Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S6 Ep6: Bookshelfie: Josie Long

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Comedian Josie Long joins Vick to discuss internal monologues, her big move to Scotland and how ADHD is changing the way she sees the world and herself. She may be best known for her standup comedy but she is also a podcaster, playwright, co-founder of the education charity Arts Emergency, and now an author, with her very own debut book , Because I don't know what you mean and what you don't - a brilliant, richly-drawn collection of short stories. Josie started doing stand up at the tender age of  just 14 years old and by the time she was 17 - shortly before heading to Oxford University to study English - she won the BBC New Comedy Award. After graduating, she returned to the standup circuit and was named best newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006. She’s since become the first woman to be a triple nominee for the Edinburgh comedy award. Josie’s book choices are: ** Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys ** Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit ** Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi ** New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver ** Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season six of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of Season Six? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com.com. My friend Robin was like, you know some people don't have an internal monologue. I was like, how? Who are these people?

It shocks me every time. They live in paradise. Who are they? They just live on a deserted island. Beautiful. You mean there's no voices in your head? Yes. How is there not like 20 things going on at once?

Yeah. Oh, and I am. With thanks to Bayleys, 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 Vic Hope and I'm your host for Season 6 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your

2023 reading list. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This year's 20203 shortlist is out now. Have you read any of these six brilliant books yet? Well, if not, head over to the Women's Prize website to discover them now. Joining me in the studio today is Josie Long. She may best be known for her stand-up comedy, but she's also a podcaster, playwright, co-founder of the Education Charity Arts Emergency,

and now an author with her very own debut book because I don't know what you mean and what you don't. A brilliant, richly drawn collection of short stories. Josie started doing stand-up at the tender age of just 14 years old, and by the time she was 17, shortly before heading to Oxford University to study English, she won the BBC New Comedy Award. After graduating, she returned to the stand-up circuit and was named Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006.

She's since become the first woman to be a triple nominee for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, and we are delighted to have her here with us to discuss some excellent books. Welcome to the podcast, Josie. Hi, thanks for having me. From studying English at uni to writing your shows to writing a book, what has been your relationship with literature? Oh, wow. I grew up in Alpington, which at the time I felt like there wasn't that much cultural stuff near me.

I suppose that was like a museum and I used to go to the library a lot. But when I was a teenager, there was one secondhand bookshop on the high street. And it was called PTO Books, RIP, PTO Books. And when I went in, he would always give me kind of special stuff. So give me kind of like poetry collections and like more kind of literary fiction and stuff like that. And so for me it felt like a very cool thing to go in and like get my high brow and unusual things. And as well, like especially when I was a teenager, I wanted to write short stories and I started writing short stories. But I also like loved pretending I was a real poet.

You know, so I had like a book I carried around that said very clearly, like my poems. Yeah. And like always be ostentatiously like, oh this, it's just my poems, you know. And so I think I really loved finding out about literature. I was like English with something at school. And yeah, I was very excited to do English at university because I really felt like I could find out about, you know, all these things that I was really into. I've collected a lot of books and many of them I still haven't read and I just love her. having them there. I love knowing that they're there waiting for me and also kind of feeling that I understand why I've got them and what ideas I'm interested in. And also, do you know what?

When I was younger, I really love the idea of having my own personal library. Yeah, you do. You do until you move house and then you've got to lug all those books to the next place. It was a romantic prospect and now look at us. Do you know what I'd say? At least books are easy to pack. And easy to unpack. Yes, exactly. When you get into a new house, I just moved. And the first thing that me and my partner did was unpacked the books because it was really, really pleasurable and stimulating and therapeutic. And it was methodical as well. It was so easy.

Everything else could wait. But that bit, we wanted to get it done and we absolutely loved getting it done. And every part of it, you open it. And it's like you remember all these dimensions to yourself and to what you want and what you aspire to and what you're interested in. And I feel like for me it's like this way to kind of. of externalise all the things so you don't forget them, you know, like, yes, I am really interested in that. Yes, I will go forward with that. Yes, that was really important to me.

And it's all there. It's like it anthologises your past, your present and your future. Beautiful, yes. So all the parts of yourself that you might not even have discovered yet, they're laid out. There's your history. It's your bookshelf. Yes. And do you know what as well? When I moved to house, it was my first time buying somewhere. So it was my first time being able to like do anything in the house, like put things on the walls, permanently. What a feeling. And I got friends

a couple in there both joiners and boat builders. Oh! Just so romantic, right? And then they both built me these beautiful bookshelves from a cedar tree that had fallen over in a storm.

