on the elections of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, and his new book, ‘Dispatches from the…

Sophie Mackintosh
The Welsh novelist’s debut, ‘The Water Cure’, a feminist dystopia, received critical acclaim and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Sophie sat down with Georgina Godwin to discuss how speaking Welsh has influenced her writing, writing her first stories as a child on her grandad’s computer and her latest novel…

Ava Glass
Some readers are convinced that this internationally bestselling author has worked as a spy for a British intelligence agency. In fact, her previous work in counterterrorism is where her fascination with espionage began. Ava Glass is a pseudonym for crime writer Christi Daugherty who sits down with Georgina Godwin to…

Eleanor Catton
Celebrated New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton sits down with Georgina Godwin. At 28, she became the winner of the Booker Prize for her acclaimed second novel, ‘The Luminaries’. After 10 years she is back with the action-packed psychological thriller ‘Birnam Wood’, about a guerilla gardening group whose ideals and ideologies…

Oksana Zabuzhko
One of Ukraine’s most acclaimed contemporary authors sits down with Georgina Godwin. Oksana’s debut novel, ‘Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex’, is the most translated work of new Ukrainian prose in the world today – but it caused huge controversy on publication in 1996. Since then she has emerged as a leading…

Sally Hayden
The Irish journalist and photographer has documented migration, conflict and humanitarian crises across the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Her debut book, ‘My Fourth Time, We Drowned’, about the treatment of refugees travelling to Europe, was named Irish Book of the Year in 2022 and won the Orwell Prize. Sally…

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a multi-award-winning Nigerian author. Her debut novel, ‘Stay With Me’, was published in 2017 to huge critical acclaim and won the 9mobile Prize for Literature as well as the Prix Les Afriques. She speaks to Georgina Godwin about her highly anticipated second novel, ‘A Spell of Good…

James Crawford
The Shetland-born writer and TV presenter, best known for BBC documentary series ‘Scotland from the Sky’, speaks to Georgina Godwin. His latest book, ‘The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break our World’, took him to some of the planet’s most contested and fastest-changing borders, from Israel to…

Cal Flyn
The award-winning writer from the Scottish Highlands sits down with Georgina Godwin at Cheltenham Literature Festival. They speak about biodiversity, visiting Chernobyl and Flyn’s new book, ‘Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape’, which focuses on the places left behind by humans and reclaimed by nature.