Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S3 Ep5: Bookshelfie: Annie Mac

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

DJ, presenter and author Annie Macmanus chooses her five favourite books by women and tells Yomi why she’s outgrown Annie Mac.  Annie is best known as a BBC Radio 1 DJ where she currently hosts the flagship daily new music show, Future Sounds. She’s also an incredible club DJ, playing at the world’s biggest venues, events and festivals, and has curated her own festival - Lost and Found - in Malta. Her own podcast - Changes with Annie Macmanus - is all about change and how people deal with it. And this year she’s published her first novel - Mother Mother, which she describes as “a story about family ties, addiction, the resilience of women and the teflon-strength bond that can exist between a mother and a son”     Annie’s book choices are:  ** Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume ** Peig Sayers by Peig Sayers ** Unless by Carol Shields ** The Green Road by Ann Enright ** The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath   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.

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Of rebellion. I'm tired of losing. Wouldn't you rather give it all up to something real? Star Wars Andor, original series streaming September 21st, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. 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 Yomiyo Jenga-Kay, your host for Season 3 of the Women's Prize podcast. We have a phenomenal lineup of guests for 2021, and I guarantee you will be taking away plenty of reading recommendations. Each bookshelfy episode, we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life, the five different books by women. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Bookshelfy.

I'm Yomiya Degokay, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be your host for series three, where I'll be lucky enough to be interviewing some incredible women about the work of other incredible women. I'm excited to tell you that this year's short list is out, and the six brilliant authors and their books can all be found on our website, www.womenpriced.com. We are still practicing safe social distancing, and this podcast is being recorded remotely.

Today's guest is DJ, broadcaster, podcaster and now author Annie Mack. Annie is perhaps best known as a BBC Radio 1 DJ, where she currently hosts the flagship daily new music show Future Sounds. She's also an incredible club DJ playing at the world's biggest venues, events and festivals, and has curated her own festival, Lost and Found, in Malta. Annie also hosts her own podcast, Changes with Annie McManus, which is all about, you guessed it, change and how people deal with it. And this year she's published her first novel, Mother Mother, which she describes as a story about family ties, addiction,

the resilience of women, and the Teflin strength bond that can exist between a mother and son. Welcome to the podcast, Annie. How are you today? I'm really good, Yami. Thank you. I'm very well. I have my five books in a little pile beside me, ready to talk. Wow, you've got them physically. That's commitment. Yeah, well, I just wanted to kind of preface this whole conversation with the fact that my memory is awful. And I've been quite nervous about just talking about books because I've realized when I started thinking about books and how I've read them and consumed them over the years that I've read all my life. But it's very kind of not saying the experience of reading is disposable, but the way that I treat the books is quite disposed.

So I just I just get books, I read them, I pass them on. I get books, I read them, I pass them on. And I rarely remember the authors of the books or the titles of the books. So a lot of the time I've kind of no recollection of what I have actually read and I would think that I hadn't read a book and then I'll go back to it and I'll be like, oh, I actually have read this two chapters in. So to pick five books with the worst memory and then this way of reading books has been really difficult. And I've I had to kind of ask a lot of people questions and try and remember stuff about my life. And you'll notice when we go through the books that there's a couple of books from my early life and then three books from just the last three years, other than the whole 20 years in the middle. It's a bit of a blur. So apologies in advance, basically. Oh, no need to apologize. Thank you so much for joining us. So I would like to ask firstly where you do most of your reading because you are obviously a very busy bee. Have you been able to read more or less over the past year during lockdown?

Less, definitely less. I read mainly, I mean, the only time I get to read is at night in bed and I get kind of a chapter if I'm lucky and then I can't keep my eyes open. So reading is a luxury and it's something that I would always like to do more of and can't basically and I have a huge pile of books that I'm inching my way through so yeah it's just taking ages and it's so frustrating gosh that's interesting because a lot of people I've spoken to have been like oh yeah I've had way more time but you'll just kind of go on the other way yeah so I mean there's been kids at home which kids kids are not great for reading and I have a lot of other jobs

that I do that kind of occupy any free time I have. So, yeah, like just the idea of me sitting, like, on a Sunday afternoon in an armchair and reading a book is really, at the moment, luxurious. In my holidays, when I'm not working, you know, Christmas holidays, that kind of thing, I did manage to read more, and that was really lovely. So I would like to talk about your first bookshelfy, which is Judy Blume. Are you there, God? It's me.

