Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep3: Bookshelfie: Gemma Cairney

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by radio DJ, presenter and author, Gemma Cairney. Gemma shares with us the story of her life through five brilliant books which have meant something to her. Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host once again for a brand new season of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020. You've joined me for a special bookshelfy episode in which we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life through five brilliant books by women. Today's guest is radio superstar Gemma Canny. She is best known for being a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and 6 music, but she is also a champion of young people, something she demonstrated in her 2017 book, Open, a toolkit for how magic and messed up life can be.

Gemma, welcome. Hello. I feel like you've been through every single BBC radio from 1 to 6. I've been around, no lies. And sometimes I feel like a... rush of pride and then other times a rush of overwhelm but mostly pride i've i've literally been on every BBC radio network in some capacity right and that's probably because i started really young i started when i was 23 and really didn't know what i was doing and then started to know what i was doing

and enjoy it and learn a craft and became a radio geek and my career has followed because you started out as a fashion stylist right yeah who were you styling Well, I was living around the corner from here, just off brick lane. I'd been to drama school and I was going to loads of warehouse parties and had loads of mates who were in bands. And it was kind of an amazing time for East London. It doesn't really get talked about very much because it was quite weird in DIY and we didn't document everything.

But everybody sort of wanted to work together in a haze of, of party and creativity. So you'd be out and someone would be like, I need a press shoot for my new single ever. And then I'd be like, well, I'm a stylist. I'll just bring the clothes. I'll just buy a 10 pound bag from Roe Kit. Basically, I live down the road to be on retro.

And this does sound like such a cliche for when you think about the rise of the idea of what a hipster is. but we didn't even know what that term was. It was just like messing about and having a laugh. So I'd go down to Beyond Retro and I would beg to borrow some clothes for a shoot and I would sign the docket and then turn up to the shoot and we'd have all these fantastical ideas, you know, in terms of concepts

and there were still quite a lot of magazines around that we all aspired to work for. And to be completely honest, it was just so fun. And I'd been to drama school, so for me it was like theatre. We were creating these scenarios And actually a lot of the scene and people were quite theatrical. It was like living in another world a little bit, but a real fun one. And yeah, I ended up doing early shoots with Florence Welsh.

I did a shoot with Adele, which was particularly funny because we were just messing about in her flat that she showed with her mum at the time, and she was not the biggest star on the planet. Kate Nash was one of my mates, so we just used to run around Harrow, where she lived with her sisters and mum. My mate who's a photographer called Scott Trindor, who's now like the bees, knees in fashion photography.

But we just knew each other. We just hung out together. And we all just really wanted to help each other, which is really nice. And nothing got documented, which is so sad. I mean, we've got some of these photographs, which are all quite weird and very much of their time. But I, I mean, I guess really I liked hanging out.

I definitely loved clothes and concept. So I used to try my hardest to bring that. to it. But as soon as I started to progress in fashion, I kind of started to hate it because suddenly there were quite a lot of rules. There was a hierarchy. It felt pretty fierce. So actual fashion was a bit like, oh man, I'm way too sensitive for this. And like, hey, hold up. Isn't it illegal not to pay me? Like, what's going on? What's up with that? I've been asking that for a long time. But then you made the jump from fashion to radio and you've done, you know, radio one, two, three, four,

four extra, one extra six minutes. You know, if they went all the way up to radio, BBC Radio 10, you would have done it, but they haven't yet. I guess I'm insatiable and also there is another side to this in the sense that if you are growing within the job, for example, then you do start to develop. skill and appetite and you want different challenges but also I'm quite hard to define and I think like the media particularly within an institution is still stuck in this idea that a brief is a brief a person is a person and what do they have to offer and what boxes are they filling and I have

always found that perpetually difficult so I would love a show that is filled with entertainment and frivolity that brings people together like when I was on radio one weekend breakfast I had the most fun chatting to the whole country which means all sorts of different people but at the same time I get a lot out of the stuff that I've been doing on radio four which is about culture and music and art and people and humanity and it's like it completely takes you down a different route but I feel like people like I like that. We're all like a mix of stuff and I just say yes too much. I mean looking at everything you've done it's like TV documentaries you've done a book as well

you did a book called Open a Toolkit for how magic and messed up life can be for young adults and you know you bought I think I remember reading somewhere you bought a double-decker bus with the advance do you still have this bus see look at everyone's face in the studio now because this is when people actually start to worry about my sanity. This is why it's why If I'm on a date is where I really test someone. I also own a yellow bus and they're like, out. When does a bus come in like 30 minutes into a date? It depends when we're having a good time or not.

