<description>&lt;div&gt;This month, we are speaking to the Egyptian poet and author Iman Mersal. We talk about the genesis of ideas, structure and form when writing in Arabic, and the importance of urgency in directing your writing. &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Iman's work includes the creative non-fiction work Traces of Enayat (2023, And Other Stories &lt;a href="https://www.andotherstories.org/traces-of-enayat/"&gt;https://www.andotherstories.org/traces-of-enayat/&lt;/a&gt;), and her poetry &lt;br&gt;
has been featured in numerous publications such as Blackbird, The American Poetry Review, Parnassus, The New York Review of Books, and Paris Review. &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
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Find us on Twitter: &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods"&gt;@UnsoundMethods&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan"&gt;@JaimieBatchan&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom"&gt;@LochlanBloom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Jaimie's Instagram is: &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimie_batchan/"&gt;@jaimie_batchan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Or at &lt;a href="http://jaimiebatchan.com/"&gt;jaimiebatchan.com &lt;/a&gt;and &lt;a href="http://lochlanbloom.com/"&gt;lochlanbloom.com&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: &lt;a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods"&gt;https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: &lt;a href="https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/"&gt;https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;
</description>

61: Iman Mersal

<description>&lt;div&gt;Episode 60 with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
This month, we are speaking to not one but two authors as we discuss collaborative writing with Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams. &lt;br&gt;
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Natasha and Luke are the joint authors of &lt;em&gt;Diego Garcia&lt;/em&gt;, winner of the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize. We talk about their unique approach to crafting a novel and the differences between empathy and solidarity, as well as the current situation for the displaced Chagossian people, a key focus of their novel. &lt;br&gt;
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&lt;strong&gt;An update from the authors:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
This podcast was recorded on 13 October when the UK was in active negotiations to hand back the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, whose sovereignty over the islands is internationally recognised. The then UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly’s announcement on 3 November 2022 included a statement of the UK’s will to "resolve all outstanding issues" in relation to Chagos, indicating recognition of the Chagossian people’s right to return.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
In January 2024, in a Foreign Affairs Committee Meeting discussion of defence issues in relation to current world events, including Israel’s continuing violation of international law in relation to its occupation of Palestine, and its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people, the recently appointed Foreign Secretary David Cameron strongly indicated that the return of the Chagossian people to their islands was no longer a possibility, and that “the overriding question must be the safety, security and usability of this base”.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
You can find out more about the Chagossian struggle for reparations and the right to return here:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="http://thechagosrefugeesgroup.com/"&gt;thechagosrefugeesgroup.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://chagossianvoices.org/"&gt;https://chagossianvoices.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
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Find us on Twitter: &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods"&gt;@UnsoundMethods&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan"&gt;@JaimieBatchan&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom"&gt;@LochlanBloom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Jaimie's Instagram is: &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimie_batchan/"&gt;@jaimie_batchan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Or at &lt;a href="http://jaimiebatchan.com/"&gt;jaimiebatchan.com &lt;/a&gt;and &lt;a href="http://lochlanbloom.com/"&gt;lochlanbloom.com&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: &lt;a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods"&gt;https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: &lt;a href="https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/"&gt;https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;
</description>

