Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S3 Ep13: Shortlist 2021: The Authors

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Yomi speaks to the six incredible authors who have been shortlisted for the 2021 Prize - Brit Bennett, Patricia Lockwood, Claire Fuller, Cherie Jones, Susanna Clarke and Yaa Gyasi. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on September 8th.    The 2021 shortlist:  ** The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett ** Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller ** No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood ** How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones  ** Piranesi by Susanna Clarke  ** Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi   Every week, join journalist and author Yomi Agedoke, and inspirational guests including Elizabeth Day, Sara Pascoe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as they celebrate the best books written by women. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and has been running for over 25 years, and this series will offer unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2021 Prize winner.    This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Yomiya Degrake, your host for Season 3 of the Women's Prize Podcast. You've joined me for a very special episode to celebrate this year's Women's Prize for Fiction shortlisted authors. Welcome to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast.

In this episode, we'll be hearing from the incredible authors who have been shortlisted for the 2021 prize. Britt Bennett, Patricia Lockwood, Claire Thiller, Cherie Jones, Susanna Clark and Jarsie. We're recording this podcast remotely and we'll hear from our six shortlisted authors from the comfort of their own homes. So please do forgive us if we sound a little different. We'll also give you a flavour of their nominated books.

We begin with Britt Bennett to discuss her second novel, The Vanishing Half, a book that has been described as utterly mesmerizing, and the lyrical mediation on identity, race, and gender. Here's an extract of the book. The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou Le Bonn ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou,

pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort. The barely awake customers clamored around them, ten or so, although more would lie and say that they'd been there too, if only to pretend that this once they'd witnessed something truly exciting. In that little farm town, nothing surprising ever happened, not since the Vines twins it disappeared. But that morning, in April 1968, on his way to work,

loo spotted Desiree Vines walking along, partridge road carrying a small leather suitcase. She looked exactly the same as when she'd left at 16, still light, her skin the color of sand barely wet. Welcome Britt Bennett to the podcast, author of The Vanishing Hall. How does it feel to be nominated for the women's prize? Hi, it's an incredible honor. Such an amazing list of books that made the long list and the shortlist. And beyond that, so many amazing books they've been published in this past year. So I'm grateful that this book was selected for the short list.

Your book has introduced many readers to the concept of colorism, many who would not have necessarily been aware of it before, and has contributed to a global discourse around racism and inequality. Was this your ambition when you started writing? I mean, I certainly never imagined that the book would be framed in that way, that you just framed it. I knew that when I first started writing this book, I was really interested in this idea of colorism and these hierarchies created within communities that are already marginalized and how you kind of move between and among those hierarchies. So I knew that that was something that I was really interested in. And I just wanted to tell a story about a specific family in a very specific place that hopefully would have a, a broader resonant. So it's been very cool to see this book really connect to readers throughout the world. You even just then touched on the fact that you weren't necessarily expecting it to be

framed in the way that I just mentioned. So what, if anything, about the book's reception has surprised you the most? I think honestly, everything about the reception really surprised me. You know, I think in general, you read a book and you just hope that somebody doesn't know you reads it. And for me, you know, I was sort of nervous about a second book. And I also, when I realized the book was going to be coming out during a global pandemic, I had no idea whether anybody would be in the mood to read a book at all. So I think really the passion and the fervor that readers have had for this book in the United States and throughout the world has been completely overwhelming. It never stops being surprising, even though this book has been out in the world for about a year now.

I want to talk to you a little bit about Mallard. as a concept and what research went into creating it. I actually thought it was real for a really long time. And I'm just interested in how you sort of conceptualized it as a place. Yeah, I wanted to draw upon some actual real places and these real, you know, small, creal communities in Louisiana. And some of that came from, you know, researching, finding historical documents,

reading books about the history of race in Louisiana and that particular context. So some of it was drawn from a more, I guess, academic kind of historical research. But a lot of it was also drawn from talking to my mother and other members of my family. My mom grew up in rural Louisiana. So she was familiar with these types of communities, although she didn't come from a place like that herself. She had heard about these places. So some of it was also drawing on the stories that she told me about her own childhood.

So your book is going to be made into a series by HBO. How do you feel about that and what role we be playing in its creation? Yeah, I think it's really exciting. It's exciting to land at a place like HBO that makes such great television and also so many great adaptations in particular. I will be serving as an executive producer, so I'm weighing in on the creative side, but I'm not adapting it myself. And I think that that's exciting to be able to hand the reins over to our really talented writers.