Okay, so it was there for the taking. Yeah, very romantic, right? It wasn't even taken away from the natural world. No, if anything, it was helpful. It was helpful. That needed to happen. Well, that is exactly

what this podcast is all about. It is exploring your life through the prism of the books that have shaped you. It is your bookshelfy. So let's get into your first book that you've brought today, which is Wide Seragasy by Jean Rees. This 1966 novel by the Dominican British author

serves as a post-colonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage from the perspective of his wife, the madwoman in the attic, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway. Tell us about this book. When did you read it? Gosh, so I actually can't recall when I, first read it. I think I was in my early 20s. I'd read Sylvia Plath and that had intensely affected

me. But this was the first book where it was written by another woman and when I read it, it didn't just affect me. It's like it dragged me into the emotional world of the novel. And then when I'd finished it, I was still there. It to me felt the most powerful book I had ever read. And I was going to do Good Morning Midnight because I think it's a similar book, but this really was the first time Actually, I'm saying that as a lie. The first time was Wuthering Heights when I was a teenager. But it was like, everyone's going to say Wuthering Heights. This was more powerful than that because this Wuthering Heights,

I almost felt like I got that wild connection with somebody's intense spirit, but the narrative itself didn't quite fulfill that. Whereas this, it was like, it felt like such an emotionally powerful book. And on top of that, such an incredibly vivid book with, and yet so succinct. too. What I love about Jean Reese's writing as well is it's short. Like I have such respect for like a brief writer who can, but like

in that short period of time it's like right, you're right in it straight away and you're there. And so I just found it to be the most incredibly emotionally powerful book. Like wonderful. And yeah, it was

the first time we're afterwards I was like, oh this has really upset me and left me shaking up and taken me into this world that was like where I actually don't think I was when I picked up this book, you know, I was actually doing fine and then I read this book and I was like, wow. And I just, yeah, I love it for that reason. And I love her. I think she is the most wonderful, unusual, interesting person.

Also, it's funny because, like I say, I'm obsessed with the fact that I got diagnosed with ADHD. And I look at her and I'm like, Pierre Adi-HD-HD, she started things, she didn't finish them, she had a life or she did this, that, the other. but also I'm quite into sad writing and I try to get away from it but I just am like I love Raymond Carver short stories I loved Richard Jates those were like my favour when I was younger and Billy Childish

like all these people just fucking write sad shit and then when I saw this it was like my dream but it's it's not just sad it's darkly funny and it's defiant and powerful and I love that about her and then I read an interview with her and she said and they said, oh, you know, has your life been incredibly sad? You know, your book's incredibly sad.

And she was like, no, I just wrote all my sadness into the books. I'm fine. And I just kind of love that about her too. You said that before you read it, you were absolutely fine. And then this incredible emotional experience happened. What did this book interrogate for you? What did it make you feel? What were those emotions?

Oh, gosh. I think it's about like cruelty and abandonment and loneliness. And a lot of her stuff is about people who, even though it isn't the end of their lives, feel as if their lives are over. And that's such a powerful melodramatic feeling. And it doesn't feel like melodrama in the books. But I think I'm somebody who like I feel sometimes quite intense emotions. So like sometimes if I feel unhappy, I'll be like,

it's the end of the world. And then I'll like have a biscuit and I'm like, oh no, it was fine. It was just it was a blip. And so I feel like this is the emotional register of her writing. It's like people who really feel like all is lost and I could never possibly change it. And for some reason I really connect with that. And I'm like, but I don't feel like that's what I'm like in my day-to-day life. But I feel like when I read and when I connect with art, I'm like, that's what I love.

You mentioned your ADHD diagnosis there. Yeah. How did that change the way that you live? look at the world and also change the way that you look at yourself. It changed the way I look at books because I am to diagnose authors from the past 100%. I'm like, obviously I had yet. Obviously. Do you know it was very helpful in a way because I've always felt awkward and weird and like

I didn't quite fit in and to understand that it might be because my brain is functioning in a slightly different way at different times. It's been so useful. And even just to like, it's going to be so, sound so silly, but like to see all these memes and be like, oh my God, I feel so seen. to feel so seen is incredible. It's been very helpful for me because it's given me a new framework

to understand why certain things in my life did or didn't go a certain way, why I have these like melodramatic emotional swings. Looking back at my family, seeing it kind of through the generations, although they would absolutely not accept that themselves, but nonetheless. Yes, it's been really interesting.

But the only problem is I'm still in the, I think, I guess, honeymoon phase of diagnosis where I am really like. So I'd better tell you I have ADHD. And I feel like in five years, I wouldn't. Do you know what? By then I will have got over it a little bit more. But yeah, it's been a big deal for me, yeah.