60: Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams

<description>&lt;div&gt;We're opening 2024 with our chat with David Shields: David is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including &lt;em&gt;Reality Hunger&lt;/em&gt; (which, in 2020, &lt;em&gt;Lit Hub&lt;/em&gt; named one of the most important books of the past decade), &lt;em&gt;The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead&lt;/em&gt; (New York Times bestseller), &lt;em&gt;Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season&lt;/em&gt; (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), &lt;em&gt;Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity&lt;/em&gt; (PEN/Revson Award), and &lt;em&gt;Other People: Takes &amp;amp; Mistakes&lt;/em&gt; (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). &lt;em&gt;The Very Last Interview&lt;/em&gt; was published by New York Review Books in 2022.&lt;br&gt;
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The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields—a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions—has published essays and stories in the &lt;em&gt;New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Best American Essays. &lt;/em&gt;His work has been translated into two dozen languages.&lt;br&gt;
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The film adaptation of &lt;em&gt;I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel&lt;/em&gt;, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 (available on Vudu). Shields wrote, produced, and directed &lt;em&gt;Lynch: A History&lt;/em&gt;, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch’s use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (streaming on Prime Video, Peacock, AMC, Sundance Now, Apple TV, Tubi, Kanopy, Google Play, and YouTube). &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
In June 2023, &lt;em&gt;I’ll&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;Show You Mine&lt;/em&gt;, a feature film that Shields co-wrote and was produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, was released theatrically nation-wide and distributed digitally on Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Vimeo. A new film, &lt;em&gt;How We Got Here&lt;/em&gt;, which Shields wrote and directed and which argues that Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of (Allan) Bloom times Žižek (squared) equals Bannon, is streaming now on Tubi, OTT Studio, and Cineverse; the companion volume is forthcoming in January 2024.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The text of the passage that David reads out in this episode is as follows:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
When a “colleague” asked if I have “any sort of tried-and-true compositional methodology when it comes to literary collage,” I found myself emailing back, in about five minutes, this curiously complete summary: “I’ll stumble into a metaphor that in my grandiosity I think explains the universe, at least for me, at least for the moment. Some large subject will represent for me a personal, cultural, and human ‘crisis’: something about which I’m confused, ambivalent, embarrassed, ashamed, excited. I’ll then ‘shoot a lot of film’—gather hundreds or even thousands of pages over years, sometimes over decades. Just stuff: stuff I’ve read, old stuff I wrote, new stuff I’m writing, emails from friends, research, etc., all of which puts ‘pressure’ on the ‘material’ (some supposedly enormous subject). I won’t really know what I want to say about it. I just know it’s tugging at me and I need to explore it and I’ve convinced myself I have something or other to add to the conversation. &lt;br&gt;
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“At a certain point, I’ll no longer be surprised by shooting more film. It will all be telling me the same thing. So I’ll stop and read and reread and reread what I have. Often the page count goes down very quickly—from, say 3,000 pages to, say,1000, then 500, then 300, then 140. At 140, maybe it’s a book. No literary collage can be longer than 120 pages. (Joke.) (Sort of.)&lt;br&gt;
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“To mix metaphors: you’re getting rid of all the dross, all the easy things, all the obvious things. You keep only what scares you. Then you start pouring the paragraphs you like into different thematic silos, different rubrics. And you organize each of these rubrics so that each of these silos or rubrics or holding tanks has its own trajectory. Each one is in a way its own mini-essay. Then you arrange the silos either vertically or horizontally. I.e., as consecutive chapters going downward—as, say, Jean Toomer does in &lt;em&gt;Cane&lt;/em&gt; (I think of that as vertical)—or you arrange it horizontally—across space—as, say, Amy Fusselman does in &lt;em&gt;The Pharmacist’s Mate&lt;/em&gt;. Basically, it’s either AAAAA, BBBBB, CCCC, DDDDD or A/B/C/D/A/E/B/B/D/B/C/A/D. Easiest thing in the world (nothing is more difficult and more beautiful).”&lt;br&gt;
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Find us on Twitter: &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods"&gt;@UnsoundMethods&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan"&gt;@JaimieBatchan&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom"&gt;@LochlanBloom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Jaimie's Instagram is: &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimie_batchan/"&gt;@jaimie_batchan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Or at &lt;a href="http://jaimiebatchan.com/"&gt;jaimiebatchan.com &lt;/a&gt;and &lt;a href="http://lochlanbloom.com/"&gt;lochlanbloom.com&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: &lt;a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods"&gt;https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: &lt;a href="https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/"&gt;https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</description>