And for me to be able to just kind of take a step back and see this book transformed in some way and translated onto the screen in a way that's different than how it had been living alone in my head for all of those years. So I'm just very excited as a person who loves television and is a fan of HBO and the creative team that we've assembled there. I'm excited to see how it all turns out. Yeah, we all are. Definitely looking forward to that. So you've mentioned already that it's been, you know, quite surreal to see the response to the book. But, you know, you were also recently named one of Time magazine's next 100 most influential people, which is incredible.

How did you feel when you were made aware of that? And what do you think it is about your writing that resonates with so many people globally? I mean, that I think is another just surreal moment that, you know, I'm still. I'm just kind of laughing, even hearing you say it because, of course, it's such an honor. But again, when you sit down to write a book, you don't imagine something like that emerging from it. I think that readers have connected to this story in particular because it is a story about a complicated family. And we all come from complicated families in our own way. So I think there's a way that on that level, readers have connected to it.

And then there's the larger thematics that you've spoken to about identity and race and gender and all of these. other larger sort of thorny issues that we're all struggling to understand in our own lives and also culturally, I think that maybe that is what readers have connected to is kind of the intersection of of the more personal and also the more sort of universal kind of cultural concerns that this book speaks to. Thank you so much, Brett. Next, I speak with Patricia Lockwood about her stunning nominated book. No one is talking about this. A novel that defy genres and seeks to high. like the absurdity of being extremely online. Here's an extract of the book. She opened the portal,

and the mind met her more than halfway. Inside, it was tropical and snowing, and the first flake of the blizzard of everything landed on her tongue and melted. Close-ups of nail art, a pebble from outer space, a tarantula's compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter. Van Goghs, the potato eaters, a chihuahua perched on a man's erection, a garage door spray painted with the words, stop, don't email my wife. Why did the portal feel so private when you only entered it when you needed to be everywhere? She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside the air hung swagged and the cloud sat in piles of couch stuffing. And in the south of the

sky, there was a tender spot where a rainbow wanted to happen. Welcome to the podcast, Patricia Lockwood, author of No One Is Talking About This. Tricia, how does it feel to be nominated for the women's prize? Oh, it was extremely exciting. I had sort of a rain, my career in my life in such a way that would preclude me from ever being nominated for an award. So it was a huge surprise when it came through, but I did have a couple psychic feelings attached to it. When I was, yeah, when I was long listed, I thought, well, that was a huge surprise. But the day before the shortlist was announced, I knew that I would be on it. How did you know you'd be on it?

Just my body told me, I'm not sure. I have become very, very psychic over the last year. I haven't had any further psychic feelings about it. So I can't, in that regard, point to anything that might occur. But for the shortlist, yes, I knew. Incredible. I might have to ask you a few questions after this about myself. Yeah.

So how do your different forms of writing inform each other and what disciplines did you draw on for no one is talking about this? It all feels like the same substance to me or, you know, like I'm drawing from the same well. So there's something about the sort of poetry I've written that has always cross genres. I might just as easily write a prose poem as a lineated one. I might just as easily write something true as something fictional. And that's never really been an issue for me, I think, because in poetry, that's something

very natural to people. So I did draw on traditional novels, of course, but I was also thinking about fragmented novels of David Markson. I was thinking about people like Lydia David. Ull Abyss, people that sort of exist in these no man's lands between the genres and are very comfortable there. Your novel definitely touches on and reflects

on your own experience of internet fame. What made you want to bring this into your writing? It was a little bit true when I started it as a novel, but it became true. It was actually this self-fulfilling prophecy. So in the book, she becomes famous, quote unquote, for the simple tweet, can a dog be twins? No question mark.

