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PODCAST

Fictionable

Interviews, book chat and everything about the short stories and graphic fiction from all around the world appearing in Fictionable. "Storytellers, readers and creatives alike will love" – The Independent Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All Episodes

21:52

Sheyla Smanioto: 'It's a haunted story, where you...

Fictionable ·

2025/09/01

This summer series of podcasts has taken us from the snow and ice of AL Kennedy's Expedition Skills to the blunt heat of Ali McClary's Proper Magic, and from the staccato fragments of Pete Segall's Bolex Man to the unstoppable momentum of Dafydd McKimm's The Nosebleed.We bring this season to a close with Sheyla Smanioto and the haunting threat of her short story Intruder, translated by Laura Garmeson and Sophie Lewis.Speaking with the help of the interpreter Jaciara Topley Lira, Smanioto tells us

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18:27

Dafydd McKimm: 'I write this kind of story in a bit...

Fictionable ·

2025/08/24

This summer, we've heard from AL Kennedy, Pete Segall and Ali McClary. We'll be bringing this series to a close with Sheyla Smanioto, but this time Dafydd McKimm steps into the consulting room with his short story The Nosebleed.McKimm tells us how The Nosebleed was a story that came to him with the ending already in place, citing the translator Michael Hofmann and his notion of Kafka time, where it's "already too late".With this type of story, the author says, "You just set the ball rolling and the

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15:15

Ali McClary: 'This story started as a conversation...

Fictionable ·

2025/08/08

We've already heard from AL Kennedy and Pete Segall in this summer series of podcasts, and we’ll be hearing from Sheyla Smanioto and Dafydd McKimm over the next few weeks. But this time we're summoning up Ali McClary and her short story Proper Magic.McClary confesses that the intense friendship between Min and Hazel is drawn from her own experience."I hope that all girls, all women have these kinds of friendships," she says, "that feel a little bit magic, a little bit disgusting."They may not always

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17:07

Pete Segall: 'I don’t feel like it’s my job as a...

Fictionable ·

2025/07/31

We began this Summer series of podcasts with AL Kennedy arguing that the empathy which powers fiction makes writing it a political act. We'll be talking fiction – or maybe politics – with Sheyla Smanioto, Ali McClary and Dafydd McKimm over the next few weeks. But this time we're zooming in on Pete Segall and his story Bolex Man.Segall tells us that this series of snapshots emerged after he took up analogue photography. He was wandering around the neighbourhood taking pictures of "the same buildings,

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28:39

AL Kennedy: 'It's all political, if you're writing...

Fictionable ·

2025/07/25

It's raining in London, but it's time for another issue – and another series of Fictionable podcasts. Over the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Sheyla Smanioto, Pete Segall, Ali McClary and Dafydd McKimm. But we begin Summer 2025 with AL Kennedy, and her icy short story Expedition Skills.Kennedy says that the story emerged out of the "very strange day" earlier this year which saw the commemoration of Martin Luther King and the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Upstate New York was covered in

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30:06

Susanna Clarke: 'You’ve got to play with things being...

Fictionable ·

2025/05/23

This spring we've heard from Fríða Ísberg, Bronia Flett, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods already. But we bring this series to a close with Susanna Clarke and her short story The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City.Clarke tells us that it's a story she's been thinking about for some time."I have never really stopped thinking about Strange and Norrell," she says. "It's a world that keeps summoning me back."In the novel, The Raven King was very young when he first arrived in England, Clarke

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19:36

Jeremy Wikeley: 'I would always defend the notion of...

Fictionable ·

2025/05/15

We've already welcomed Fríða Ísberg, Bronia Flett and PR Woods in this Spring series, and Susanna Clarke will be joining us next time. But now we're hearing from Jeremy Wikeley with his short story Kent's Oak.According to Wikeley, his main character's disconnected connection with his neighbours on the estate is just how it felt when he was growing up in the suburbs of a small town."You were very familiar with a lot of places and a lot of things," he says, "and you were at home. But you didn't have

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19:58

PR Woods: 'I would never write anything against Wolf...

Fictionable ·

2025/05/08

We've already heard from Fríða Ísberg and Bronia Flett in this Spring series, and we'll be welcoming Susanna Clarke and Jeremy Wikeley on to the Fictionable podcast over the next few weeks. But this time we're going back in time with PR Woods and her short story Our Lady of Sorrows.Woods tells us how Sister Avis came to her after someone wrote to the Guardian about Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall arguing "It's a great story, but it didn't happen like that."In the 16th century, the dissolution of the

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22:51

Bronia Flett: 'This is obviously all fiction'

Fictionable ·

2025/05/01

Fríða Ísberg got this Spring series of podcasts started, with a dialogue on monologues and a reading from her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer. We'll be welcoming Susanna Clarke, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods on to the podcast over the next few weeks, but right here and right now we're talking transformation with Bronia Flett.Flett tells us how her short story Leopard, Spots fell into her lap, and explains why she wanted to put female friendship under the lens."We do form these close

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25:33

Fríða Ísberg: 'We are always just looking for simple...

