Christina Patterson is a journalist and author, whose new book Outside The Sky Is Blue, is an absolutely beautiful reflection on family, illness, grief and love. I worked with Christina many years ago. In fact, she sat next to me when I was a very green reporter working on the gossip column of the Independent newspaper. She, in contrast, was an extremely erudite and glamorous columnist, writing about big issues like politics and literature - and she was absolutely lovely to me. What I hadn’t...

Christina Patterson is a journalist and author, whose new book Outside The Sky Is Blue, is an absolutely beautiful reflection on family, illness, grief and love. I worked with Christina many years ago. In fact, she sat next to me when I was a very green reporter working on the gossip column of the Independent newspaper. She, in contrast, was an extremely erudite and glamorous columnist, writing about big issues like politics and literature - and she was absolutely lovely to me. What I hadn’t...

I adored this episode. Lily King is the author of five novels - including, most recently, the phenomenal best seller Writers and Lovers, which documents the creative and romantic travails of aspiring writer Casey Peabody. It's one of my favorite books of the year and so speaking to Lily felt like a fitting finale to this series. I loved hearing about everything from why she writes by hand to how she forces herself to work even when she's not feeling inspired and so much more. It was a...

Sarah Pearse on being fangirled by Reese Witherspoon and how to get published

Arifa Akbar is the Guardian's Chief Theatre Critic and the author of the phenomenally powerful Consumed: A Sister's Story. It's an astonishing read, which tells the story of Arifa's sister's death from tuberculosis, which was somehow missed by medics at a top London hospital. It delves into the aftermath - Arifa’s search for answers to questions such as whether her sister’s history of poor mental health meant she was taken less seriously, and spools back to their childhood, growing up in...

Tahmima Anam on satirising big tech - and the five years that her son wouldn't eat

Elif Shafak on postnatal depression and writing as 'animal instinct'

Emily Ratajkowski is a model, activist and actress - and now the author of My Body, a collection of essays reflecting on her position in the spotlight

Right, I'm off to enjoy my honeymoon (yes, all being well, by the time you read this I will be one day into married life). But I'm leaving you with a joy of an episode. I loved this book. The Troubles with Us: One Belfast Girl on Boys, Bombs and Finding Her Way is a brilliant memoir by Alix O'Neill about her time growing up in Northern Ireland. Taking in everything from bomb threats to pop music and her (very) eccentric family, it's both hugely entertaining and enjoyable but also massively...

Today's episode was such a joy to record - Phoebe Luckhurst is an editor at the Evening Standard newspaper, and also the author of The Lock In, a totally fun indulgence of a book about what happens when three housemates (and a date) find themselves trapped in the attic of their house share. Phoebe is such a clever writer - she has managed to work in so many touchpoints of millennial culture and London life, from dating apps to public transport calculations to awful landlords and so much...

This was such a fun interview! Olivia Petter is a podcasting phenomenon and the author of Millennial Love, a kind of modern anthropological anthology of what dating and relationships are like now. From apps to ghosting and how social media can affect both the beginning - and end - of relationships, to how the MeToo movement changed ordinary women's lives, there was so much we covered. I loved her book, and I loved talking to her about it - I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Buy the book:...

I loved this conversation: Nadifa Mohamed is an award-winning novelist whose most recent book The Fortune Men is a dazzling account of the real-life events surrounding the wrongful imprisonment and execution of a Somali seaman and father, who was the last man to be hanged in Cardiff prison. Set in Tiger Bay in the 1950s and fusing historical reportage and literary fiction, it has just been longlisted for a Booker prize - and quite right too. I loved talking to Nadifa about her unique approach...

Today's guest is the absolutely brilliant Bella Mackie, author of the fabulous and funny new novel How To Kill Your Family. You may also know her non-fiction work, particularly her phenomenally successful memoir Jog On, which chronicled how taking up running after her first marriage collapsed helped manage her anxiety. It was a bestseller, and she has become one of the most high-profile and refreshingly down-to-earth voices on mental health around. I loved our conversation, which took in...