Simply, can a dog be twins? And this somehow travels the globe, and everyone wants to know this, and it's disseminated among the whole population of the world. And that hadn't exactly happened for me yet. But after the novel came out, sort of in that same time, I have actually had this experience with a tweet about my cat, Miet. And it's this self-fulfilling prophecy now, where it has gone so far beyond me.

and it's talked about by K-pop stands on Tumblr, and I feel it being chattered about in far corners of the universe, and it wasn't exactly true for me at the time that I was writing the book. I had had a little taste of that, but it has since become true, so now I do know. Your book also sort of draws on experiences from your family in the second half of the novel. How did you come to the decision to do so, and what were the challenges with writing about, you know,

more painful experiences. Yeah, so I began doing it almost compulsively. And I think it's because I had been writing about my day-to-day life in the first half of the book, just like noting down the minutia, the really, really small things. And then when I was carried into this more urgent situation with my family, with my sister, who was pregnant, I just kept doing it, except I was no longer writing about the portal. I was no longer writing about being trapped inside the internet. that I was writing about being released into the world, into some world of real emotions that

was new to me. And so I do describe it as being compulsive that I just began in this clear stream to write about the things that were happening. The difficulty really was, you know, just making sure it was okay. I told my sister that that's what I was doing. And luckily, my sister did see it as a form of memorializing, a form of setting down concrete details that, you know, when it's actually happening to you, sometimes just fly by. You can't really grasp them. So she, I was there as a documentarian, and I think that she was very grateful for that.

But yeah, it is difficult to know what to include, how much of your real experience you should use, what should be fictionalized, what it would be disrespectful to fictionalize. I didn't end up actually fictionalizing that much. I felt it was important to put my niece's personality into the book intact because that was the very holy thing that I experienced was this communication with her and her personality. And finally, for those who have read the book, can a dog be twins? Do you have the answer? I believe that it must never be answered. This is the question that will never find the twin of its own answer and it must exist as a question in the universe for all time. That is what I truly believe. You know what, that answer is actually satisfying, more satisfying than had you actually said yes or no.

Right, I know. It's better this way. It is better this way. It's a certain mystery. Thank you so much, Trisha. It's a pleasure talking to me. Now we delve into Claire Fuller's fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, a heart-stopping novel of betrayal, resilience, love and survival. Here's extract of the audiobook.

The morning sky lightens and snow falls on the cottage. It falls on the thatch, concealing the moss and the mouse damage, smoothing out the undulations, filling in the hollows and slips, melting where it touches the bricks of the chimney. It settles on the plants and bare soil in the front garden and forms a perfect mound on top of the rotten gate post, as though shaped from the inside of a teacup. It hides the roof of the chicken coop, and those of the privy and the old dairy, leaving a dusting across the workbench and floor where the window was broken long ago. In the vegetable garden at the back, the snow slides through the rips in the plastic of the polytunnel,

chills the onion sets four inches underground, and shrivels the new shoots of the Swiss chard. Only the head of the last winter cabbage refuses to succumb. The interior leaves curled green and strong, waiting. Welcome to the podcast Claire Fulah, author of Unsettled Ground. Where did you get the inspiration to write Unsettled Ground? It came from a place, really. So there's a point in the book where the main characters end up in a caravan in the woods. And it was that caravan that I found, a real-life caravan in the woods near to where I live.

And it had clearly been lived in at one point, but was, dilapidated and vandalised and I went there with my son and we kind of had a look around and it just made me think about who might have lived there and how they would have managed because there wasn't any power or sanitation and what would that person's life have been like and so the main character in Unsettled Ground Jeannie kind of came to me through that. Claire, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the main characters, 51-year-old twins who still lived with their mum up until her passing. Can you tell me a little bit about the idea for those characters came about?

I guess once I decided that at some point they would live or have to go and move to this caravan in the woods, then Jeannie came to me, I suppose. Because I don't plan my novels, I just start writing and I see where it takes me. So I kind of discovered about what these characters were like and what might happen to them as I was writing. So almost in the same way that readers discover the characters as they read the book. You know, they came to me in the things they did. But I do start with Dot, their mother and her death. So the book starts with that and that's what kind of kicks everything off.

But once I knew a little bit more about them. knew that they were living in poverty, that Jeannie struggles to read and write, that they don't have any transport and very little technology, then I really looked into how people with those particular circumstances might survive in the modern world or struggle on what things they would find difficult. It was very important to me not to write it with pity or anything that was sentimental. You know, I wanted, it was really important that the readers were empathetic to Jeannie's situation, but didn't pity her. So recently, you interestingly said that depictions of rural poverty are common in US literature, but not necessarily in British fiction.