Margaret. Could you please tell me when you first read this book? Well, I'd love to, but I don't know exactly because my memory is decimated, but I presume I checked with my friends, it was around the same time as the protagonist in the book. So kind of 12, 13, that time. It was early secondary school and it was, again, I think the reason why I chose it, I, I chose it. I, I chose it because I remembered it. I remembered the name of it and so it must have had an impact of me. Then I bought it and I read it again and I remembered so much more about it when I bought it. And yeah, it kind of talks about a girl growing up and, you know, getting her first period and like really wanting her body to grow and grappling with religion and the idea of religion and who she should believe in and why. and it's just a kind of coming of age, I guess, story that really reflects quite powerfully

a lot of what I was going through at the time. So what do you remember about puberty and growing up and how much did you feel that, I mean, I guess when reading you related to Margaret's own experiences? So like her, I think she's 12 or 13 in the book. for me it happened later than that. I think I got my period when I was 14 and I remember like Margaret in the book just feeling like it was this interminable weight

and you know I remember very vividly going into assembly in the morning and kind of nudging my friends and telling them that I got it and then our school was right beside my secondary school I used to have to climb over the back wall to get into the secondary school I remember coming home from school

and my man was out putting out the washing on the washing line and I remember telling her that I got it and it feeling like this big deal. And I remember it being really scary and frightening the kind of physicality of it, you know, what it looked like and what it felt like and I guess what it's signified as well. I remember my one breast growing quicker than the other one

and feeling like my life was pretty much over and standing in the mirror, like with my hands up in the air, being like, oh God, it's, you know, what am I going to do? I'm not understanding that that was a very normal thing. You know, it's such a mad time, isn't it? It's so sensory. Your body is changing. Everything is changing.

Your hormones are going, world. And I did write a diary at the time, but I don't know where that is now, which is a shame. But yeah, it just reflected a lot of kind of the physical stuff I was going through. And also, like, I read all of the Judy Blume books, the Dini ones and all of the others. but this one specifically is pertinent to my experiences because I also did a lot of grappling with God around that age. I was brought up in a church of Ireland kind of community. I went to church every Sunday because we had to.

We had no choice. I went to Sunday school as well. My father was religious. My mom, not so much. She came from a very, very strict presbyterian background in Northern Ireland. so I think she was kind of put off a little bit by religion because of that. So she went to church but she didn't really play along and she just kind of quietly acquiesced but just didn't really practice,

if you know what I mean? And around that time there was, it was kind of in our school, there was like a group of kids that were really into Christianity and there was a family and a house that ran Christian camps, down in Wicklow, which is the county underneath Dublin, where I grew up. And I started going there with other people, friends of mine. And it became like something that I was really, really into Born again Christianity. We sang a lot of, you know, Christian music. We did a lot of praying.

And it was really fun as well. You know, we used to sit and do campfires and do loads of sports and all the kind of young teenage things or like property fancying boys and all of that went on there. but it was just through the lens of this kind of Christianity, this born-again Christianity. My first festival that I went to was a festival called Greenbelt Festival in England, which was a Christian festival. No way I would have been allowed to go to that if it was not for the Christian aspect of that. So, yeah, my early teens were kind of quite immersed in God

and talking to God and trying to discover God and what it was all about. my elder brothers and sisters I had two older brothers and a sister were quite eye-wily about it I remember them taking the mick out of me like around the table and my mom like hushing them but yeah it was a big phase

that I went through and then I think there was an instance at one of the camps where there was someone I remember a woman talking about speaking in tongues and something about I can't remember exactly but there was something a few extreme talks from people that really kind of put me off it a little bit and made me feel

like this was not maybe where I wanted to go and I just kind of slowly moved out of it. But yeah, so are you there? God, it's me, Margaret, really stuck with me as a name and, you know, thematically really match my experiences in early teens. So your second bookshelfy is Peg Sayers by Peg Sayers. Now, can you tell me who? who Peg Sayers is and why you own a copy of this book. It's, I don't know why I chose this. I think, to me, this book is, it's so emblematic of where I come from.

And when your Irish diaspora, which so many young people do, like it's a kind of very common trend to grow up in Ireland and leave Ireland at a certain age, your kind of, your idea of your Irishness is magnified somewhat. and it becomes more and more important to be Irish when you're not there. You know what I mean? You cling on to that identity and how it shapes you and how it forms you.