Yeah, so. Like, there's so many chapters in my career, but I got really excited when I was writing my book because I felt like it was something important. And that's not just an ego thing because it's not just me that book. It's like I built the book. I wrote it, I curated it,

I directed the way that it looked that it, felt the subject matters were really passionate to me from research. But I commissioned people to write sections and I got things overseen by different experts, etc. So the idea that this book was going to be effective was really exciting to me, but I wanted it to be out there. And I realized that you can't just get a book out there by tweeting about it. So I was thinking, oh man, like what is my approach to the marketing? And I was. thinking about the Spice Girls movie a lot. He doesn't.

I mean, I always do. It's like in my subconscious. And I thought, I want a bus and I want to go on a school's tour. And the publishers were like, yeah, when we had the initial meeting. And then as it was getting closer to this tour, they said, you do realize we can't actually afford a bus. And I said, but we've discussed this. They were like, we can give you the budget for a Honda White Civic.

Well, it was pretty much. They said that we can wrap a cab. And I was like, that's still really cool, but I've really just got this idea of a bus, which sounds so ridiculous. But then I just did a classic me thing and just went on this whole spiral of research. Found this depot in Kent and just asked around and found a cheap 90s route master. Spent pretty much my entire advance. Bearing in mind, I lived in Margate.

And my lifestyle was a bit more hippy and punk at that particular point. in terms of my outgoings weren't huge and stuff. I just felt like I really wanted to get out there and try this. So yeah, I bought a bus and we went around schools around the country and it was the most fun I've ever had. It was amazing. Because the book is a practical guide for young adults trying to cope with, you know, whatever life throws at them, right?

Yeah, and I think, you know, that we market it again as young adults and it is the first time that you're dealing with things when you're a teenager. And it helps to place that book in a particular part of a bookshop. But we don't stop. Anyone that tells me that they've completely nailed it, I don't quite believe. And it's more of a sentiment, that book.

You're meant to dip in and dip out and feel like you've got somebody there for you and that you're not alone, regardless of what you're going through. But it doesn't all have to be heavy. It can be fun. It can be a bus tour. It can be talking about,

going out raving, having a laugh, the importance of friendship, you know, having a laugh. So, yeah, it's kind of everything. And for me, literally turning up, you know, in the playground with that from Nottingham to Glasgow to Margate, like where I was living at the time, it was a total thrill and a pleasure. And just to see how people react to a physical thing. It's not a photograph, is it? or a video message when you're like, all right, let's talk about this really messy thing called life

with young people. It made me believe in the future because most of them are pretty damn cool and they know a lot more than we do. Oh yeah, I feel like young people know so much more than we did. They're just absolutely awesome. It made me feel a lot better about everything. And that was a few years ago now,

but I think about that when I get worried about the future. But I also think that sense of positivity really reflected in the books that you've chosen for bookshelfy because I think you're one of the first people to have chosen children's books, which I really love. The first one is The Moomins by Tov. Is it Janssen? Janssen? I wouldn't know, especially.

I feel like I don't want to offend any Scandinavian listeners. But a lot of people know the Moomin series. So it's a whole series, a whole world, the Moomans. And as a child, I had really overactive imagination and there was quite a lot of weird surrealist stuff out there for my generation kind of like a hangover from from psychedelic input of the 70s I think and I think the moomens is no exception and I used to always be drawn to these types of kind of kids things and it's it's weird the series is weird because it's based around a family of

mythical creatures called the Moominens and they're kind of like these very huggable blobs because I've seen pictures of them and they look a bit like hippos yeah right but the magic to the Moomans

is not only how atmospheric the writing is it really takes you to this I guess it might be a similar a similar thing to why people like Scandinanois which I actually don't like like, to be honest.

I think I'm probably still a bit of a kid. But this was like warmer and weird. And it really talks about nature. And they're very much in touch with the seasons. And morally, Tovey, the writer, is getting into young people's brains and talking very much about care, personality types, love, emotions. But it's all done through these, absolutely beguiling and bizarre characters.