Can you tell me a little bit about why you think that is? The conversation, I think at the moment in in the UK seems to be about urban poverty, perhaps because it affects more people, perhaps because it's more easily measured. And it's just more obvious. You know, you walk into any major city in the UK and you can see that deprivation, I think, around you. You know, people are on the street asking for money or whatever it is. And I think if you walk into an English village, because this book is set in England, then I, you know, you know, you just don't see that. I think it's hidden. So maybe that's why it's not really being mentioned in literature either. Thank you, Claire. What would you say has been the benefit to you

as a writer having started writing at the age of 40? If the books I might have written in my 20s had been published, I might end up being embarrassed about them now. I don't really know. You know, I just think I might not have lived enough of a life. That's not to say that, you know, writers in their 20s can't write wonderful books. But I'm not sure that I was ready for that. I think I needed lots of time to soak up lots and lots of other books that I was reading and to have some more life experiences to understand about living in different places and different, just different experiences, I think, have all been able to kind of

compost down. That's how I like to think about it and help me write the books that I've written so far. Do you ever draw on your early training as a sculptor in your writing at all? Do you ever find that it can inform how you, I suppose, structure your writing or approach your writing? Not very obviously, but I think there are some subtle similarities with how I, would sculpt so so I was a stone carver and I would carve very large pieces of stone you know human size life size often or sometimes even bigger and I wouldn't necessarily have a plan I would have some kind of vague idea in mind but I would really start carving and it was almost like I was discovering what was in the stone what was already there and and kind of uncovering it and I think

writing for me feels a lot like that. Obviously there is no lump of stone. There's nothing to uncover, but it is a process of discovery for me because I don't know what's going to happen from one scene to the next. I don't know the ending. I don't know, you know, what the next chapter is going to hold. It is a process of discovery in the same way and kind of almost uncovering what's already there in some odd way. That's almost what it feels like. And then once I've finished my first draft, and for me,

creating a novel is so much in the revision and in the editing. And that is, I guess, quite similar to the polishing and refining that you might do when you're making a sculpture. So there's some similarities, but I don't really ever think about creating. art when I'm writing, the two feel like very different disciplines. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish Cream. Bailey'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. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether in coffee, over ice cream or paired with your favourite book. Enjoying the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, share the literary love and be part of the future of the Women's Prize Trust. They're making a one-off donation to support our important workers to charity. Donations of all sizes help us to continue empowering women, regardless of their age, race, nationality or background to raise their voice and own their story. Search for Support the Women's Prize to find out more.

You're listening to a special episode of the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. where we're speaking to the 2021 shortlisted authors. Next up, we catch up with Sheree Jones about her haunting an unforgettable novel, how the one-armed sister sweeps her house. The book focuses on Barbados, where poverty and misogyny lurk under the surface, and where a cautionary folk tale takes on multiple meanings for three very different women. Here's an extract of the book. Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister.

The village vicar and his wife had two little girls Such beautiful children you never did see Skin yellow and pretty like peanut milk Hair curly and silky like pudiswa Eyes big and light brown with long long lashes But although they both beautiful Only one of them was gifted with good sense The other one was own way and liked to give the mother mouth

So it just so happened that there was an entrance to the boxers' tunnels right on the vicarage lawn at the bottom of the garden. Nobody sure what's it doing there, but it there nonetheless. The vicar wife have half a mind to get the yard boy to seal it off with stones and cement,

but is only half a mind and she never actually sent the boy into town to buy the bag of cement and the cement blocks to do the job. The vicar's wife tell her little girls about this tunnel, how they mustn't go into it, I would have monsters that lived down and near. Sherey, how does it feel to be nominated for the Women's Prize for your debut novel? It's an amazing feeling.

It's better than I could ever have imagined. It's surreal, lots of pinch-me moments, but I'm so very pleased, so, so very pleased and honored to be in this amazing short list. It's a dream come true. Oh, I love hearing that. Your novel appears behind the facade of tourism in Barbados and depicts a darker underbelly. What is your view on the tourism industry there? And how does it help or hinder the local community?

Well, the thing is, I mean, we have a complex relationship with tourism, as I'm sure most countries who depend on tourism, as part of the economy or as a pillar of the economy would have. So at the time how the one-armed sister sweeps, her house was written, we were less than, or sorry, when it's set, we were less than 20 years out of independence. And tourism was one of the ways that our economy was able to, you know, be established and strengthened.