59: David Shields

<description>&lt;div&gt;In this episode we're joined by Johanna Hedva, a Korean American writer, artist, and musician who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Johanna is the author of the essay ‘Sick Woman Theory’, originally published in 2016, which has now been translated into ten languages. Hedva is also the author of the novel On Hell, which was one of Dennis Cooper’s favourite books of 2018, and the nonfiction collection Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain. 'Your Love is Not Good' is out now, available from And Other Stories: &lt;a href="https://www.andotherstories.org/your-love-is-not-good/"&gt;https://www.andotherstories.org/your-love-is-not-good/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Johanna's website: &lt;a href="https://johannahedva.com/"&gt;https://johannahedva.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
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Johanna’s Nine Inch Nails piece in the White Review is here: &lt;a href="https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/theyre-really-close-to-my-body/"&gt;https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/theyre-really-close-to-my-body/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Johanna's latest record: &lt;a href="https://bighedva.bandcamp.com/album/black-moon-lilith-in-pisces-in-the-4th-house"&gt;https://bighedva.bandcamp.com/album/black-moon-lilith-in-pisces-in-the-4th-house &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
A new piece called "scream demo": &lt;a href="https://www.amant.org/publications/10-scream-demo"&gt;https://www.amant.org/publications/10-scream-demo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
"Why it's taking so long" (essay): &lt;a href="https://topicalcream.org/features/why-its-taking-so-long/"&gt;https://topicalcream.org/features/why-its-taking-so-long/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
"Sick Woman Theory" (essay): &lt;a href="https://topicalcream.org/features/sick-woman-theory/"&gt;https://topicalcream.org/features/sick-woman-theory/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Author photos credit: Ian Byers-Gamber &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Find us on Twitter: &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods"&gt;@UnsoundMethods&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan"&gt;@JaimieBatchan&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom"&gt;@LochlanBloom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Jaimie's Instagram is: &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimie_batchan/"&gt;@jaimie_batchan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Or at &lt;a href="http://jaimiebatchan.com/"&gt;jaimiebatchan.com &lt;/a&gt;and &lt;a href="http://lochlanbloom.com/"&gt;lochlanbloom.com&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: &lt;a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods"&gt;https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: &lt;a href="https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/"&gt;https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</description>

58: Johanna Hedva

<description>&lt;div&gt;For episode 57 we caught up with the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, author of 8 novels, 3 collections of short stories, numerous plays and pieces of non-fiction and 5 memoirs.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
An indefatigable defender and promoter of African literature and language, Ngũgĩ’s writing spans from the early 1960s onwards. He talked to us about his journey to becoming a writer, from having friends who proved he didn’t need to wait for permission, then being a central figure in the emergence of African writing’s recognition across the world, being imprisoned for writing a play in his native Kikuyu language, to then receiving a medical diagnosis that meant he had a very short amount of time to write his ‘final’ book. It’s quite a ride.&lt;br&gt;
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Technical note: Due to some kind of infrastructural fault at his home, Ngũgĩ spoke to us from a hotel room and we had to record via MS Teams, so the audio is not quite up to our usual standards. There's also something odd with the audio at the very beginning, apologies!&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;
Find us on Twitter: &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods"&gt;@UnsoundMethods&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan"&gt;@JaimieBatchan&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom"&gt;@LochlanBloom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;
 Jaimie's Instagram is: &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimie_batchan/"&gt;@jaimie_batchan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;
 Or at &lt;a href="http://jaimiebatchan.com/"&gt;jaimiebatchan.com &lt;/a&gt;and &lt;a href="http://lochlanbloom.com/"&gt;lochlanbloom.com&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: &lt;a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods"&gt;https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;
 Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: &lt;a href="https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/"&gt;https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;
</description>

57: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

A literary fiction podcast hosted by authors Jaimie Batchan and Lochlan Bloom.

We talk to fellow writers of literary fiction about process, what makes fiction 'real' and the motivation to sit down in front of an empty page and make things up...

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