Were you the kind of kid who was always reading books? Yes and no. I have a short attention span and probably always have. So I'm not massively highbrow or booky as such, but I probably have always been creative. So yes, I'm attracted to certain things. But it's visual, it's words, and it's very often people and fun.

What were you like when you were a kid growing up? Oh my God. Giggly, loud and mischievous. Troublemaker. Yeah. All your teachers have said about you. Oh my goodness, total polar, which I think still is the same now. My drama teacher always gave me time.

She believed in me. Whereas like very stiff up a lip. At this point in terms of secondary school, I was living in Sussex. I was one of the only like black kids in my school. I was at a girls' school. I was really astutea. I thought I was really astutee. I thought I knew everything. I mean.

And then other teachers were just, I was called Malfi from the start. Right. Which I am annoyed about now because I think to ask questions, and to be bold is not necessarily an evil trait. It's also a little bit judgmental now. Yeah. So, I mean, women, women are told that we're not allowed to actually, like, know ourselves or to ask too many questions or to be too loud.

And I think I've always been like that. So there's nothing I can do about it. I've always, like, pushed the boundaries. but I've had this insatiable appetite for, like, joy and positivity and getting people together. And so, like, there's this real, like, yin-yang thing going on. And I think that teachers kind of could see that and didn't really know what to do with me.

It's kind of weird because I feel like school is one of those places where we don't fit into a box. Teachers don't really know what to do. And it's like, I'm sorry, you're above my pay grade for caring. So I'm just going to leave you alone. and not have to deal with you? Yeah, I think it really does depend on the teacher, but having thought about the education system a lot now

because of working with young people visiting schools, there's definitely a bit, a wiggle room on what education is and should be as far as I'm concerned. And your second book, The Magic Fireway Tree? Yes, it's kind of similar. I mean, it sounds similar, and everyone tells me, this is the most quote unquote magical book. Really?

Yeah. That's really nice. What is it about? A group of friends, again, another big theme in my life. All quite strange. There's a guy called Moonface, which I'm fine with. He's a loud in my gang. And they go up this really gorgeous tree that just holds their imagination and dreams and fears.

in the sense that when they get to the top, there's a different land every time. Oh, so it's like a portal? Yeah. And there's brilliant lands, there's terrifying lands, there's ridiculous lands. I can't even remember specific ones, but it might be like the land of topsy-turvy.

Right, so everything's upside out. Yeah. Right. It's pretty trippy stuff. Yeah, what was Enip like, you know, it's really far cry. from the naughtiest girl, do you know what I mean? But really lovely.

I mean, I'm sure you could pick it all apart and try and find meaning to it all. But again, when you're a child, to get lost in that is just awesome. It's a bit like the Narnia cupboard but without leading to the weird Christian allegory land. Okay, yeah.

I mean, I also liked Narnia. Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never got into Narnia. I didn't like love it, love it, but it's all of that ilk, isn't it? It's amazing. I mean, you seem like you must have been a really imaginative kid.

Yeah, it's actually quite strange, but I think I've had to explore this more recently because I've thought about the books that affected me. When I started writing, I had to open that up and think, what has influenced me? How do I want to write? What do I want to communicate? And it started to become more important to me that these books resonated.

But I don't, It's not like I've spent a career talking about literature. It was always like a secret jockey fantasy to see whether I could get into university and study English, but I never actually did it. You know, I got sidetracked by Ace London. But when I've had to think about it a bit more, yes, my imagination was constantly going,

and that's partly because we didn't have the internet. So I found my kicks in other, ways. Do you think the internet's really kind of affected people's capacity to imagine? Yes. In short. But also influences it. You know, this is a massive debate that can go on forever. I love and hate it. Just like everybody else, am I a bit afraid of it? Yes. I think everyone's a little bit afraid of it. Even if you think it's a positive force for good. Yeah. It's hard not to be a little bit afraid of something so powerful. We can curate it into our positive force,

but we have a responsibility on ourselves to actually try and do that. And when an addiction is an addiction, it's really difficult to admit it. Because when you were kind of hanging out in East London, you know, styling for it Florence and Machine, starting out in radio, I'm guessing social media wasn't that big?