And this book, Pegg, is basically me doing that. So Peg Sayers is an Irish icon. She was a Shanaki, which is the Gaelic word for storyteller. And she was not remarkable at all as a woman, but what was remarkable is that she told, the story of her life to her son who then dictated it in in in in gaelic and it became a huge book on the irish language curriculum so ireland for those who don't know the republic of ireland has a native language which is which is which is what we call it irish or gaelic and it is compulsory in ireland to learn that up to a level um grade and um peg the book peg is on

curriculum. I was one of the last generations to have it forced upon me on the Irish language curriculum. And it's really interesting because a lot of people just associate this book with like, oh God, like the pain of having to learn Irish in school. And Peg's life was not a fun life, shall we say. You know, she went through a lot of hardship, a total poverty, forced marriage. You know, for some of the first pages, she talks about the two brothers that lived, you know, in her family her mother had nine or ten children that died you know like just incomprehensible like sadness and poverty and hardship um and you know she talks that the book is all about that basically and it you know symbolizes a lot about Ireland at the time um but mainly

I think for a lot of Irish people to them this just brings back their Irish lessons and the struggle of learning Irish. But for me personally, it's, it means a lot because it reminds me that I, you know, at the age of kind of 17, I was pretty much fluent in the Irish language. And, you know, we were kind of really advanced in terms of writing it and speaking it. And it also reminds me of going on to what we called Irish College. So the Dubliners, I grew up in Dublin, would go to what we call the Grailtock, which is the area of Ireland. that is Irish speaking, so it's still native Irish speaking people there. And we would stay with families and we would go to a kind of school every day and speak Irish and do everything in Irish and stay with these Irish families.

Kind of like going on like a foreign language exchange, but you're going in your own country in order to learn Irish. And my time at Irish College at Gailtop was so kind of transformative. of I remember having my first proper kiss there. I remember singing Eric Clapton, Are You Wonderful Tonight in Irish to everyone, making friends for life. So yeah, I've just kind of look back on Irishness and my education in Irish really fondly now.

And also with a sadness, because what happens and what happened to me, and I think I don't want to speak for everyone else, but I think it is a common pattern, is that upon leaving secondary, school and leaving that education in Irish, your speaking just drops off because the majority of Ireland does not speak Irish and, you know, street signs are still in Irish and, you know, it's definitely kind of laced through the English that Irish speak, but mainly it just dropped off in terms of

just speaking it every day. So I've forgotten it all and I'm quite sad about that. And I think I keep peg because it's written in the Irish language and I kind of like just reading it and looking at it and also my copy of it is being passed down from all my brothers and sisters and it is totally covered in scribbles and peg's photo on the front she has a beard someone's given her a beard and a moustache and giving her two dumbbells to hold oh peg is if her life wasn't hard enough i know hey um i've got my brother's writing in it and i don't know it's it's just nice it feels kind of like an antique the whole book so yeah gosh that was absolutely fascinating. I mean, it's just interesting how, I don't know, little you can know that that sort of happens in other cultures and countries because I'm just like this, I mean, the whole idea of basically having a language exchange in Ireland is fascinating to me and just something I've kind of had no concept of. That's really, really interesting. I'm really interested in how the Irish language and, you know, learning the Irish language essentially has shaped your writing and how you, I don't know, if you do weave that into, you. I don't know, if you do weave that into,

you're writing, because I'm reading currently Mother, Mother, which is a brilliant book so far. Congratulations. Thank you, yummy. Thank you so much. No, really. Honestly, well done. I was actually just saying to one of the producers before, like, oh my gosh, like, obviously we just assume that you'd write nonfiction.

And it's just a kind of brand new string to your bow that obviously I'm sure you were very much aware that, you know, you were brilliant at. But it's just a very nice sort of surprise to see you doing fiction and just how brilliant it. It's so well done. Looking forward to finishing it amongst my other 11 books. I'm currently juggling. But yeah, I'm interested in how you feel personally that it has shaped your writing. Definitely.

Like there's there's a way of speaking. Like the way that Irish speak English is laced with the kind of structure of the Irish language. And I've been trying to think of examples for you and I haven't really found it. But there's basically there's ways of talking English as an Irish person where you're talking in the same way that a sentence is structured in the Irish language. And I didn't even realize I did it until I started writing mother-mother. And, you know, you have copy edits and, you know, people have different ways of interpreting English, I guess.

And there's like the grammatically correct Queens English. You know, that's a starting point. But for me, it's not my starting point, really. And I've learned that that is just a kind of a style of writing. writing and it's a language in itself. And you know, one of the most impactful books for me growing up was Brendan Beans, Borstall Boy and Confessions of an Irish Rebel as well. And both of them are written really phonetically. So they're written in a language that is English, but laced with the way that you speak Irish. And I found that really kind of fresh and exciting to read.

