In Writing with Hattie Crisell

Dec 05 2024 65 ep. 48 mins 389

In Writing with Hattie Crisell Podcast artwork

Journalist Hattie Crisell visits the studies of writers of all kinds – novelists, screenwriters, poets, journalists and more – to find out how they write, why they write, and what they can teach us about doing it better.

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S6 Ep63: Jesse Armstrong, screenwriter

Dec 05 2024 54 mins

For this final episode of the sixth season of In Writing, I sat down with Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession, and writer/co-writer of numerous other brilliant shows and movies including Peep Show, Fresh Meat, The Thick of It, In The Loop and Four Lions. At his London office he told me about some of his projects that didn't work out (and why); the importance of tone, and how you

S6 Ep62: Sara Collins, novelist

Nov 28 2024 50 mins

Fresh from judging the Booker Prize, novelist Sara Collins joins us this week. Her debut The Confessions of Frannie Langton won the First Novel prize in the 2019 Costa Book Awards, and having adapted it into a TV series, she's now working on her second book. In this episode, she talks about the careful rhythms of her writing routine; the value of plotting (even in literary fiction)

S6 Ep61: Tom Crewe, novelist

Nov 21 2024 58 mins

This week I'm talking to Tom Crewe, author of 2023's The New Life, contributing editor of the London Review of Books and winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. I visited Tom in September at his London office, which is really more of a nest of books, and we talked about the strange emotional journey of publication; the wrangling of structure; the role of sex scen

S6 Ep60: Posy Simmonds, cartoonist and graphic novelist

Nov 14 2024 52 mins

This week I'm in the London home of artist and writer Posy Simmonds. From the 1970s onwards, Posy had a regular comic strip in The Guardian, where she wrote Mrs Weber's Diary and later serialised the graphic novel Tamara Drewe. She went on to publish two more graphic novels, Gemma Bovery and Cassandra Darke. Earlier this year, she had a major exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Pa

S6 Ep59: Nathan Silver, filmmaker

Nov 07 2024 49 mins

Nathan Silver, director and co-writer of Between the Temples (and many other movies) joins me from New York today to talk about his 'scriptment' approach to screenwriting, in which scripts read more like novellas. Nathan and I have a great chat about how he collaborates with cast and uses improvisation to tell a story; how comedy helps him to 'Trojan horse' experimental work to aud

S6 Ep58: Hattie in the hot seat

Nov 06 2024 47 mins

This slightly silly bonus episode marks the launch today of In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation, published in the UK by Granta Books. Friend of the podcast and former guest Sathnam Sanghera came to visit the room where I write, for a conversation about the writing life – touching on elaborate procrastination, the fetishisation of founta

S6 Ep57: Yomi Adegoke, novelist and non-fiction writer

Oct 31 2024 41 mins

Yomi Adegoke, bestselling author of The List and co-author of Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, spoke to me in August for this episode. We discussed the stellar career she's established in her twenties and early thirties – from launching a self-made magazine, to producing an acclaimed book on the experience of black British women, to writing a novel that has sold more than

S6 Ep56: Craig Brown, satirist and biographer

Oct 24 2024 60 mins

I had a great chat this week with Craig Brown, parody writer and columnist for Private Eye and the Daily Mail, and author of offbeat biographies including A Voyage Around the Queen; One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time; and Ma'am Darling (about Princess Margaret). Craig takes iconic cultural figures and writes around them, exploring how they were seen by their friends, fans and

S6 Ep55: Bella Mackie, novelist

Oct 17 2024 47 mins

The very funny and frank Bella Mackie is with me today. We met in August to talk about the writing of her three bestselling books: the nonfiction hit Jog On: How Running Saved My Life, and the witty murder novels How to Kill Your Family and What a Way to Go – a new genre that we dub 'sarcastic crime'. Bella opens up about accepting defeat on a failed manuscript, learning her craf

S6 Ep54: Donal Ryan, novelist

Oct 10 2024 43 mins

This week, meet Donal Ryan, who has since 2012 published seven bestselling novels and a collection of short stories. Based in County Limerick, Ireland – where he teaches creative writing at the University of Limerick – he writes heartfelt stories inspired by the kinds of people he's lived among all his life. His latest novel, Heart, Be At Peace, is a sequel to his debut, The Sp