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The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast.

Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production.

Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.

Discover all our upcoming events here.

If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here.

Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O’Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein…and many, many more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Copyright: © Shakespeare and Company

Latest Episodes:

🎙️🍃Ali Smith on Companion Piece (live in the bookshop!)🍃🎙️ Jun 29, 2022

Show notes

We were joined in store this week by the wonderful Ali Smith to discuss Companion Piece, the the fifth-volume in the increasingly inaccurately named Seasons Quartet.

Taking the ongoing pandemic as its backdrop, Companion Piece is a mischievous, enigmatic puzzle of a novel, that examines how companionship and togetherness might be possible in a world in which everything—from a deadly virus to the vested interests of corrupt politicians—is fighting to divide us.

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🐑Ottessa Moshfegh on Power, Magic…and her Pirate Ancestors🐑 Jun 22, 2022

Show notes

Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh’s extraordinary fourth novel, unfolds in a medieval fiefdom of the same name. It’s a story of struggle in a world in which one human wields absolute power over another, but in which all must submit to a Nature that writhes and wriggles, and has still not been fully stripped of its capacity for magic. It’s also a world in which God and the Devil have a very real impact upon Lapvonians’s lives, and in which the next village feels like another world, but heaven and hell are within grasping distance.

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🥀On Darkness, Fables and Heartbreak, with Vanessa Onwuemezi🥀 Jun 15, 2022

Show notes

A collection of seven extraordinary short stories, Vanessa Onwuemezi’s Dark Neighbourhood resists interpretation and elides description, shifting between voices and styles with astonishing deftness and grace. Spaces and territories are important to the book, how we inhabit them and how they shape us, as are attempts to understand how not just our minds, but our entire beings are affected when we pass from darkness into light, and back again.

Buy Dark Neighbourhood: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781913097707/dark-neighbourhood

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Vanessa Onwuemezi is a writer and poet living in London. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prototype, frieze and Five Dials. Her story ‘At the Heart of Things’ won the White Review Short Story Prize 2019.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A World Without Men, with Sandra Newman (Live at Hey Festival) Jun 08, 2022

Show notes

In this special live episode, recorded at the Hay Festival, we were joined by Sandra Newman, whose new novel The Men takes a very stark idea and runs with it. What would happen, to the world, to society, to minds, if one day all the Men, and boys—everyone with a Y chromosome in fact—just disappeared? Newman’s vision is of a world set free, but also a world plunged into mourning, in which some structures collapse while others hold firm, in which certain of those left behind cling on to the “religious” idea of Men, and all they stood for, while others set about adapting, organising and rebuilding something better.

Buy The Men here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783789016/the-men

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Sandra Newman is the author of four previous novels; The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, (shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award), Cake, The Country of Ice Cream Star (longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Literature) and The Heavens. She co-authored the hugely successful How Not to Write a Novel with Howard Mittelmark. She has also written The Western Lit Survival Kit, Read This Next, and a memoir, Changeling. She lives in New York.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Bodies, Freedom and Change, with Olivia Laing May 25, 2022

Show notes

This week, we’re joined by Olivia Laing, one of the finest non-fiction writers at work today, to discuss her latest book Everybody: A Book About Freedom.

Buy Everybody here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781509857128/everybody

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She writes for the Guardian, the New York Times, and Frieze, among many other publications. Her books include Crudo, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and translated into fifteen languages. The recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction, she lives in London, England.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meg Mason on Sorrow and Bliss May 18, 2022

Show notes

This week’s guest is Meg Mason, author of the literary sensation Sorrow and Bliss.

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'It is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. It is also impossible not to laugh out loud... Extraordinary'

Guardian

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets.