We were talking about neurodivergence, actually, on Radio 1. A little while ago, we do a show called Lifehacks about issues affecting young people. We had a guest on who said she'd always felt like her mind was all these spinning plates. And as soon as she got her ADHD diagnosis, rather than getting angry with herself for dropping a spinning plate, she just learnt to be a bit kinder because she knew why it was happening and she didn't need to be so angry with herself for it and that sounded like quite transformative

like actually a very small thing but actually a very big thing yes definitely definitely it was the same with emotions like when I was younger and it relates to literature because literature was where I found these like extremes of emotion and longing and yearning and all these feelings that I had that I think were at least in part due to emotional aspects of neurodivergence And so it was hard to weather those storms when I was younger,

whereas now I feel a lot more like, yes, I'm feeling this, but this isn't forever, and this is part of my brain. It's not necessarily reality. Yeah, it's just giving me a handle to almost, like, give myself a level of remove from my emotions, you know, to put them into something else. Yeah, and also what's funny is,

in writing it's been very helpful because I've been writing these stories that I like first person, and they're very intense internal monologues. and that is very natural to me because I have a very what should we say like vivid mental life but then when I found out

my friend Robin was like you know some people don't have an internal monologue I was like how who are these people they live in paradise who are they just live on a deserted island beautiful you mean there's no voices in your head

how is there not like 20 things going on at once and I envy them but I'm also like at least I can use this to like like really, really channel it into understanding, kind of complicated things or I don't know. You can harness it for you. Do you think you would have done anything differently in your career

or in your life if you had known earlier? Oh God, let's not even get into it. I'm 40 years old. Yeah, I mean, like, I can look at when I was eight and I had real problems at school. I can look at when I was struggling in my A-levels. I can look at when I got to university and I felt completely abandoned in this, like, odd way.

I can look at relationships I had. Oh, my God. I could look at something every single year in my life and say, had I known, I could have. But at the same time, like, perhaps had I known, I wouldn't have made art in the same way.

And perhaps had I known, I wouldn't have, like, done the weird, impulsive shit I've done, which some of it was amazing, you know? It's brilliant. It's like fun, yeah. And I think as well, like, I just don't know, like,

my mum sort of had to frame the type of brains that she and I have in a certain way to give us, like, a way of navigating the world, because we didn't know what that was. And I think, in some ways that framework has served me very well because she was just sort of like yes yes you've got to like storm ahead

and do this like the other you know so it's complicated it's interesting and I suppose the worst part is I can't do anything about it it's so funny isn't it let's move on to your second bootshelf of the book now which is Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Saltnitz

when the worldwide movement against war in Iraq failed to persuade the Bush administration against military action many activists felt that they're actually had been futile. This book arises out of this moment arguing millions marching against war did not constitute a failure but a step towards success at a time when social and environmental pessimism can make us feel powerless. This book delivers a clear, well-argued case for hope. Can you tell us why you picked it?

Firstly, I just love her and I love what she manages to do as a writer because she can write things that are, I guess, like polemic or just a political argument, but they also just they just have so much poetry and story and personality in them as well. So they're beautiful books, the things she writes. But this book in particular, I just love it. Like for me, as somebody who kind of, I write stand-up and it's often about like being on the left and losing, because that's how it's been the last 12 years, you know? And that's quite a hard thing to be like, right, I want to write a show about how we can try and stay optimistic and not feel defeated.

and it's like, oh God, we've been defeated. Right, okay, I want to write a show. And to read this, I felt like it was really helpful in not just understanding, but also beautifully summarising what is important in terms of trying to, I guess, like, be useful to political struggle. I don't know. I feel silly saying stuff like that, but like, she says that hope isn't like bland optimism saying that everything's fine.

hope is an axe to knock down the door to allow you to take action. She sort of gives it a power for you. So with Arts Emergency, we have this phrase that's like optimism is a weapon. And what we mean by it is that basically that it's something that if you have it, it's a power that can't be taken away from you by powers that be or by money or lack of it or by even by legislation. You cannot legislate away people's ability to carry ideas and to keep that kind of power and that defiance.

And, yeah, so that book just got me through a lot. And it was really funny because I also, there's a really good Howard Zinn quote that's about like being hopeful in dark times, isn't being foolish, it's thinking about how the history of mankind is, as well as the history of cruelty. It's a history of cooperation, kindness, incredible feats of like love and stuff like that.

And so, like, it's a similar book to that, and it gives clear examples of different movements that have had these successes. And I used to do it at the end of my show as a joke. I used to read a bit. And then I'd had a bit earlier about a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird. And then at the end of the quote, I'd be like, oh, let's kill the bird. Let's get the bird.

And then at the end of my show, it was like, very serious reading this beautiful quote from Rebecca Solnit. And at the end being like, and we've got to get the bird. And so I have this lovely connection to this book in particular because I used it in my show every single day for a couple of years. but I also just yeah I really love her writing I find it inspiring I'm going to take

Hope as an axe I needed to hear that today oh my God please have a look at the book as well because it's so full of these this is what I love about it sometimes as well you don't just need the thing to be said but you need the thing to be said

so well and so succinctly you can carry it around a concise queen we love to see yes oh my gosh and its optimism is oh so this is arts magic magic we say optimism is a weapon It's a weapon.

Because it's about like creativity, not just in terms of creating a piece of art, but in terms of allowing yourself to believe that the future can be different and that you can create it, I think is really important. I really, really needed to hear that and I'm really happy to have it now in my toolkit. Just to take into the day, so thank you. Oh, God, I hope I haven't misquoted it. And you'll be like, she says hope's a trumpet. What hell?