Not at all. My space was just coming in. Right. And I think that we are now really obsessed with that and it overrides not always of course i really don't want to be a doommonger because there's amazing things happening and amazing people and conversations happening with eye to eye so i i don't want to sound really grumpy but we would definitely just living in a moment without thinking about it we weren't thinking about how we could stream that or what people would think if we were hanging out

together or yeah so that does change things but it doesn't it doesn't mean then it's bad that we have it but we but i do think we have a responsibility to think about how it affects us especially kids i think younger people yeah does your book talk about that yeah a lot i did a lot of research even you know just like going off on my own tangents online and i was a bit like whoa i can't come back from that so one of the things that I found myself saying was you just remember that you can't unsee things like I keep thinking at the moment about trigger warnings like remember when trigger warnings were like I think

like they're not anymore everyone's just talking about everything like wild abandon everyone's got the opinion but like we're talking about really deep stuff like all of the time and it gets quite heavy I think of course it does we need to have a deep breath have a cup of tea and think about the things that we do want to talk about and the things that we don't or the things we want to know and own things. And that changes. It's just the noise is loud.

This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayle's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream or paired with your favorite book. So the third book you picked was the drama of the gifted child, which I hadn't heard. of before. So somebody told me about this. It was a practitioner, beautiful, she does, she practices Shaito. Her name's Sylve and she's based in Margate and she's just a really serene, cool person. Right. So when she recommended this book by Alice Miller, you're like, give me that.

Yeah, when someone is really careful and considered and you sort of admire them and then they tell you about a book that they think might be good for you, you kind of, you hope for the best, don't you? you believe them. And yeah, I mean, I'm sort of at a point in my life where I'm coming to terms with stuff. I'm realizing that my childhood wasn't perfect. And I've been in the public world growing up quite haphazardly as the world has changed quite a bit.

And I'm a bit like, wow, okay, now what? I'm a young woman. and yeah I mean my book's called open it is to talk about things but suddenly you sort of open up your own books and I've been I've been yeah I've been going to therapy and I've been speaking to people and I've been trying to keep some of that to myself as well because I don't I don't for me it doesn't feel good to be constantly spouting that in a public sphere so a book like this it's it's quite heavy but also really easy and beautiful and it's just about your childhood, you know, with regards to the depths of trauma

or just stuff that might have really affected you. And that's hard. That's hard for us all. But this is a really good book on that. It's about psychotherapy. Right. And yeah, I'm getting a lot from it. So that's why I was like,

should I talk about this? It's a bit heavy, but it's really good. So if anyone's feeling a bit like at that point in their life, like I'm coming up to 35 I'm a bit like oh wow I'm bit tired but I still got a loads more to give it's a good one

it's a really good one it's interesting because I feel like so many people I know in my friendship group who are in their 30s and I'll go to therapy yeah and I think one of them actually stopped because his response was they just make me talk about bad stuff that happened

in my childhood I was like isn't that the point with therapy? I know it's just a really weird loop and you have to go on your own personal journey and big up to anyone whose parents were awesome enough to make sure that they had an absolutely excellent loving childhooders like big up but if not then you have to do the work as they call it which makes a lot of people eye roll but the work is the work is the work and it's it's if you want to actually live like a happy good life

which I do and make other people around you feel good, then therapy is kind of an interesting concept. I'm always reaching for the positivity. I'm always like, it could be fun. And then I'm like, no, don't make friends of your therapist. Just get on with it. I actually, well, one of my other friends who really enjoys therapy was like, look, it's an hour of just talking to someone

who has no clap back, has no, nothing to say to you, nothing to cut in, none of their personal shit to bring in. They are just fully listening to you and you don't worry, have to worry about pissing them off or boring them. It's absolutely amazing. I look at a therapist's eyes sometimes and they're just like completely just so skilled at not being emotionally engaged but also being engaged. It's like, whoa.

It's really cool. It's a skill. And I interview people for a living. I talk to people, but I do it on an emotional level. I'm like an explorer, an investigator. I'm fascinated in people's experience and how they overcome things and what inspires them and all of that.

But like when you're sitting in a room and no one really gives the shit in the sense that it's not about anything except for just like getting it off your chest. It's kind of refreshing. Radical self-care is about saying I am going to spend some of my money on not just putting a plaster over how I feel

or getting drunk or flying far away to forget about it. It's just it's really like approaching like what makes you feel good on a more consistent level, really exploring things in the world that aren't making you feel good and asking questions. So from a more intellectual perspective, a spiritual one, a generational one. It's deep.