I definitely want to try and kind of write like that moving forward, just anything phonetical like that. I mean, I studied contemporary Scottish literature in university, and I loved urban Welsh for that as well. And, you know, Roddy Doyle, the Dublin writer. And even Anne Enright, you know, she writes in a way that is, you can really tell, even without talking about Ireland, you can tell that she is Irish from the English that she writes.

Does that make sense? That does that make sense. does that very much make sense. It's interesting, especially because, I mean, I'm one of those people that only speaks English, much to my parents dismay. So I'm fascinated by linguistics and languages and just how they shape how, you know,

we speak and different dialects and stuff. So that's very interesting indeed. You also move from Dublin to Belfast to uni and then to London to work in radio. I'm interested in how much your identity has been shaped by those moves and also how Irish you consider yourself from now because you know you're speaking about being a member of the irish diaspora and how common it is to you know leave as a population i would say it's quite similar in nigeria where you know a lot of people

which is at an age and and essentially want to leave or try to leave yeah do you still consider island to be home where do you sit on that yeah i do i really do and it's been interesting because the pandemic in the last year has really highlighted that to me and it's kind of it's conflicting isn't it because you know i now have my own family who see this house that we live in London as home. But I think in my heart, Ireland will always be my home. And you think of big things in the pandemic in terms of your choices and where you're going to end up and what your priorities are in terms of what you want out of life. And one of those things that really kind of kept coming up from me was all of my family are in Ireland now. I used to share being

in London with my brother, but he's back at home. So I do feel quite like separated over here from them. And I do feel drawn to Ireland as home. And I kind of wrote a piece at Christmas time about feeling homesick for Ireland. Even though I haven't lived there for 20 years, it's definitely home for me. And, you know, I'd go back there a lot. I would kind of spend the whole month of August there last year. my family come and see me a lot or did when they could.

So there's still a very kind of active, I have an active kind of relationship with the country. I work there presenting a TV show over there, a music show. So I still definitely consider it home. And it means so much to me to be Irish, as I said, like way more than it would be if I stayed there, I think, because not being there just accentuates how much, I kind of, it means to be to be from there.

And I think one of the reasons for that was, you know, talking about just learning about new cultures and stuff. When you grow up in Ireland, right, you learn everything about England. You learn everything about the empire. You learn about imperialism. You learn about slavery. Obviously, Ireland went through the famine

where, you know, a million people died, a million people left. it's been through a kind of horrible history at the hands of the British Empire and you learn all that and you learn everything about England, pop culture, everything. And when I moved to England from Belfast, I moved to do a, what was it, a kind of MA in radio, this one-year course in radio. I just could not get over how little people knew about Ireland. I just presumed that people would know the difference between,

the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland or the fact that we had our own currency and our own language and all of this stuff. And I found it quite shocking that people didn't know that. And as a result of that, even though I'd lived in New York for a summer and being in Germany and kind of being around a lot, I felt more foreign than I'd ever have before being in England because I felt really alien in that people really didn't know about my culture. And that it was, yeah, it was just quite a surprise for me, I guess. So that, again, just made me feel more, you know, attached to Ireland, I suppose. That is so, so interesting because my mum, who is, I mean, my mum was actually born in Scotland,

funnily enough, and then left age three, but, you know, she's lived in Nigeria, I think, I think she's actually lived in the UK longer than she's lived in Nigeria, but she has a Nigerian accent. Yeah. And by, she always said that when she, you know, she came to school in the UK, she said, by virtue of how little people knew about Nigeria, how everyone assumed that, you know, what they'd seen on, I don't know if it was comic relief back then in the 60s, but what they'd seen on TV essentially made her feel,

because they had essentially no reference point, it made her feel more Nigerian. And to this day, she feels so Nigerian. She still talks about us going home. And I'm like, Mum, you've lived in Croydon for about 35 years. And she's still, you know. I relate to your mom. I relate to your mom.

And I am that mom that's like, my to my son's like, remember you're Irish. Remember you're Irish. And my kid, my kid says, I'm English just to wind me up because he knows it winds me up. It just means so much to me that they understand my Irishness and they understand what an asset it is to have this kind of tied to this country, which is, you know, it's just so culturally rich. And also, you know, relating to your man, like the English curriculum, as we know, post-BLM, move and things, you know, there's a lot of work to do there in terms of teaching new generations of kids about the real history of the British Empire.