Fictionable ·

2025/04/24

Everything is changing, but one thing you can rely on is a new set of stories and a new series of podcasts from Fictionable. Spring 2025 brings us stories from Susanna Clarke, Bronia Flett, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods – we'll be hearing from them all over the next few weeks. But we begin with Fríða Ísberg and her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer.Like much of her work, Ísberg explains, Fingers began with the cadence of a character's thought."You don't need to know what the mother's

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27:18

Joanna Kavenna: 'We all make fictions about the future'

Fictionable ·

2025/02/23

After hearing from Helga Schubert, Ben Sorgiovanni, Julian George and Rachida Lamrabet, we bring this Winter series of podcasts to a close with Joanna Kavenna and her short story Notes on the Future.Kavenna tells us how this story was born from an obsession with patterns and a robust detachment from her characters."I like to have quite questing narrators," she says, "who are desperately trying to find meaning in a world that keeps depriving them of meaning. Which is probably quite

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18:24

Rachida Lamrabet: 'Fiction gives me the opportunity...

Fictionable ·

2025/02/15

In this Winter season we've already heard from Helga Schubert, Ben Sorgiovanni and Julian George. Joanna Kavenna will be rounding off the series next time, but right here and now we welcome Rachida Lamrabet and her short story Two Girls on Bicycles, translated by Johanna McCalmont.Lamrabet recalls how this story was set in motion by a chance encounter with an old friend, which brought back memories of pedal-powered escapades while she was a teenager."Everyone had a bike," she remembers. "If you

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16:56

Julian George: 'Any word out of place, the whole...

Fictionable ·

2025/01/30

So far we've heard from Helga Schubert and Ben Sorgiovanni in this Winter season. We'll be welcoming Joanna Kavenna and Rachida Lamrabet over the next couple of weeks, but for this feature we present Julian George and The Movie Lovers.George tells us how this short story emerged from the classic 1950s sitcom, The Honeymooners."I just thought of the character played by Audrey Meadows, Alice," he says. "Sometimes that character wanted something else, or there were moments of unexpected poignancy."The

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14:59

Ben Sorgiovanni: 'What fiction does really well is...

Fictionable ·

2025/01/25

This Winter series of podcasts got underway with Helga Schubert, who told us how she put together her short story On Getting Up from pieces of her past. This season we'll be hearing from Joanna Kavenna, Rachida Lamrabet and Julian George, but this time we meet Ben Sorgiovanni and his story No One Here Knows You.He tells us how this story grew out of a philosophical thought experiment about how you would know there was a tiger in a forest if you'd never seen it, and why his characters were looking

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24:34

Helga Schubert: 'There's got to be distance between...

Fictionable ·

2025/01/17

As the world lurches into 2025 we launch into another series of Fictionable podcasts. We'll be hearing from Joanna Kavenna, Rachida Lamrabet, Ben Sorgiovanni and Julian George over the next few weeks, but we start with Helga Schubert and her short story On Getting Up, translated by Aaron Sayne and Lillian M Banks.Banks turns interpreter as Schubert explains how this story was awakened by an appearance on a panel discussing one of German literature's most prestigious awards, the Ingeborg Bachmann

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29:09

Esther Karin Mngodo: 'I am more myself when I write...

Fictionable ·

2025/01/11

Last year we heard from Daisy Johnson, Judith Vanistendael, Scott Jacobs and Hannah Webb. We bring our Autumn series to a close – just in time for Winter – with Esther Karin Mngodo and the translator Jay Boss Rubin, who join us to talk about First Date.Mngodo tells us how this story ate another of her short stories, Without Sun."It came from the idea of how things are within other things," she says, "how everything is interconnected."In First Date, the links stretch across an entire millennium

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19:09

Hannah Webb: 'I always seem to end up writing at the...

Fictionable ·

2024/11/01

We opened this Autumn season with Daisy Johnson and followed up with Judith Vanistendael and Scott Jacobs. We'll be sitting down with Esther Karin Mngodo over the next week or so, but this episode is devoted to Hannah Webb and her short story Titanic.While Jacobs told us Be Careful Who Your Friends Are was drawn from his own life, Webb insists that her story is definitely not autobiographical."I have been on one of those holidays," she says, "but it didn't end up like that. There was much less

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18:18

Scott Jacobs: 'I made a few things up along the way'

Fictionable ·

2024/10/24

This season we've already heard from Daisy Johnson and Judith Vanistendael. Over the next few weeks we'll be sitting down with Esther Karin Mngodo and Hannah Webb, but this time we welcome Scott Jacobs and his short story Be Careful Who Your Friends Are.According to Jacobs, this curious tale was a "real-life experience"."I changed the names, to protect the innocent," he says, "including the name of the restaurant."But the last-minute invitation, the bottle of Primitivo, the bowler hat and that

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22:37

Judith Vanistendael: 'This first love has defined my...

Fictionable ·

2024/10/18

In the first of our Autumn podcasts, Daisy Johnson told us how she was living on the edge when she was writing her collection The Hotel, and read from her short story Conference. Over the course of this season we'll be ranging all round the world to hear from Esther Karin Mngodo, Scott Jacobs and Hannah Webb, but this time Judith Vanistendael explains why The Small Story is very close to home.This graphic short started when she began thinking about her own family, and how the funny story her

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24:07

Daisy Johnson: 'Most of the things I write do have a...

Fictionable ·

2024/10/11

The leaves are swirling, there's a nip in the air, so it's time for a whole new bunch of Fictionable podcasts. Over the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Judith Vanistendael, Esther Karin Mngodo, Scott Jacobs and Hannah Webb, but we're launching into Autumn with Daisy Johnson and her short story Conference.Conference appears in Johnson's forthcoming collection, The Hotel, and she explains that throughout the collection she set out to write about "what it means to live in unsafe spaces"."We feel

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