So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times and The Times of London. Her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times UK, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for Sunday STYLE magazine and The New Yorker's Daily Shouts and been a regular columnist for GQ and contributor to ELLE, marie claire and Vogue. Her first novel You Be Mother was published in 2017. It was followed by Sorrow and Bliss, first released in Australia in 2020, then published in the US in February 2021 and out in the UK in June 2021. The studio, New Regency, is adapting Sorrow and Bliss for screen. Visit megmason.com for more.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

📱Love (and Life) in the time of Algorithms, with Jem Calder📱 May 11, 2022

Show notes

This week’s guest is guest is Jem Calder, author of Reward System a series of interlinked stories that charts a group of friends in their mid-twenties as they struggle to make something of their lives in an indifferent, often hostile, 21st century metropolis.

Sally Rooney said that “Reward System is an exhilarating and beautiful book by an extraordinarily gifted writer. Reading these stories, I found myself thinking newly and differently about contemporary life” while Holly Pester called it “'A crushing and clear-sighted portrayal of people dodging the alienation of work, money and life's digital shorelines” adding that the short scenes were “so brilliantly observed I felt the reality of a generation in every detail.”

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

*

Jem Calder was born in Cambridge, and lives and works in London. His fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly and Granta. Reward System is his first book

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🐍🎲Luck, Life and Little Snakes, with DBC Pierre🎲🐍 May 04, 2022

Show notes

DBC Pierre’s Big Snake Little Snake is a characteristically freewheeling, riotous account of a couple of years the author lived in the Caribbean, spending his time, among other endeavours, conducting an inquiry into risk. It’s also an extraordinarily fun book, yet with a deep seriousness at its core. Seeking to understand, as it does, how the world can be presented to us as fundamentally indifferent, while also being so clearly, and so often, unfair.

Buy Big Snake, Little Snake here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781788169776/big-snake-little-snake-an-inquiry-into-risk

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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One of the nation's most uncompromising literary voices, DBC Pierre is author of the novels VERNON GOD LITTLE, LUDMILA'S BROKEN ENGLISH and LIGHTS OUT IN WONDERLAND, plus the picture book for distracted adults PETIT MAL and the Hammer novella BREAKFAST WITH THE BORGIAS. The novel VERNON GOD LITTLE sold in 43 territories and won the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Award and the James Joyce Award from University College Dublin. His ground-breaking new novel MEANWHILE IN DOPAMINE CITY was published by Faber & Faber in August2020 and is short-listed for The Goldsmiths Prize.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On imagining what hasn’t, can’t and won’t imagine you, with Margo Jefferson Apr 27, 2022

Show notes

Despite being a lauded writer and critic, despite being the winner of a Pulitzer Prize even, Margo Jefferson innovates and takes risks like a writer with nothing to lose. Her new book, Constructing a Nervous System is both the history of a mind’s formation and the deconstruction of a culture and its tropes, as well as what feels like a form of self-analysis taking place on the page, beneath the readers eyes, in real time. It’s a book about race and gender, but also of family and culture, where all four intersect, and how one person used the limitations society sought to place on her as a ladder to climb free of them.

Buy Constructing a Nervous System here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783789009/constructing-a-nervous-system-a-memoir

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson was for years a theater and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York magazine, and The New Republic. She is the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

*

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Prison, Literature and Grief with Preti Taneja Apr 20, 2022

Show notes

On 29 November 2019, Usman Kahn attacked and killed Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at Fishmongers Hall in London, and was later shot dead by police on London Bridge. Jones and Merritt were involved in a prison education programme in which Kahn had participated. All three had gathered at an event that day to mark five years of the programme. Preti Taneja also worked on that programme as a teacher of creative writing in prisons. Jack Merritt oversaw her work. Kahn was one of her students. Aftermath, is Taneja’s attempt to come to an understanding of these events both how they called into question what had come before and the grief and trauma they engendered.

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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES

Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses

If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.

Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en

All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.

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Preti Taneja is a writer and activist. Her first novel, We That Are Young, won the Desmond Elliott Prize and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into several languages. Her second book is Aftermath, a lament on the language of prison, terror, trauma and grief. Taneja is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She is a contributing editor at And Other Stories, and at The White Review.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Shak

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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