I'm like, oh, shit. But it doesn't matter if you did because it was good anyway. It doesn't matter. If she didn't say it, just pretend I said it. and I wrote it. But I think she did. I think she did. I'll talk a little bit about your alternative reality tour.

Oh, yeah. Which is a reaction against political and social, doom and gloom. Can you just tell us a bit about that? This was quite a long time ago. About 10 years ago, I know more. 12 years ago. Me and my friend were in the process of setting up as an emergency, but there was like a big atmosphere of protest at the time.

And everyone I knew and everyone I was meeting, we were all just involved in like attending the student. student protest trying to help make UK uncut actions really special and exciting and just getting involved with that and it became something that was like very much a big part of my life but it was after a little while that I sort of felt like you know there's all that chat about activism where you've got you've got fighting against but you've also got kind of showing why you're fighting and also like not fighting like the radical part of activism which is about love and fellowship and communion and things

which are not related to commodification you know and so me and my friends and I've done it a few times and it's been some of the most interesting and unusual things I've ever done where we just would get loads of writers performers people in this van and we'd just go around the country and pitch up somewhere and I would like tweet about it so that would get me lots of very like

nice gentle cardigan wearing people and then also I've noticed you're wearing cardigan and it's a massive compliment it's very itchy though I am just going to say We were talking about this before we started recording for agey cardigan. And that's a problem for the crowd, you know? Everyone's just scratching. Just scratching themselves.

Everyone's trying to concentrate. But it was like very gentle people who have long been my crowd who I love dearly. And then also what we would do is we would just go around like flyering to anyone who was out and about. And so we would have these like really wild shows full of teenagers who just didn't give a shit. And like we would get people from the local area who would like come and perform like, Like one time we met this boy at a skate park who came and sang a cover of George Ezra's song. And it was so incredibly beautiful. It was like I like genuinely getting like tingles thinking about it because his voice was incredible.

And it was like in, I think it was in Trowbridge in a car park. So basically it was like this exercise in like we don't care if this seems silly or ridiculous. We don't care if this is a failure. We're trying to make happenings happen. And so I remember you start looking at public space in a different way. so you suddenly are like round the back of the shopping centre and you see free flights of stairs arranged in a corner and you're like that's a theatre

and we had this bed sheet It's an amphitheatre theatre Yeah exactly, it's perfect And then we had this bed sheet that we got the logo on And we were trying to string that up And the first time we did it We had this amazing tour manager Who really jokingly but very took it seriously

So he would use the lights of the van Like the banner And he'd be like five minutes This is your five minute call performers Like it was very sweet And it was one of those things I think I've done it three or four times and all the times I've done it

I've had some of the most unusual experiences of my life be it staying in a sort of semi-ruined stately home run by a very unusual activist and swimming in the river in the morning before we did this thing in a bus shelter or suddenly in Lester in an underpass performing to 200 people we had no idea how they got.

They're having one of the most beautiful shows I've ever had in my life with loads of comedians often just doing silly stuff not even really doing political stuff, but the point of it was to say, if we can make this happen, being as we are, and we would also, we got a grant at one point from Sussex University.

I don't even know if it was by fair means or foul, but we used it to like buy food, like pizzas and stuff. So every show would be like, and now free food. And then we have this massive box of books. So we're like, and free book. And we just like give stuff. And it was like, if we can create this thing

that is nothing to do with money that is like, free and unusual and also kind of there's a situationist slogan which is like we will ask for nothing we will demand nothing we shall take occupy and I like this idea that we were going into spaces that are often semi-prioritised

and being like we are occupying this space for the glory of fun and then we will leave and it was funny too because we had like brushes with the police and I just don't know now how that would work and I've been wanting to do it again under the banner this is not a protest

But with my young kids at the moment, I'm really frightened of being arrested, which is sad. But, yeah, we never got any hassle. I remember once we got in Margate, we're in this, was it Margate in somewhere? We were in this sort of old Victorian shelter. And then the police showed up. They were like, what are you doing?

And we were like, it's just a show. They were like, it's not an anti-establishment. Is it something like that? It's anti-Torian. They were like, that's fine. We were like, oh my God. Yeah, we had loads of fun experiences. I wrote a really long blog about it a while ago,

but it got taken off the internet. Not deliberately, it was like we didn't pay the domain. Yeah, fine. We were like, this is a long time ago. But yeah, it was a really interesting thing to do, and I really cherish the experiences that it gave me. Well, perhaps in future, when your kids are a little bit older and the threat of being arrested is not as terrifying.

Yeah. Well, also, bring them along. You've got kids what they're going to do. Bring them along, exactly. 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 shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes.

It's time to talk about your third book now, which is experiments in imaginative. otherwise by Lola Olufemi. In this book, Lola Oliphemi offers an experimental exploration of the possibility of living differently, grounded in black feminist thought and political organising. It shows how the imagination is central to revolutionary movements as an active and collective practice. The quote that I know is particularly important to you is after defeat, re-enchantment is necessary. and your current comedy show Reenchantment was inspired by that.

