Showing titles in Authors

May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life - not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude - both an exhilarating and terrifying state.

Here is one of the great autobiographies of the English language - exuberant, wonderfully contemporary in spirit, by a man twice as large as life who—he said so himself—had no trouble remembering everything that had ever happened to him and a lot of things besides.

Novelists, poets and playwrights live double lives, sharing the real world with everyone else while spending a good deal of time in a universe of their own making. When they fall out with each other, they are able to kindle feuds and antagonisms as passionate and public as workers in any trade. Richard Bradford’s highly entertaining audiobook looks at some of the closest and most complex relationships in literary history, examining their dramatic effects on literature itself.

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. 

Joining us in the Audible Studios to discuss her latest book, The Four Tendencies, is New York Times best-selling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin. Author of international best sellers The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, Gretchen Rubin has made waves with her insights into habits, happiness and human nature. With more than 600,000 people having taken her online quiz and a hugely successful podcast and blog, Gretchen delves further into personality traits with her latest title, The Four Tendencies.

In C. S. Lewis: Writer, Scholar, Seeker, Dr. Sørina Higgins will take you on a fascinating expedition through the life and work of this influential author, examining the crucial events and relationships that shaped his personal, literary, and spiritual journeys.

A.J.A. Symons discovered Frederick Rolfe’s Hadrian the Seventh in 1925 and became consumed with fascination for its eccentric author, aka ‘Baron Corvo’. His ‘quest’ takes the form of an irresistible detective story, the twists and turns of his investigation into Rolfe’s unfortunate life resulting in a groundbreaking form of biography that reveals much about both men.

In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presenting a mosaic of historical fragments, diaries, dynamic literary criticism and illuminating new research, he reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists.

Joining us in the studio to talk about his latest book, Rebel Ideas, is British table tennis Olympian, author, journalist and broadcaster Matthew Syed. Known for being the ping-pong guy from popular sports podcast Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy, Matthew Syed started his career as a table tennis player, competing in two Olympic games, and was ranked as a top player in England for 10 years. Since then, Matthew moved on to a career in journalism, writing a column in The Times and broadcasting on the BBC and Eurosport.

Fantasy writer and film editor Joe Abercrombie joins Elise Italiaander in the Audible Studios to talk about the writing of his 'edgy yet humorous' fantasy novels and the exciting film projects that he's been involved in.

Ant and Dec met on CBBC's Byker Grove and an instant friendship was formed, on and off screen. They moved from acting to music, releasing three albums as PJ & Duncan, including their still popular hit, 'Let's Get Ready to Rhumble'. From there, presenting children's TV with shows such as SMTV and Gimme 5 was the next step in their journey towards international renown. Next came primetime slots, with the duo presenting shows such as Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

Joining us at Audible Studios is Alex Bertie, YouTube vlogger of his transgender journey and author of Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard. When Alex was born, doctors took one look and put an 'F' for female on the birth certificate, based on genitals. When Alex was 15 he realised he was a transgender man, through many years of struggling with identity. After coming out to family and friends, Alex battled the health-care system in order to take male hormones, have surgery, change his name and grow a beard.

Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about his latest novel, Salvation, is best-selling science-fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Coined the king of space opera, Peter F. Hamilton has created some of science fiction’s most vast and extensive universes, making him one of Britain’s biggest selling sci-fi authors. Known for The Night’s Dawn trilogy and the Commonwealth Saga in particular, Hamilton embarks on a new universe, publishing Salvation, the first book in a brand-new trilogy, in 2018.

Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between "naive" poets-who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously-and "sentimental" poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft.

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau argued in his essay “Civil Disobedience” that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have the right to avoid such submission to permit the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was partly motivated by his abhorrence with slavery and the Mexican-American War. His work has inspired great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Martin Buber.

Kim Stanley Robinson joins Nick Glynn in the Audible Studios to talk about his new novel, New York 2140.

This, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks, begins where the first volume left off, in the middle of the 1960s. It traces and documents Sontag’s evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world of New York City to world-renowned critic and dominant force in the world of ideas with the publication of the groundbreaking Against Interpretation in 1966.

Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they met through mutual friends and began writing and gaming together. Having already built the world of The Expanse for a game (it was initially created for an MMORPG pitch), the pair set out on a task to bring the world to life through fiction. Their first novel, Leviathon Wakes, was published in 2011 and was nominated for the 2012 Hugo Boss Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about her latest book, Record of a Spaceborn Few, is acclaimed science-fiction author Becky Chambers. Growing up in a family heavily involved in space science, Becky Chambers has had huge success with her sci-fi Wayfarers series; her books have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, among others. The third sequel within the Wayfarers series, Record of a Spaceborn Few was published in July 2018.

Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about his latest book of verse, Essex Clay, is lauded British poet, biographer and novelist Andrew Motion. Andrew Motion was the former President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. His career has seen him publish numerous collections of award-winning poetry, including Natural Causes (1987) and Dangerous Play (1984), and his revered biography, In the Blood. June 2018 saw Motion publish his second biographical sequence, Essex Clay.