Claire Nicholls

Do you have as much scope to be as weird as you want to when there's a publishing house behind the book?

And maybe not so many would want to go and escape it all and live as a pet, perhaps.

Well, look, congratulations on this book and your incredible path to having this book published.

It's called Grief Dog.

It's published by Text.

Michael Winkler, it's been wonderful to meet you.

You're listening to The Book Show on ABC Radio National.

My name is Claire Nicholls and this is Kay Tempest.

Kay Tempest there describing life in a trans body in his song, I Stand on the Line.

Honestly, go and listen to the whole thing.

It is raw and so powerful.

And Kay is a British musician, poet, playwright and author who has been a force in the world of rap and spoken word poetry since he was a teenager.

And Kay brings that same lyrical magic you just heard to his second novel.

It's called Having Spent Life Seeking, and it's about Rothko, who's out of jail and back in the hometown where everything fell apart.

Kay Tempest, welcome to the book show.

And I know you had a quote from Ted Hughes on your wall when you wrote this book.

The quote is, write what you can't bear to admit.

Why that quote?

How hard is it to go that deep and to write what you can't bear to admit?

So this novel is about Rothko.