But it's empowering and it's pretty cool. Your fourth book is Sister Outsider by Audrey Lord. So how did you first encounter her book? So I got given it as a birthday present a little while ago and I didn't pick it up because I've been on this feminist reading thing for not that long. Like I am no highly, like, well-read, you know, I just, this is quite recent for me

some of this stuff in terms of actually sitting down and properly reading a book from start to finish and I've picked it up quite recently and I was just like, whoa, this is what I'm talking about this is speaking to me

it's about being a woman of colour it's about exploring the nuance of that it's about maybe being slightly alternative and it's old school I'm down I'm down with lectures given in America in the 70s. I'm interested in that.

I'm drawn to the past sometimes and I think that there might have been a bit more of just less fear about talking about big stuff. Yeah, definitely. Was there a particular essay that resonated with you from this book? Or just an ideal concept? So I was enjoying. her take on eroticism.

I mean, even as an idea, like, what is eroticism? Again, made into a commercial thing, not necessarily, it's not very fashionable now, but think about like erotic fiction at some point or whatever. But the actual meaning of eroticism and how a woman can inhabit that and how that can give them a sense of power. I don't know, it's just fascinating.

I'm not saying I agree and adhere to all of these things, but somebody very poetic, being able to deliver these ideas that are weighted in it, like a lot of self-belief, I'm just like, it's definitely made my mind kind of think, you know. I like things that make me think. And some of which I'm, like, nodding, like, oh, yeah, no one really says it like that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I kind of, yeah. I mean, it's a real testament to the work that it's still being talked about what, I mean, I think Sister Outsider came out in 1984. Right. So that's like what? To a 30? I mean, it was the year before I was born and I'm going to be 35 in a month. So 36 years ago.

So almost four decades, which is crazy. It is crazy. And it doesn't mean that every single line resonates. Times have changed. Times are constantly changing. Boy, don't we know it? But I think it's good to go in sometimes. And she does.

And just reading like a verbatimates. and speech, I get something out of as well. I think because I'm always thinking about the mediums of broadcast and communication, just the idea of somebody talking like that. I'm just like, God, blam it. She was good, weren't she? Was she reading notes? It's just like, how does someone do that?

Very cool. Are you more of an audio person than a text person? I think so. I think I'm probably an audio purist. And your final book, Maya Angelou, the autobiographies, you listened to this one, right? It was a BBC project. Yeah, so she wrote her autobiographies

and then it was adapted into a Radio 4 drama series which I caught a bit of them was like, whatever this is, this is really great. And then it's now available and audible. And I travel a lot. I travel a lot on my own as well, which I'm cool with her and I love, but I know my things that make me feel comfortable and happy

and walking around a city. so I listened to the ends of this in Athens last year. It's just, it's like you have a friend. I don't know, that sounds ridiculous, but when you are listening to something that you're really enjoying and you're also in surroundings that you like, but might be new, it's like you've got that mate there anyway. I don't know, but you're filling your mind instead in a different way.

And I just got so into this, because I found it hard at first. A lot of the dramatization of her early life is quite heavy and I'm just a bit like I don't really want to hear this and then her life changes and her life just gets really fun and filled with drama and romance and glamour she becomes a dancer and all these things that I didn't necessarily know about Maya Angelou I've read her incredible poems obviously I was just like this woman is or was phenomenal like the epitome of the nominal woman that she talks about. And I guess as a student of hers, you can only really,

really feel that if you look into how someone ends up like that or being able to write like that. And the best thing about Maya Angelou is that she does know how the cage bird sings. It resonates in how she writes and it resonates in her life story. Like she overcame and overcame and overcame. And that to me is fascinating because a lot, of women of colours stories that we know of in terms of like these big stories that we know about from say Nina Simone to Whitney Houston

are these very embellished tragedies and that's so sad so I'm like Guamire give me some joy she's just like I carried on and carried on and carried on and carried on. And I don't know, I love that. I can't, there's not many examples of women of colour

who are so kind of attractive in the sense of the work they put out, like so compelling, so interesting. Please tell me more. I'm actually researching them because my next book is about, it's called The Immortal Sisterhood. Oh really? Yeah. Tell us more about that.

Oh, man. I'm just going to jump into history books and write about incredible women. I mean, it's not the most, like, freshest idea. A lot of people are doing it. But I'm doing it from my perspective. And I'm finding out about a lot of people that I didn't know about.