So I think we all felt a sense of pride, I think, in our appeal to tourists, but I do think there is a darker site to it. There is the exploitation at several levels of the local population. There is this sense of presenting a beautiful site or our beautiful side and perhaps paying less attention to. the lived reality of many, many bejans who serve tourists or who work in that industry. So to me, it is a very complex relationship. And I think in writing how the one-arm sister sweeps her house, it was important for me to portray that complexity. Personally, I think that, you know, tourists are welcome to come to Barbados and to explore

Barbados. I just want everyone to understand that, you know, just as would happen anywhere else, there are many sites to existing in Barbados as a Belgian. And I think it's great that people have the opportunity to see some of those less obvious sites of life here. How does this novel, or how would you say this novel reflects your own personal life experience? I know you've previously said that you drew in part on an abusive relationship in your past when writing. Yes, so it definitely did influence my writing of the book and certainly some of the creative choices that I made in writing it. I always say, you know, that night that Lala's character came to me on the bus, I was living and working in the UK at the time, and it was very cold and quite late in the evening.

evening and I was tired and I didn't particularly feel like hearing a character from a new story in my head. But part of the reason that I was so compelled to write this story is because of the similarities between Lala's life and my own, you know, the first thing is being from Barbados. I also have had some of that type of beach. side existence. When I was very, very young, my parents and I, we lived in a house on the beach. And I've always had a very close, and I would also say complex relationship with the sea. So there were those similarities, but I think what made it particularly difficult for me was the fact that I had also experienced abuse in an intimate relationship, as Lala had. although my experiences weren't her own.

So that made the book quite wrenching for me to write. There were times when I just had to put it down. I couldn't, you know, living through some of those experiences with Lala was quite difficult. But it was also an empowering experience because certainly in terms of, for example, how I wrote about violence, I mean, it was a very conscious choice of mine to ensure that Lala,

or any other woman in the novel was not re-victimized in the retelling. Thank you so much, Sheree. The women in this novel are often very supportive of each other. I was interested in whether that was a theme that you set out to include or whether it just sort of came about naturally in the writing. I wouldn't say that that is a theme that I set out to include. I, you know, for me, in terms of how I receive and write a story, it is very much that. It's almost as if I feel I'm entrusted with the particular tale to tell.

So it was less about foregrounding one particular theme over another, save and accept to the extent that doing that brought out the story that I felt. I was given. So in terms of, you know, women, supporting women, I think they do in the best way that they know how. Now, whether that way is particularly helpful or nurturing, I think, is another story, but certainly I think that I would have written into the story what I thought was relevant to its telling in that respect. And finally, how has your work been received by people in Barbados? That's a question that I've actually been asked quite a lot. And, you know, Bejans have just been so excited and so happy for me, you know, that the book made the long list and then the short list and that, you know, it's been getting so much attention in

in the international media. So I think Bayjans are just proud of the fact that, you know, one of our writers is getting that level of attention. I haven't had anybody kind of chastise me for airing the dirty laundry in public. We are a very reserved people, I think, naturally. So I wonder whether even if people thought that way

if they tell me, but... so far so far nobody said anything about that i've i've just had lots of congratulations lots of support and lots of lots of praise which has been really nice next susanna clark and i discuss her mesmerizing fantasy book piranesi a novel that's been described as a masterful work of weird fiction and a miraculous and luminous feats of storytelling it tells us that the tale of a very singular house and its mysterious inhabitants. Here's an extract from the novel. This morning, at 10 o'clock, I went to the second southwestern hall to meet the other. When I entered the hall, he was already there, leaning on an empty plinth, tapping at one of

his shining devices. He wore a well-cut suit of charcoal wool and a bright white shirt that contrasted pleasingly with the olive tones of his skin. Without looking up from his device, he said, I need some data. He is often like this, so intent on what he is doing that he forgets to say hello or goodbye, or to ask me how I am. I do not mind.

I admire his dedication to his scientific work. What data, I asked. Can I assist you? Certainly, he said. In fact, I won't get far if you don't. Today, the subject of my research is, at this point, he looked up from what he was doing and smiled at me. You.

Susanna Clark, author of Pyrinaise. Hi, Susanna. How does it feel to be nominated for the women's prize? Hi. It's a little bit overwhelming, to be honest. It was, it's not, I don't suppose anybody expects it. Well, perhaps some people do. But no, it was completely unexpected and brilliant.

And in a way, I can't quite believe it. But no, fantastic. We definitely can and we are thrilled for you. So, Suzanne, many readers have responded to your book with a greater sense of sort of poignancy, having read it a year after a year of lockdown. Would you say that the, The book has taken on a greater meaning for you in the last year or since it's been published.