So can you tell us about why this resonated with you? Well, so I love the way you kind of introduced it because it is about imagination and like political imagination being so important. But I think sometimes when you feel particularly defeated or you feel particularly unable to feel like you can be useful, you need to hear from other people. Sometimes I feel like we're all going along to the same goal and sometimes you're going to be exhausted

and other people are not. And you need to listen to the people who are like full of ideas and thought. And I don't know, something about the fact that I'm 40 and I think she wrote this at 25 and to listen to her like energy and spirit. But it's not just that. This is such a, it's such an interesting enigma.

of a book because it's so poetic and fragmented and unusual and literary, but it's also a clear book about political writing. It has things like she, I'm going to show you this and it's quite embarrassing, but she's like, I believe in collaboration, so I've left this space for you, write something and I just wrote, thank you, Lola, I want to live now in the future and be unafraid because at the time I came to this book, I felt very, I suppose defeated. Like after the 2019 election, it felt very, very sad. very scary to look at all the things that the Conservatives had planned and are now enacting and to feel that even though we had fought very hard, it was now this state of kind of

ignominy and defeat. And so she almost starts with it. She does say, like, you're all looking around, you're saying you're defeated. Yeah, of course. You're going to get defeated over and over and over again. And it was just to hear that was exactly what I need. It was like, yeah this is part of it why did you think and sort of what I like as well is she is I think

very radical in her thought and her writing and so she's not really interested in parliamentary organising she's not really interested in talking about parliamentary politics she's interested in understanding and connecting with

radical thinkers and activists looking back at people on top of it like she's like interested in thinking about time in a really fun sci-fi. Sci-fi's probably not the wrong word. She wants to go back in time and inhabit those places in this book.

So it's just one of the most interesting, bold, enigmatic, beautiful books I've ever read in my life. And you can look through it like, I've just underlined so much of it. And I felt that it was exactly the book I needed at the time. She says to try is to take the prospect of the future, now, then, to come so seriously that we dedicate our lives to living in and with it. I want things bigger than they seem. I wish to be engulfed by the horizon. You want that too. You can want to be frenzied enough by your own yearning, frenzied enough to risk everything.

I belong to a legacy of those who saw that this world had an offer and refused it. I just like, honestly, I could read you the whole book. It's so galvanizing, isn't it? What about this? No poetry and no hope. hope as an empty gesture of optimism, hope as a riot or uprising or revolution, or many other names,

simply steal everything, burn everything. And I'm like, fucking yes. Well, we just had hope as an axe two minutes ago and now. I mean, listen, you need to, you have, I think, you know, the work of literature and the work of all these things is like this framework to support you to know you're not alone. And when you see these other people

and you feel you can learn from them, but not just that you feel like you can be in communion with them And yeah, I just loved it. And, like, I am grateful for it. And I'm just grateful as a 40-year-old for hers as a 25-year-old as well. Like, I hope that doesn't sound too embarrassing. But I think it's a fantastic book. And I have bought it for loads of my friends.

Because it's part fiction and part poetry and then part, part, just very clear, polemic. And also, do you know what? Sometimes I think I love to read books by people who's politics perhaps I aspire to be more radical. So when I read this, I'm like, yeah, this is very important to remember constantly, you know. Well, you said politics is not always parliamentary and that's not what she's dealing with here. Politics imbues every single part of our lives.

Yes. So for you, how have you taken your defeats and grown from them? I suppose the important thing is you might feel very sad or despairing. But firstly, it's not about you personally. It's about the collective. And what really I like about her book as well is she's really kind of talking about how the individual artist is like too imbued with like capital and stuff like that. And actually it's like the things we can make collectively, collective joy, radical joy, things like that, you know. So yeah, I guess the first thing you do is you have to get over yourself.

And then luckily for me, what's been really, really life-changing moving to Glasgow is for the first time of my life, I feel I can stay somewhere. and I feel like I've got a bit in my stand-up about how all my friends up there are like more left-wing than me and I'm the boozy one and I absolutely love it but basically I feel like it's such a long process of learning for me how to try to be useful in my community try to start volunteering, start understanding

like it's going to sound really silly and I hope my friends listen don't mind me saying this but we've got a sort of little mutual aid WhatsApp group between about 15 families who are all friends, but some of them we don't really know. And what we do is we, can anyone watch this baby for an hour? Can anyone help me with this? And we all just mutually aid each other.

And it's such a small thing, but it feels like a way to practice in a little microcosm, how we also wish to be the whole rest of the time, you know, and a way to live it in a small way so that we all do get to kind of feel in community with each other, like quite deeply. And it's just really fucking nice. And like, I suppose for me as well, it was very cathartic to be like, oh, I don't actually have to think about the Labour Party ever again in my life. Goodbye. That was quite nice.