Absolutely. And how that affected, you know, all the countries that it did and the people that are here now, how they're here now, and the context of them being here now. Absolutely. Oh my God, something I only learned at a school because I was thinking, can you imagine going to school and thinking that, like, as a Nigerian child or Nigerian parents, that the empire was a good thing because they didn't teach us anything other than, oh, the Queen's Jubilee and it's great. It's insanity.

But yeah, thank you so much for your second book selfie. Star Wars Andor, streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. Gassian Ander, Empire is choking us. I need all the heroes I can get. From the creators of Rogue One. There is an organized rebel effort. Get a hunt started. Witness the beginning. This is what revolution looks like.

Of rebellion. I'm tired of losing. Wouldn't you rather give it all up to something real? Star Wars Andor. streaming September 21st, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required T's and C's Apply. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish Cream. Bayleys 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 favorite 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 by 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. Your third bookshelfy is by Carol Shields. And it's called Unless. What is the book about?

And when did you first read it? So I read it back in 2018. It was a recommendation from my mom. I think my mom actually gave it to me. My mom is an avid reader. She was an English and Latin teacher all her life. And then she kind of went from teaching that to being a kind of remedial studies teacher in a primary school. And she just recommends books to me all the time.

So this was one from her. And I'd never read Carol. Fields before. I didn't know much about her. I still haven't read anything else by her. I'm going to read the Stone Diaries, having read this one though. So yeah, it's called Unless. And it's an angry book. It's a book from the perspective of a 44-year-old woman who's a writer. And she's kind of entering into middle age. And she is starting to feel frustration and anger at the patriarchy about the kind of miniaturising of women, how she felt miniaturised as a writer.

And this all is kind of, all these kind of feelings of anger are as a result of her eldest daughter, she's three teenage daughters, her eldest daughter, Nora, dropping out of the university and basically becoming homeless by design, like wanting to,

sitting on a street corner all day in Toronto with a sign around her. neck that says goodness. There's nothing they can do. She won't speak to them. She won't accept food from them. Her friends are giving her the mom all different things that she should do, leave her alone, call the police, all of this stuff. And she feels so helpless and confused as to why her daughter is doing this. So the book is kind of this journey from the mother's perspective of figuring out, trying to find meaning in what her daughter is doing, trying to understand why. And she she starts writing these letters to kind of patriarchal institutions,

questioning the kind of unequallness of the systems that her daughter is part of. She never sends the letters, but she writes them as a kind of a therapy for herself. And yeah, it's just, it's not a long book, but like the writing itself is so eloquent. And it's just, I was really struck by how beautiful the writing was. but it's also really honest and very frank and just, I don't know, interesting. It's kind of, you're kind of following her on this journey of feeling more and more unraveled and more angry at the world. And she kind of denounces the idea of charm and politeness and sincerity and just starts to kind

of embrace fury. And it's just really interesting. Like not loads happens, but it just really stuck with me the book. And I was reading it at a time. when I had just turned 40 and I was having all these mad kind of reassessments in my head of my life and what I'd been doing and my motivations for my choices over the years and I really felt an urge to learn something new and I guess reading this book was a kind of springboard in just denouncing I suppose everything that I felt I should be doing and just being like fuck it I just want to do what I

want to do. And I started a writing course, which started me off on my journey to writing Mother Mother. And like you said, it is a bit weird that I did fiction. And I guess I wrote the book Mother Mother without consulting anyone else, without speaking to an agent or a manager or anyone about it, I just started writing. And it was a very private experience. I did it for me. And this story kind of came out with me and that was that. And then I took it to an agent. And the agent was like, why didn't you write a memoir? That's what people would expect of you. And I didn't have an answer for him.

I just knew that this was the story I wrote and I wrote it for the motivations of feeling like I needed to write. So I have a lot to thank that book for because for some reason, reading it really helped me to just do exactly what I wanted in that context. And I got the book out of it. I absolutely love the fact that your mum recommended it. And the fact that she loved it for the anger in it.

I think that's just amazing. Because you said your mum reads a lot. But yeah, did you guys ever speak about it, discuss it after you'd read it? You know what? I don't recall if we did. I probably just told her I liked it. And she's now, I think she's got the stone diaries as well. So she's going to send me that.