I think the meaning of a man who was in a house and only knew about one other living person in the world. So living this quite isolated life, it was really, for me, more a reflection of chronic illness, which I've suffered from for about 16 years at this point and the sort of isolation that can bring. But also I think I wanted to suggest that it's also that there are things that it brings that are quite positive, which you may not realise at first. So I think in a way that meaning was always there for me.

And then it was completely surreal that everybody else sort of went into isolation as well. Nobody could have predicted that. That was very, that was kind of surreal, but the sort of resonance was always there for me. And what would you say has been the most surprising part of the reaction to your book? I'm tempted to say that people just got it. It was such a personal book in a way. I just, after a long time, I just wrote a long time not being able to write.

so I just wrote the book that I wanted to write. And it was, so it was a personal book in the sense that I didn't really know whether it would even make sense to anybody else. And when I finished, I took it to my husband and said, can you read this? Tell me if anyone's going to understand it or am I just crazy? And he seemed to think other people might understand it. So he kind of went from there.

And then it seems like a lot of people have understood. it, or at least sort of found something in it that resonates with them, which is fantastic. So having had such a long time between novels, which, you know, you've mentioned is in part due to your experiences of illness, how would you say publishing Pyronezzi differed to publishing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in terms of the, you know, cultural landscape? For Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I got on planes and went all over the world and talked to people. And that was in itself quite surreal. I hardly travelled at all up to that point.

And suddenly I was going to all kinds of places. And an American tour is very strange because you sort of arrived somewhere in the morning. You get to the hotel. You have interviews in the afternoon and events in the evening. and then you go to bed and then you go up early in the morning and you go somewhere and you never see these places really except out of the window of a taxi.

It was in a way it was that's, in a way that's exciting but in a way it was lovely not to have to do that. And I didn't have to do that partly because I'd said I couldn't and partly because nobody could. Nobody could in the world and everything was suddenly on Zoom and it was so much easier for me.

So that was, a definite difference. I think possibly that fantasy books are continually becoming a bit more mainstream and the definition of what a fantasy book is is constantly opening out. And I think maybe that's a slight difference that I've noticed, I'm not sure. So as you mentioned, I mean, your book, I mean, it's, you. mysterious, it's otherworldly, it's thoroughly beautiful, but you did say that you weren't entirely sure if everyone would get it,

but, you know, so many people have. Where would you say you draw your inspiration from? It was very much a response initially to an Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges. I think I'm saying that right. George Louis Borgs, who wrote, he was a blind Argentinian author who was a great anglophile and wrote these tiny jewel-like short stories, but often they're set in very surreal worlds. And I loved these stories in my 20s. And I had no idea how to write.

write something similar, but I wrote seven or eight pages of a story about a house with two characters and seas going through the house, invading the house. And that was the beginning. So it was very much a response to this one author, really. But also, I think, um, C.S. Lewis became quite important as I was writing because he is an author who is terribly important to me when I was a child. He sort of formed my idea of what a wonderful book and a world that you could escape to in books, what that was all about. And so inevitably almost little influences and bits, I picked up bits of the Narnia stories because they've meant so much to me.

So I think those were the two main influences. Finally, I spoke with Yajasi about her latest book, Transcendant Kingdom, a searing novel about a family ravaged by forces both within and beyond their control. A book that explores love, grief, and inheritance. Here's an extract from the novel. Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying in it, a practiced stillness filling the room. For months on end, she colonized that bed like a virus.

The first time when I was a child and then again when I was a graduate student. The first time I was sent to Ghana to wait her out. While there I was a walking through Kajetia Market with my aunt when she grabbed my arm and pointed, Look, a crazy person, she said in tree. Do you see? A crazy person. I was mortified. My aunt was speaking so loudly, and the man, tall with dust caked into his dreadlocks, was within earshot. I see, I see, I answered in a low hiss. The man continued past us. mumbling to himself as he waved his hands about in gestures that only he could understand. Welcome to the podcast, Yarr Jassy, author of Transcendent Kingdom.