Because I think I sort of think maybe the history of the Labour Party is where radical politics often get sucked in and murdered. So, no, I can't say that. I think often people's hopes and dreams can be trampled by the Labour Party. And so for me to sort of say, oh, maybe I can just see if I can like spend the rest of my life. trying to volunteer at community groups, spend the rest of my life trying to do more useful things. That doesn't mean that I don't want to try and influence politics in a wider way, but I'm a comedian. I've been doing shows on stage about the Tories or whatever for 12 years,

and unfortunately those did not sway the elections. I will continue to do that, but that's only one part of what it can mean to have a political life. And so when I read books like Lola's book, I feel really like, I want to foster a radical spirit and not pretend that that is. in any way unrealistic or pretend that that is any way childish or anything like that because those are the ways that people react to that often because I actually think it's the most like real and powerful thing and you look around the world and you see it everywhere you know and I don't know it's funny because like you're probably always going to feel

at odds with I feel cheesy but with capitalism I suppose and so you have to like keep reminding yourself that actually there is an alternative and you you you can work towards it. But you have to try and put yourself in it as well. I don't know what I'm saying. I feel like I'm... No, you know, I mean, this book is at its heart, intersectionally feminist.

Definitely. And something I always say is that as a black woman, joy is radical. Yeah. Compassion, which you've just spoken about, compassion on the smallest, on the most local level, is radical. That is living a radical life. No, no, but the fact that she's a young black woman is really important.

Like, for me, as an older white woman, to like sit and read her work and like I don't know like it is really important on an intersectional level you know let's move on to your fourth book shabby book now which is devotions new and selected poems on Mary Oliver I see it sitting there on the little table next that shocked me for a second because so I feel like you know it's I think it's like in the office where he says what's your favourite album and he's like I think it'd be the best of you know and I've really you can choose you can choose a compilation it's absolutely fine Yeah, this is a bit of a curve boy, I suppose,

because I really like the nature writing of Raymond Carver, who, you know, sad short stories, and then in his 40s, he's like, guys, did you know nature exists? It's great. And I feel like that's a vibe I can really understand. I only discovered nature a few years ago, but oh my gosh, it's changed everything. But also, I just didn't know. I grew up in the suburbs. I grew up in the countryside.

I wasn't thinking and I wasn't appreciating. I mean, I was enjoying. But I wasn't taking in how transformative. and how transcendental, like the experience of nature was. I was just taking it for granted. And it wasn't until I needed it because we were being kept inside, that all of a sudden it hit me. Oh, you need that.

You need it back. Yes, and we are beings that, like, desperately need it. That's something she says at the end of experiments in imagining otherwise, I think. Yeah, we, like, desperately need to connect with nature. And I suppose re-enchantment, part of that as a word in a political sense is about reconnecting with the world, the mystery of the world, also with nature and each other. So it was like kind of a statement of intent as well

because it's so important. And so... Magical. Yeah, with Mary Oliver, she's somebody that I make a show called Shortcuts and we've been making it for 10 years and my producer, Ellie, is wonderful and is so full of new inspirations all the time.

And she's actually who got me into the writing of Mary Oliver. She's a nature poet. She's kind of like a mystic poet, really. She likes to think about life and death and nature. And it's very much... about a person listening and in community with nature it's not somebody kind of telling you how they know all about it you know I think it's like got a real mysticism to it like just the first thing I open up is her saying I don't know like so much of it is her focusing around like I don't know I don't understand I listen to this I like call to it and about kind of how you should live your life but also and similarly to White Soakas I see she has this way of writing about nature and landscape and colour that is very beautiful and nourishing

and like, thirst but satisfying, you know? And I just really love her. I think she's really cool. It's just these incredibly beautifully wrought observations of nature. You start to see the world in a different way from reading her poetry, which is the most gorgeous experience.

And I know that one of the themes in reenchantment, your last Edinburgh show was to reconnect with nature and beauty. How have you been doing that? Well, you know, it's funny, I can't get over that I now live. When I was younger, and one of the reasons I moved to Glasgow,

was every time I would ever get up to Glasgow, I'd arrive and I'd be happy. And I'd be like, oh, it's weird, I'm so happy here. And then there's a place called Gourke that's got an outdoor swimming pool that obviously is my favourite thing in the world. And you go along the side of the... the Clyde as it comes right out on a train for like 40 minutes and when you get there you can get

little ferries out to different peninsulas and islands and the view is so stunning it is like these just hills in the distance over this beautiful bay and the fact that that is 45 minutes away from where I live I can't believe it and so I suppose it's like I don't necessarily know how well I've yet done it. Like I've been swimming in like locks and I love that. I've been to like little trips to islands and stuff with my daughter. But I feel like it's very much like the direction I want to go. Like quite often when I write a stand-up show,