But we talk about reading a lot. My mom is nearly 80 now. And she is doing a thing now where she's going back and just, re-reading all of the classics. She loves the classics, so she's just going back and re-reading them over and over again, and she says she gets something new from them every time. So, yeah, she's got an expansive book collection, both me and, well, all of us, our siblings, have really benefited greatly from it. I love that. So, you know, speaking a little bit more to mother-mother and, you know, how it came about, you've mentioned that you've always written,

whether it be sort of private journals and observations. Yeah. I'm interested in, because you know, as you said, you took it to an agent and they kind of were like, wow, okay, like we expect you to do you to do a memoir. And that seems like the type of writing that you actually had been doing. So was it intimidating at all to make that jump from writing about yourself, writing about, you know, that personal type of writing to fiction,

which is obviously quite a different skill? I didn't really find it intimidating just more exciting. Like, again, maybe it's. totally foolish and some people having read reading mother mother might agree with that most certainly not i didn't i didn't go into it in a kind of academic way at all it was really way more impulsive just like i'm so impulsive as a person any of my friends will tell you that i'm just i just really driven by impulse and it was that um so i didn't study what i thought i should write or think about it in detail and i was very encouraged actually by my friend Teague, who's a DJ, recommended this book by Stephen King called On Writing, which is basically a kind of how to, how in terms of writing a novel.

It's part autobiography, part how to write a novel. And it's, I just got so much comfort and inspiration reading that book because he talked about all of his novels just starting with a scene and not having an ending in his head when he started it. And just allowing this scene to kind of grow, like a spider's web and take structure and take shape and then kind of adding to it and filling in colour and filling in detail and figuring in sense of place. And that's how it worked with mother mother and that that's how it was happening. And then I read this book and I was like, oh, thank God.

I don't have to have an ending. Like I can just keep doing what I'm doing, which is writing, this splurges of writing and then coming back to it the next day and I'm kind of heavily editing it. and at the start when I had a teacher to show it to kind of really getting her to help me with what bits she thought were working, what were. And then for the rest, just kind of going by instinct. But yeah, there was no plan. It just came. And then I had a first draft and I brought that to an agent. Someone told me about an agent that they knew and I met him and I liked him.

And he went away and then came back and said that he really liked it and his wife really liked it, which I was happy to hear. and we then went about sending it to publishers. And what was really interesting was that, again, it's all so new this world of publishing. I didn't know how it worked, but everyone was just like, what the fuck? This is not the book that Annie Mack, why?

We're not going to get this. She's written a book that's nothing to do with clubbing or raving or music or anything that anyone associates her for. this just isn't going to work. So we got so many rejections. People just couldn't really understand it. Oh my God, Yami. There was something like 12 rejections.

Jesus. One person accepted it. And that person was an amazing woman who became my editor. She just sent an email like 24 hours after receiving it saying, this book has just made me cry so much. Like, can we talk? And that was perfect because I wanted someone who was going to take the book. on for the right reasons because it moved them rather than the reason of me having an Instagram

following or you know what I mean? I'm really grateful looking back that it was them. Yeah. And so they've been amazing. And it's now, like I kind of forgot about all that for a while. And then now, obviously, now when we're trying to sell the book again, it's kind of quite interesting because people are still like, oh? So someone on Twitter.

last week was like, since when did Annie Mac turn into a librarian? Which I really enjoyed. A librarian? Yeah. Oh God, just skip over the right a bit, but librarian. Well, personally, I will say that it's surprising in the best possible way. I mean, I think it's interesting how, you know, I suppose, the incredible work that you've done in music can be, I suppose, a hindrance to doing something

new and something that you are absolutely clearly a natural at. I mean, again, I didn't necessarily expect that to have been the story. I honestly didn't think it would have been that, you know, you hadn't necessarily planned it. It just sort of came. And I think if Mother Mother is a book that just sort of fell out of you, I mean, then you're clearly a natural. But it's fascinating that I suppose who you are was in some ways. It was a hindrance. Yeah.

Most definitely a hindrance. Yeah. And it was really interesting. It was kind of like, how do I get past this public perception of me? And also, like, I guess there is a kind of a public perception of people, and I totally understand that. But I guess in my head, there was more to it. So it was kind of frustrating. It was like, why can't you see that there could be more to it? And also, why isn't it possible for someone to play music? I mean, my job is to put music together in a full way. There's not, there is a lot of parallels to that with, you know, it's kind of telling stories, but in a different way.

And it shouldn't be so strange if that if someone works in music, creating music, creating music, creating music. that they might want to write a story of words, you know. And we now move to your fourth bookshelfy, which is The Green Road by Anne Enright. What do you love about this book? Oh, my God. Everything. I love everything about this book.

