Episode 16: Isla Morley (Come Sunday; Above; The Last Blue)


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Jun 07 2020 58 mins  
Charlie and Isla Morley (Come Sunday; Above; The Last Blue) discuss growing up and travelling back to South Africa, creating a negative heroine, the 1800s medical phenomenon wherein people were literally blue, and what it's like owning five tortoises.

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Image of the Fugate family, as mentioned
Cathy Trost's article 'The Blue People of Troublesome Creek'

Question Index

01:03 Can you tell us more about your background in South Africa?
03:04 How did novel writing come about?
08:05 You've lived in several places - can you tell us about your journey?
11:12 Have you been back to South Africa?
13:48 Have you ever considered writing a memoir?
15:34 Come Sunday's Abbe isn't a nice person; why did you want to create her?
17:41 Why was grief important to explore?
18:19 When did you decide to incorporate Christianity?
20:19 Was narrative style always in your mind?
22:08 Why poetry?
23:38 Was African mythology, used in the book, something you experienced in childhood?
29:01 Was it daunting to have so much of Above set underground?
31:31 Would it be fair to assume that the book will continue to be an outlier as you move forward?
33:48 When did the idea of going along with Dobb's idea of what's going on come into your process of writing?
42:02 Tell us about the medical background to The Last Blue
46:48 Am I barking up the wrong tree thinking the concept of blue people as per your book has to do with commentary on racial discrimination in history?
51:31 How important is the narrative of women to you?
52:34 Is there any interesting fact you can share with us about photography in the 1930s?
55:15 What's next?
55:54 What's it like having five tortoises?

Purchase Links

Come Sunday:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Waterstones
Hive
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

Above:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Waterstones
Hive
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

The Last Blue:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Waterstones
Hive
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

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Photograph used with permission from the author.