​I​'m so​,​ so excited for you to hear today's episode. L​i​sa Taddeo is a phenomenon. She shot to fame as the author of Three Women, which covers the sexual and emotional lives of three women from different backgrounds and regions of the United States. It was described as ​'groundbreaking​'​, ​'​seminal​'​ and having created a ​whole ​new genre. Now she has written a novel, Animal, a gripping and often dark story of rage, power, control and abuse. ​I absolutely loved talking to her - she was...

I'm so happy to be back - and I'm so excited about today's guest. Natasha Lunn is a journalist and the author of Conversations On Love, an absolutely gorgeous book in which she interviews authors and experts, while also drawing on her own experience in a series of riveting personal essays. She asks three key questions: how do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it? This is truly the stuff of life, and I couldn’t put Conversations On Love down. I've known...

Where to start with this? I absolutely loved Malibu Rising. A heady mix of 80s Malibu and 60s Hollywood, it’s an absolute blast to read. But then I shouldn’t be surprised - after all, it was written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of 2019’s smash-hit Daisy Jones and the six. I just adored speaking to her about it, as well as hearing about her unconventional path to writing (it involves Jennifer Aniston), her love of chick lit and how motherhood has made her better at her job. It’s was a great...

Where to start with this? I absolutely loved Malibu Rising. A heady mix of 80s Malibu and 60s Hollywood, it’s an absolute blast to read. But then I shouldn’t be surprised - after all, it was written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of 2019’s smash-hit Daisy Jones and the six. I just adored speaking to her about it, as well as hearing about her unconventional path to writing (it involves Jennifer Aniston), her love of chick lit and how motherhood has made her better at her job. It’s was a great...

I’m not sure you could have come up with a more ambitious task than Kat Arney set herself when she decided to write her most recent book Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution and the Science of Life, in which she looks at the history of cancer in the human race, as well as how we tend to view, prevent and treat it today. It’s not her first massive challenge - before this, she wrote a book about understanding how our genes work. I loved hearing how she took on the task, how she built her career in...

Dima Alzayat has had a fascinating life. Born in Damascus, Syria, she grew up in California before moving to the UK to study creative writing. Her collection of short stories Alligator and Other Stories is a riveting read, in which she ranges across genres and formats in a way I’ve not seen before. I loved talking to her about this - hearing about her process and path to publication (not to mention how motherhood has changed that) as well as about some of the frustrations she has felt in...

This was such a fun episode to record. Katie Service is a former makeup artist and beauty editor who is now Editorial Beauty Director at Harrods - and the author of The Beauty Brief: An Insider's Guide to Skincare. She’s also an old colleague of mine - we worked together on ES magazine, where she became my go-to guru for anything vaguely beauty related. I have to admit: this is not natural territory for me. Left to my own devices (for instance in lockdown) I tend to go a bit feral. So I...

This was such a fun conversation. After becoming fascinated by an old photo taken on the island of Hydra in Greece, Polly Samson set about researching the lives of the musicians, writers and artists who settled there in the 1960s, from Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen to the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston. Her novel, A Theatre For Dreamers, is a lush fictionalised account of their lives, and a look at the problematic role of an artist's muse. I loved hearing about how and why she...

I absolutely loved interviewing today's guest. Jenny Kleeman is a journalist and broadcaster and the author of Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death, which has just come out in paperback. The book is utterly riveting - Jenny travels all over the place talking to those at the forefront of some of the world's most intriguing technological innovations, from lab-grown meat to euthanasia machines. Her experiences range from the weird and wonderful...

This was such an interesting conversation. Natalie Morris is a journalist and the author of Mixed/Other: Explorations of Multiraciality in Modern Britain, which draws on her own life experience as well as dozens of interviews to examine the mixed experience. From why she uses the term mixed, rather than mixed race, to the problem brands' current enthusiasm for ethnically ambiguous models and how it makes her feel when people speculate as to the colour of any hypothetical child she might have,...

Katherine Faulkner has had such a fascinating career. A former investigative journalist at the Daily Mail, she used to go undercover to get to the heart of her stories. Then she went on to become joint head of news at The Times - and while on maternity leave wrote her first book, Greenwich Park, an absolutely gripping thriller about toxic relationships and unwanted friends. I loved hearing about all of this - especially a particularly hair raising reporting mission involving designer fashion...