I think it is so powerful. It's kind of like, I'm sure this was not Anne Enright's intention, but it feels like it's so exceptionally good. It feels like she's showing off how good she is. because it's basically a book about a family, an Irish family. I love how Irish it is and I relate to so much of it. So there's that kind of personal connection, obviously, first and foremost. But it's about an Irish family of four who've all left home and they all come back to their house for a family Christmas.

And they have this major article, Rosaline. And it's a bit from everyone's perspective. So you're put into everyone's heads and into everyone's stories. And what is so powerful about the book is each story is so extremely different. And each world that you get put in is so viscerally real and so extremely different from the next. It's kind of like reading four short books, if you know what to mean. And then what's clever is at the end, all these people are joined and brought together. And it all totally makes sense.

But each world is so different. when you're reading it's so disconnected from the next. It is quite powerful. It's kind of like, I am now going to show you how well I can write about a missionary in Africa. I'm now going to show you how well I can write about a young gay man in a kind of AIDS-infested New York City. Now I'm going to show you about a middle-aged woman in West of Ireland, who's a housewife and a mother. And it's just each one is so different and so brilliantly portrayed. and her writing is just like I don't even know where to start with Anne Enright's writing.

I'm learning, I just learn so much from it and I often find myself having to stop and just reread things over and over again. There's such deftness to it. Like there's never an extra word when there doesn't need to be. Everything is told in such a kind of condensed and unvarnished way. Some of her writing I find, especially in her other book The Gathering, is quite shocking. It's quite like, it's, you know, it really hits you in your chest. So in terms of a writer that moves me and makes me feel in a really, you know, extreme way, I'd say she's, she's one of those people that does that the most.

Her and Maggie O'Farrell, it was hard not to put a Maggie O'Farrell book in, but yeah, I just think she's the ultimate. You clearly aren't the only person because the book was shortlisted for the women's prize in 2016. So clearly, you know, you are a woman of taste. The book focuses on a mother's relationship with her kids, as does yours. And I'm interested in that as a theme because, you know, even in this short chat that we've had, motherhood does come up, but not just, you know, yourself as a mother, but your relationship with your mother and then now in this book,

I'm interested in, yeah, whether that is a theme that you're particularly drawn to. Yeah, I mean, I guess it must be. It's interesting because when you write, again, in this Stephen King's book, he talks about the different stages of a book and the different stages of each draft. And one of the final, one of the kind of, not the final, the final stages is this kind of symbolism

and really kind of coloring in any kind of symbolism and really pulling it out. But an earlier stage is kind of reading it and looking at themes. And again, when I wrote Mother Mother, there was no intention of writing about specific themes. And it wasn't until I kind of, I kind of went back and started writing it over and over again that I could see the themes coming out. And yeah, I mean, motherhood is clearly, you know, a really big deal for me.

I'm only seven years into being a mother. And it's affected me irrevocably. It's changed me in every way. And it's obviously got a huge influence on me. And also being a mother of sons, Mary and mother-mother is a mother-a-son. And I really used my own experiences there. and found them really useful in terms of writing in some of Mary's experiences and bringing up her son, TJ.

So, yeah, I mean, it's a massive theme for me. And just speaking with my own mother, again, she was the one who suggested that I go to Queen's University in Belfast and go there through clearing because she went there. And I really enjoyed being able to kind of follow in my own mother's footsteps and going to university in Belfast. and the book is set in Belfast and Belfast just is a place that's very dear to me

so there is a lot of themes of motherhood in terms of my mum showing me Belfast that being the place I set the book the book being all about mothers and missing mothers and obviously being called mother-mother I wanted to give it a name that I wouldn't forget and that I didn't think people would forget

so I wanted it to be very simple and quite impactful We are on to your fifth and final bookshelfy, which this week is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. And I would love to hear about when you read this book and what in particular stood out about it. Well, referring back to what I said at the start of the conversation, I have read it before, but I have no idea. Somewhere in the blur of my 20s, I think. But I read it again recently. I actually bought it again and then realized I had it on. my bookshelf the whole time, but I just so enjoyed reading it again and kind of had forgotten

about how brilliant it was. And, you know, obviously the book, when you know the context of it being Sylvia Platt's only book and of how she took her own life, I think just a few months after it was published, it's desperately, desperately sad. But the book itself just in terms of how she wrote, I find her writing style so light and so fresh and just entertaining. And I loved, you know, excuse me, the first person narrative and kind of getting into her head. Just how she talked about things. Obviously, she's a poet and you can really hear her poetry in the writing, but it never feels forced or overdone or over-lirical in that way.