So I've heard that, I've heard you discuss that it was a neuroscientist friend of yours whose research formed the basis of Gifty's work in the novel. But how much research did you need to do in preparation for writing? And did you enjoy the research part of the process as much as the novel? writing. Yeah, I did quite a bit of research for this novel. My first novel, Homegoing, took a lot of research, but I like to think of that as research that was wide but shallow. Whereas with Transcendant Kingdom, like I needed to do a deep dive into one specific thing, which was neuroscience and specifically optogenetics and reward-seeking behavior. So the research, it felt almost like going back to

school and like taking taking a class in a way that was really nice. I really enjoyed it. And I love researching for my novels. So it is a process that I enjoy at least as much as the writing, if not more. A key theme and plot point of the novel is on the opioid crisis in the USA. You've talked about wanting to contribute to the discourse around it, but what have you learned about the crisis? and what do you feel should or potentially can be done to combat it? I learned a great deal about the crisis. I think now in the states at least we're at a point in this crisis, which I should mention is ongoing.

You know, the pandemic has kind of superseded every other crisis, but this is an epidemic that is ongoing and likely worsening due to the pandemic. But at any rate, I think most people in the states at this point in the crisis are, you know, only a few degrees of separation removed from somebody who has been impacted by it. It's a pretty widespread problem. One of the things that I think about now after having researched this book is just how our discourse around recovery is so lacking. What I learned is that it takes quite a bit of time to recover and that relapse is a part of that

process. And so rather than viewing it as a failure, when when someone relapses, we should think of it as, you know, just one step on the journey toward recovery. It's a drug that quite literally changes your brain. And so I think we have to have a lot more compassion. Absolutely. So this novel is a departure from your hugely successful debut, Homegoing. Transcendent Kingdom is the whole history of Gifty's life, whereas Homegoing is obviously a multi-generational saga that spans centuries. How did the experience differ from, you know, writing Homegoing versus Transcendent Kingdom? It was different in just about every way, I have to say. I started homegoing when I was quite young, and I also had basically no idea what I was doing, which is a lovely place

to be in for a first novel. I think it felt very freeing. And I think, and I think, found myself kind of wandering down a million different roads trying to see which road was the right path. But structurally, homegoing is really, really tight and almost mathematical. It's obviously ambitious and expansive, but it's, you know, 14 chapters, 14 POV characters. It goes in chronological order. There's this kind of logic to the plot that I think made it a book that felt straight forward to write. Transcendant Kingdom by contrast was more wily in some ways. It's non-linear. I'm just staying with this one character, Gifty, in the first person for the entirety of the novel. The structure didn't have that sense of order to it. And so it felt in many ways like a lot more, a lot more loose, a lot more free

that writing process. And I really enjoyed it. I think it felt like an opportunity for me just to stretch new muscles and to kind of learn new skills or bring new skills to the table, which I think after having a book like Homegoing, which was so hugely successful, it was like a, it was a kind of scary process to try to do something so completely new. But I think in some ways, that's also what allowed the book to work was because I didn't feel like I needed to be beholden to homegoing in any way. So I enjoyed it. So as well as depicting the challenges of immigrant life in America and the impact of addiction, the Ghanaian community in Alabama is one of the novels more positive themes.

And there's a lot of energy and joy particularly in these scenes, especially as a Nigerian person with, you know, Nigerian parents who's growing up in the UK, that resonated a lot and those were not some of my favorite scenes. Did you draw on your own experiences for these and how important was it for you to share that side of your culture? Yeah, it was hugely important to me. I think one of the things that my parents did an excellent job of when I was growing up was making sure that we were as surrounded as possible with, if not Ghanaian community, then West African community largely. When we first got to America, we lived in Columbus, Ohio, which has a pretty decent-sized Ghanaian immigrant community. And so in many ways, it was like a soft landing for coming to the States.

We went to the African Christian church, which was half Nigerian, half Ghanaian. And we kind of had this continuity of cultural experiences from Ghana to America. and that's something I really valued. I had this within my life in the states, I had this little bubble of Ghanaian community. Each place that we moved to subsequently, there were fewer and fewer Ghanaians. So by the time we got to Alabama,

which is where I also grew up, there weren't that many. And yet still, you know, my parents would make the drive to Meridianville to see the one Nigerian family that lived there when we first moved to when we first moved to Huntsville. And slowly, like, the community grew and grew. And I think in part that the credit goes to my parents

who are truly some of the most welcoming West Africans that you could find and really, really value community. I love that. Thank you so much, Y'R. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Oh, you as well. Thank you. Many thanks to all the shortlisted authors for taking the time out to speak to us. The winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

will be announced on Wednesday the 8th of September. I'm Yomi Adego-K, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Please click subscribe, and don't forget to rate and review this podcast. It really helps spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.