I almost write it aspirationally for myself. I'm like, this is where I want to be. And if I'm doing this over and over again, this is what I want my focus to be. So yeah, it's like I would like to do that more. I've been in sort of what I call pure maternity recently, which is like just everything's about the baby. and now slow and steady

where I live you can get a local bus out to the Campsie Fells which is like a beautiful little walk with waterfalls you can get buses to the Cathkin Brays which are like some hills nearby there's so much so close to me like hills and mum rose and I just see it and I'm like this is going to be my life

it's going to be my future and I wanted it for my kids too my big girl I've got a joke about it in my show but basically I put her into this outdoor nursery and I was like she's going to be this little woodland child. She loves it in the summer, but unfortunately in Scotland basically for nine months

it is not the summer and so during the winter she just comes back like like shell shocked you know and just like and I do feel awful like you know she'll take off her little welly

and she'll just have this ring of mud that like I'm like oh god like genuinely have you got like trench foot on your foot like it's an interesting thing but at the same time she can climb a tree It's so good for her yeah it's so good for her

in the overall in the long run Yes and also do you know what like in my life similarly like you I discovered nature later on I didn't really have an upbringing that had a lot of experiences in nature really and when I realised how like wonderful it is to kind of like

being cold water or being the middle of a forest and things like that it was like so transformative for me and I feel like it's so good for the brain in terms of calm and my daughter I think has a similar brain to me and I know that when she's in the woods, it gives her a real sense of, like, calm and happiness and playing.

And, like, she loves playing with sticks and stuff. It feels very pastoral and, like, romantic, you know. But then she'll be like, um, Murray pushed me over. And then I'm like, oh, God, I'm sorry. Is that what prompted the move from London to Glasgow? Was it for the kids? Part of it, yeah. Do you know what?

It was a lot of things. It was, I have been working with my friend Doug, about 12 years now making films together and he lives there and we wanted to work together more. I have lots of friends up there and also do you know what having friends who also have young families who I know we share a kind of

sensibility and share values and the idea that we could like live our lives together was really thrilling. I love the architecture and was just like an embarrassing little suck up for Glasgow like I'm so embarrassing but like I think the culture is great I think it's a great city. Yes and

it's a great thing people are so warm and friendly and I feel like it has a tradition of radical politics that I largely really admire it has a modern radical politics that I want to learn from and like just just be around and like yeah I just love it so much I love the literature I love walking around just like oh look at the sandstone and I even love the rain I'm like this is great there's so many kinds it's wonderful so yeah but it was partly I wanted I mean I couldn't afford to stay in London and have what I felt was like a quality of life. And I just was becoming so incredibly embittered after 20 years of renting.

Like, I think it was important for me to leave before I started committing anti-landlord crimes. You know, I just didn't, I didn't want to be criminalized myself through anger. And so I think, yeah, it was important in lots of ways. When you get to a place and you even love the rain and you find yourself walking around saying, I love the sandstone, you know you've made the right choice. Thank you. Do you know what? I very much appreciate that.

Very much. Right, Josie, it's time to talk about your fifth book that you've brought today. There it is, which is Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Zizi Packer. This is the acclaimed 2003 debut from American writer Zizi Packer about the lives of young black men and women in small town America. A collection of eight blistering short stories. This book explores what it means to be human and deals with race, gender, identity and the need for belonging. Why have you brought it with you today?

say do you know the thing I would add as well that it deals with that is I think a way that I initially really connected with it it's about class as well it's about people who have been the prize pony of their school or of their high school or whatever like in particular there's one about someone going to Yale and about like playing all the games right to try so hard to get into these rarefied establishments. And then when you get there, realizing how marginalised you will remain in them. And for me,

so it's about how class intersects with race, definitely and intersects with gender and all kinds of other things. But that was the level that I felt like, oh, I really do understand certain parts of this. And so then to read the writing about race two was so helpful because it felt like another layer of learning and understanding. We can all understand.

We should all understand. stand. Yeah, totally. But on top of that, like, it was just so exciting to read something. And I know now that obviously this is 20 years old, but it's still very recent, you know, to read something modern that gave me the same sense of excitement and exhilaration as it did when I read people like Raymond Carver or Richard Jates. I feel like the writing is so wonderful and the stories are so good.

A very mysterious writer is however describes Zizi Paca because I read this and I was like, more please. and now I can't find more and I'm like, why not more? This is the debut. Yeah, but I know that she has a very like important career and she does lots of teaching and writing. But this book itself like, yeah, I really felt like there were parts of it that I really, really connected to about not fitting in perhaps being somewhat alone,

not necessarily having certain like support networks around you about definitely as somebody coming from, not money going to these moneyed environments but also I loved sort of reading these stories about you know places and communities that I don't know about I'm not a part of I interrupted myself from something else I was trying to say and I'm so annoyed at myself oh yeah the complexity she manages to get into them so even like these short stories yeah but subtlety yeah yeah like the satiety of the writing like drinking coffee elsewhere I was rereading it the other day and I was just crying

because it's so beautiful and such, ah, just such masterful writing where it's like, drinking coffee elsewhere, the story is about this incredibly bright young woman who has had a very difficult, abusive upbringing. She's at this, like, elite university and she has never felt worse or more alone. And it's about her defensiveness and her. inability to let her guard down and about a sort of near brush with friendship oh my god i'm going to cry because it's so beautifully done where you read it and you are so aware that what you are reading is the opposite of what this character thinks and feels and how she manages to build that so you're so deeply in that character's internal world and like it's incredible that as you read it