I think I'm drawn to writing that is very frank and honest and unflowery. And I feel like she does that exceptionally well. There's no spare words. You know, there's never anything extraneous in a sentence ever. And I like that about it a lot. I want to quickly just rewind a little bit to our conversation about mother-mother and that writing process. And just the sort of idea that, you know, people were essentially. essentially surprised by your choice to move into fiction. And obviously when I first received the book,

and I saw the name Annie McManus on it, I was like, oh, okay, like I didn't necessarily immediately put the two together until I think I maybe a few pages in actually Googled the book and was like, hang on a minute. So I'm interested in that split essentially between, you know, Annie McManus as a sort of name that you use because you use that on your podcast also, but then your DJ Annie Mack. And I'm interested in whether you see those as two different creative identities and what the thought process was behind those name choices. Again, it was not like, you know, strategised in any way. It was just, I wrote this book and I thought it doesn't feel right to have Annie Mack as an author of this book because that name was given to me by an old boss of BBC as a kind of,

you know, an abbreviation of a long name, something that would be nice and snappy for the radio and that's genuinely what it was. And I never argued with it at the time. I just kind of went along with it. And I think there's an element to kind of reaching this age now where I feel a little bit like I've grown out of it. And I've also kind of grown out of that persona of being like a, no, like, mad for it, raver, basically. I still love music and dance music and I still really enjoy DJing, but I'm not as immersed in that world as I was. And I feel like I've kind of grown up a bit, I suppose. And I wanted to use my full name, because I'm, it's my real name because it felt like the real me I guess it felt truthful it felt like who I am

right now and who I've always been in a way and this book is a result of me wanting to write a book since I was a child and it feels very true to me as a person in terms of very pure and that you know there's no agenda there's no as I said strategy that there's no nothing. It just came out as a very pure and enjoyable creative process and it felt like my real name should be attached to that. That makes complete sense. I'm good. I'm glad. I also wanted to ask before we move on to the final question, if there's anything you can tell us about the next book you're writing at all, because obviously I'm super interested to know what that might be about. So the reason why I picked the bell jar by Sylvia Plath is because that book I've found really

inspiring at the moment in writing this new thing that I'm writing. I loathe Yami to even call it a book because I'm like 50,000 words in and I've stopped writing it for a bit because I'm trying to just, I'm just trying to take a break from it and then go back and read it. But it's so extremely different from Mother Mother. It's set in the first person and it's a bit of a roller coaster. It's very fast-paced and there's a lot more kind of. of it's from the perspective of a 21 year old, 22 year old woman. And it's all kind of written, rather than over decades, it's written over the space of about a year. So there's a lot of it that's different that I wanted to do differently. I found a lot of writing mother, mother, very

difficult in terms of the research aspect of just making sure that I got everything right and representative of the time. And because every chapter in Mary's past is like maybe a couple of years after the next, every song that's on the radio, every police wagon, every uniform, everything that she sees here has to be right to the time. And that's a lot of work. So I wanted to focus more on just like one year and really zone in on that time and kind of get really immersed in it and see how it feels. But it's a lot more, there's a lot of bad sex in it, a lot of drugs in it, a lot of rock and

role. It's a lot more, yeah, kind of young and reckless in terms of what the character is going through. Wow. Thank you so much. Annie. Normally when I ask that question, people are very coy and it's like, oh, well, it's a book and it's a novel and that's it. But you've actually, I'm like, okay, I am very ready to read this. I probably told you way too much. Like, no one's actually read it. I don't even know if it's any good. It might not never be a book. So this might be the only time you've ever heard of it, but it's fun to talk about. Thank you so much. I've got one last question for you and it is definitely saving the most difficult to last, which is if you had to choose one book from your list as your favourite, what would it be and why?

I think it would be, oh, God, it would be between the Beljar and the Green Road. But I think just on a personal tip, just because I can relate to it so much and it really brings me back to home, to Ireland, I would choose. in terms of if I had to read that over and over again, it would be that one. It would be the Green Road. Thank you so much, Annie, for being a brilliant guest today. And I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the world reading Mother Mother. Thank you, Yomi. Thank you for reading it. And thank you for having me. I'm Yomi Adegu K and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Head to our website wwwwomen's www.women's prize for fiction.com.com.

where you can discover this year's shortlist of six incredible books. You definitely want to click subscribe because in our next episode, we'll be exploring five excellent books that shape the iconic fashion designer, Deanne von Furstenberg. Please rate and review this podcast. It's the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time. Now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.

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