In conversation

John Siddique talks to Lanre Bakare about missing history books, and how black culture and resistance outside of London have shaped UK culture.

The writer and environmentalist Diana McCaulay talks with Gabriel Gbadamosi about her new novel, A House for Miss Pauline.

In 2022, the writer Hanif Kureishi, best known for his novel the Buddha of Suburbia, suffered a terrible accident which left him with paralysing spinal injuries. He has continued to write and has since published Shattered, a memoir, about the experience. Chitra Ramaswamy talks to Ruvani Ranasinha, author of a recent biography of Kureishi, and the novelist Mohammed Hanif about Kureishi’s extraordinary writing and career.’

The actor, singer and writer Renu Arora talks to Sita Brahmachari about her creative life. Renu discusses her writing, her work on stage, her feeling of connection with Frida Kahlo, and her collaborations including the creation of The Burgundy Book, a concept album inspired by her life-changing accident and near-death experience.

Nick Makoha has been inspired by the work of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat for his latest poetry. Makoha talks to fellow poet Hannah Lowe about the roots and life of the poems in the New Carthaginians.

Talking about her journey as a poet, as well as poetry as the art of silence
 and about the word and how it relates to the truth of our bodies.

Sita Brahmachari talks with the Dr Darren Chetty and Professor Karen Sands-O’Connor about their new book Beyond the Secret Garden which traces how Black and racially minoritised characters have been represented in ‘the secret garden’ of British children’s literature from its earliest stages. The interview was recorded at the end of 2024, ahead of the publication of the book.

Jason Okundaye has published his first book, Revolutionary Acts. He talks to Gabriel Gbadamosi about his drive to normalise writing about black life in his work which focuses on love and brotherhood in black gay Britain.

‘The language to me growing up in Neasden felt incredibly transgressive, inherently quite violent. But there is something ecstatic about that crossing or breaking a border for, say, Arabic words to feel so at home on your tongue.’

Talking about her writing life in Aberdeen

Penguin has published a new classic edition of Return to my Native Land, the Martinique-born poet Aimé Césaire’s tale of exile and homecoming​​. Recently, Jason Allen-Paisant joined Colin Grant at the London Review of Books bookshop to discuss Césaire's life and work.

A new documentary paints a fascinating portrait of the pioneering singer and author Pauline Black who, with the band The Selecter, was central in the late 1970s to the rise of 2-tone music and the revival of Ska. The film was released earlier this year and she talked with Gabriel Gbadamosi about her career and bearing witness to historical and contemporary British racial politics.