you're like how are you doing this incredibly nuanced thing where i know that this person is thinking this, feeling this other different thing, is trying to project this. The way that she builds well is just astonishing. And then I wrote a story about teen debaters who would like, again, the real prize pony of their like state school. And she has won about some, a young person doing debating. And what I do often with books is I,

if something really has really jumped out at me, I meant something to me, I fold the page down. Don't worry, there is no judgment in the space about doing that. I do exactly the same. But then do you know what my plan always is to go back through the book and underline so I can undo the thing? And then I didn't. So then I'm like, like, this is really important. And then I'm like, wait, I'll have to reread the whole page and tell you why.

And then I have to think about it. And it's just frustrating. But yeah, there's so much. And I thought about it before I did this. This is a page about from that particular book where she talks about this person pretending and how they like making up stories about themselves and dishing them out to different people. But if they'd keep doing that, they won't be able to be honest. Yeah, you can't keep up with it.

Yeah. And then she says, like, Dr. Ray Ben would never realize that pretending was what had got me this far. Like, yeah. It's crazy. I do the same thing as you where I fold down the pages because the author has articulated something that I couldn't put into words. But then when you go back and read it and you yourself know the nuance and you know the layers because you've been there, it means how much. Very similarly, I went to Cambridge. And upon arrival, you know what, it wasn't the lack of black faces that.

that shocked me because I was used to that. I'd grown up in Newcastle. It was the lack of anyone from the north. Oh, and the way the north was treated like a novelty. It was a novelty. People asking if you've got electricity. And did so many of the same things that you described that happened in this book that are so beautifully articulated in this book where what you've just said,

it just resonates so much. Pretending, everything has been pretending. You feel like everything's pretending up until that point because it had to be and your defensiveness is through the roof, I guess. Oh my God, you should please read this book. Well, I'm familiar with these stories because they just, she hits the nail on the head. And I sometimes think that we don't realize

how many people she might be hitting the nail on the head for because in that moment you felt so alone. And the truth is, you weren't. But also, do you know what? This to me is like, it is what intersectional feminism means because it's like we can understand each other's experiences better because of the fact that class intersects with this. and we can like really understand how the world works

and how we can like be, I don't know, like how we can try and change it or something. And it's so funny because I'm not saying, I know it's not the same experience, but I think from a class perspective where you're like, no one else here didn't have money. All these people have so much money. And it's like it represents the same thing of,

it doesn't matter how much I try and like strive for this. I will never have that. secret extra thing, you know. But you will because you do because there are other things. Yeah, and the other things are more important. That you have. Oh my good. Josie, your own debut fiction book is a collection of short stories as well.

Did Zizi Packer influence you at all? Have you always loved short stories? Do you feel like there's a specific type of sustenance that they give you that maybe longer form fiction can't? Definitely. Yeah. And definitely. Although it's interesting because I read this book when I was halfway through

my book and so now I'm like I hope I haven't ripped her off it was such a meaningful experience but like yeah definitely being able to sort of read these stories about people fighting against inequality I suppose or just fighting for a space

in the world or just like how complicated things can be and how difficult that can be I really loved yeah I love short stories so much I love Raymond Carver obviously I just read Kelly Lynx book quite recently get in trouble

which is so exciting because it's short stories about relationships and life but also quite like magic realism unusual just these like things added in George Saunders I really love I love when people can really construct a world and you're in it and then you're out of it and you're like oh my God how is this so small and it's been so big

you know as we said before we love a concise queen I am actually going to ask you probably the hardest question's over if you did have to choose just one of these books. I know they've affected you all in very different ways. They give you very different things. Which one would it be? Which was your favourite? Oh, God. This is going to seem like a curveball because I feel like it's the one I was leased like this, but I would probably keep the Mary Oliver because, and here's why. Like, I've taken this far too literally. But I've just

been rereading these stories, so they're fresh in my mind. I've been carrying around Lola's book for about three years. I feel like very fresh in the mind. Rebecca Solnit, that's like, that's not going anywhere. Whereas this is this. I feel would give me a little bit of beauty and reflection going forwards. You know, I could dip in and out and have a cry about William Blake or whatever, you know, then you can then close it again. So I feel like just in terms of like peace and sustenance, I feel like that might be the best one. I don't know.

It's funny, isn't it? It's hard. And also, you don't have to. Yeah, it's not true, is it? You don't. I like that you said, well, that's not going anywhere. It's funny to hold on to you right now. I'm not taking any of these books away from you.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. And Josie, I just want to say a massive thank you for everything that you've given us today because it has been such a stimulating chat. Oh, thank you. Honestly. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been wonderful to talk to you as well. And I really appreciate you, like, being so kind and understanding about my choices.

I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline. media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.