And I'm like, why don't we know about this person? So I'm just going to celebrate with them and an imaginary dinner party as such. That's so good. Like, do you know the artist Judy Chicago who's got a big installation called the dinner party? Oh, really? Which is basically just a gigantic.

table setting. So there are different table settings and seats for various women in history. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I mean, the book isn't in the format of a dinner party, but it just is as a metaphor. It's just, it's very up. Like, this is an idea that even if people were deemed as crazy in the end or something

bad happen or I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, that there were certain elements of their life that we could all learn from. And that parts of them should be celebrated rather than people being scrubbed. out because let's be honest, men have been able to do that forever and just be like, yeah, he was an amazing pirate. It's like, cool. Yeah. Great.

But like, where's the woman? Yeah. Who was the woman? And I was like finding out about female pirates and there are so many brilliant, interesting women to research. Where do you think that comes from for you, you know, because you seem really engaged in this idea of giving justice to women. and bringing women up.

Have you always been like this? Yeah, probably. I think I'm allowed to be like that more now. But I think women are absolutely brilliant. I also think men are. I think we're in a time where a lot of men are feeling a bit sort of scared of our empowerment. And I don't actually mean that lightly. I think, no, no, no.

Like, we all just need to just like shake off some of that like versus thing. And like for me, genuine equality is just being like love wins like end of you know I love men I do like I just do caveat yeah and I love women I love I love people it's annoying but it's the truth I think that's also what makes you a good radio presenter right thanks yeah I mean I try I do try I've had a good time. I'm having a great time. So of all the books you've picked today, which one do you think really gets you or really gets to you? Oh man. I think we should go with like the magic fire rage just because it's super fun. Yeah, like the Ina Blyton. They all get to me,

but I'm really, I'm really adamant that we need to just go on paths of disgust. talk about things and be inquisitive, but also remember the power of our imagination and that things aren't always as they seem. And, I mean, is a child's book a child's book? Who knows? I don't know. The next generation.

All of these things. Like, our imagination could actually, like, be an incredible thing for all of us. And part of this podcast is, as part of the Women's Prize, we're going back and rereading all the people who've won the prize in the last 24. five years.

Is there a particular woman you'd like to big up today? Oh. Who you like people who are listening right now to look her up besides. A writer, a writer. Or just a person. It's so hard. In public splendor, let's say, let's go for Grace Jones, who left a profound effect on me when I interviewed her.

I say she's changed my life in some ways. I don't know how or why, but she just was so herself that I was like, it's possible and so not as scary as she has been depicted to be really yeah and it just proved to me that again women

and I'm going to just stretch that out in terms of people are so many things so yeah big up grace what was she like in real life she was just wicked like I just

she was so otherworldly actually I guess again there's this theme, isn't there? But the next day I was thinking about her and I was like, what does, who does she remind me? Does that, I can usually, somebody will remind me of something.

And I was like, I've never met anyone like her. And then the only comparison that I could have in terms of her vibe, her humour, her unapologeticness, her sensitivity as well, was some of the amazing drag queens that I've been lucky enough to hang out with, but outside of the regalia. So like the next day after a night out or something when you're...

The makeup smear on the face. Yeah, when you're with somebody who's just so everything in terms of fabulous but also really like gentle. And actually that's what Grace represented, this genderless kind of force of nature who was very maternal and had all these anecdotes. and was part of a really iconic scene, but she wasn't scary.

She didn't want to, like, hurt me or shock me. Like, I said to her, I just want to archive you for the icon that you are. Women aren't often, and let's do this. Let's talk and let's find out, like, who you are. And she gave me that, and it was cool. Amazing. It was really cool.

Well, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. It's been lovely. I feel like I've been to third. therapy. Well, in that case, I'll send you an invoice after this. Oh, yeah, Casey, yeah. But thank you for letting us into your imagination emporium. Oh, thank you. And I hope that people find a book that they love in those suggestions. And if you do have a mutual love for any of them, like let me know so that we can, like, vibes out on it. I'm Zing Singh, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. You definitely want to click subscribe.

because in our next episode, we'll be exploring three previous winners of the Women's Prize in a book club with three brilliant guests. Please rate and review this podcast. It's the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard from today. And thanks very much for listening. See you next time.