Little Atoms
Episodes
Little Atoms 997 - Claire Fuller's Hunger and Thirst
07 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Fuller gained a degree in sculpture from Winchester School of Art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn't start writing unti...
Little Atoms 996 - Richard Byrne's Beauty Doesn't Reach Me
30 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Byrne is a dramatist and journalist. He was the editor of The Wilson Quarterly from 2019 to 2021. His work has appeared in The New Republic, T...
Little Atoms 995 - Angela Tomaski's The Infamous Gilberts
23 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Tomaski was born in Oxford and raised in Somerset with her four brothers and sisters. She has had a variety of different jobs, including as a w...
Little Atoms 994 - Sian Hughes' No Such Thing As Monday
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sian Hughes is a writer who grew up in a small village in Cheshire. Her first collection of poetry The Missing was a Poetry Society Recommendation, lo...
Little Atoms 993 - Elizabeth Arnott's The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives
09 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Arnott is an award-winning writer and journalist and has written critically acclaimed historical fiction as Lizzie Pook. Her work has f...
Little Atoms 992 - Sophie Mackintosh's Permanence
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sophie Mackintosh is the author of four novels, including The Water Cure and Cursed Bread. She has been longlisted for the Ma...
Little Atoms 991 - John Grindrod's Tales of the Suburbs
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
John Grindrod is the author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain, Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt (...
Little Atoms 990 - Robert Plunket's Love Junkie
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Plunket was born in Greenville, Texas, in 1945, but raised in Havana and Mexico City. After college he moved to New York and became a writ...
Little Atoms 989 - Isabel Waidner's As If
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Isabel Waidner is the author of five novels – including Sterling Karat Gold, which won the Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the Orwell ...
Little Atoms 988 - Francis Spufford's Nonesuch
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Francis Spufford is the author of three novels and five works of non-fiction. His debut work of fiction was the historical novel Golden Hill,&nbs...
Little Atoms 987 - James Geary's The World In A Phrase
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
James Geary, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is the author of Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Nee...
Little Atoms 986 - Alex Preston's A Stranger in Corfu
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Preston is an award-winning author of five novels including This Bleeding City, The Revelations, In Love and War and&nbs...
Little Atoms 985 - Manish Chauhan's Belgrave Road
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Originally from Leicester, Manish Chauhan works as a finance lawyer and currently lives in East London. His short story, "Pieces", was shortlisted for...
Little Atoms 984 - George Saunders' Vigil
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize in 2017, and five coll...
Little Atoms 983 - Grace Murray's Blank Canvas
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Grace Murray was born in 2003 and grew up in Norwich. She has recently graduated from Edinburgh University, where she read English Literature and foun...
Little Atoms 982 - Daniyal Mueenuddin's This Is Where The Serpent Lives
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Daniyal Mueenuddin graduated from Dartmouth College and Yale Law School. After winning a Fulbright scholarship to study in Norway, he practiced law in...
Little Atoms 981 - Sebastian Faulks' Fires Which Burned Brightly
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sebastian Faulks has written nineteen books, of which A Week in December and The Fatal Englishman were number one in the ...
Little Atoms 980 - Jarett Kobek's Invocation Of My Demon Brother
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jarett Kobek is an internationally bestselling Turkish-American writer living in California. His previous books have been translated into eleven ...
Little Atoms 979 - Miriam Robinson's And Notre Dame is Burning
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Robinson is an author who has worked in the world of books and bookshops for over 15 years. Previously the host of podcast My Unlived Life...
Little Atoms 978 - Harry Sidebottom's Those Who Are About To Die
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Harry Sidebottom teaches classical history at Oxford University, and is the bestselling author of fifteen novels. His debut trade non-fiction boo...
Little Atoms 977 - Ziyad Marar's Noticing
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ziyad Marar is a publisher and author of The Happiness Paradox , Deception, Intimacy and Judged: The Value of Being...
Little Atoms 976 - Graham Robb's The Discovery of Britain
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has published widely on French literature and history....
Little Atoms 975 - Joanna Pocock's Greyhound
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joanna Pocock is an Irish-Canadian writer living in London. Her writing has notably appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation and&n...
Little Atoms 974 - James Rebanks' The Place of Tides
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
James Rebanks is a farmer and writer based in the Lake District. His No. 1 bestselling debut, The Shepherd’s Life, was translated into six...
Little Atoms 973 - Mary Roach's Replaceable You
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Roach is the author of seven best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing ...
Little Atoms 972 - Thomas McMullan's Groundwater
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas McMullan lives and works in London. His debut novel, The Last Good Man, won the 2021 Betty Trask Prize. His short fiction has been publish...
Little Atoms 971 - Sarah Perry's Death of an Ordinary Man
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After ...
Little Atoms 970 - Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kiran Desai is the bestselling author of two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both t...
Little Atoms 969 - Natalie Haynes' No Friend To This House
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of The Amber Fury, The Children of Jocasta, A Thousand Ships, which was s...
Little Atoms 968 - Patrick Ryan's Buckeye
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Ryan's short story collection The Dream Life of Astronauts was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-D...
Little Atoms 967 - Miriam Toews' A Truce Which Is Not Peace
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good ...
Little Atoms 966 - Stuart Nadler's Rooms For Vanishing
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stuart Nadler is a recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and the author of Wise Men, The Inseparables, R...
Little Atoms 965 - Laura Lippman's Murder Takes A Vacation
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since Laura Lippman's debut, she has been recognised as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the "essential" crime writer...
Little Atoms 964 - Oliver Basciano's Outcast
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Basciano is a journalist and critic based in São Paulo and London. On this episode of Little Atoms, he talks to Neil Denny about Outcast: A Hi...
Little Atoms 963 - Claire Adam's Love Forms
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Adam was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She was educated in the US and now lives in London. Her first novel Golden Child won...
Little Atoms 962 - Mike Jay's Free Radicals
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Jay has written extensively on scientific and medical history and contributes regularly to the London Review of Books and the Wall...
Little Atoms 961 - Brandy Schillace's The Intermediaries
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Brandy Schillace is a historian, former professor and museum professional, and former editor of Medical Humanities, a social-justice journal...
Little Atoms 960 - Wendy Erskine's The Benefactors
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Erskine is the author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and ...
Little Atoms 959 - David Farrier's Nature's Genius
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Farrier is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh. David's first book, Footprints: In Search of Fu...
Little Atoms 958 - Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marie Rutkoski is a New York Times bestselling author of several novels for children and young adults. She grew up in Illinois as the oldest...
Little Atoms 957 - Gurnaik Johal's Saraswati
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. His 2022 collection We Move won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Pr...
Little Atoms 956 - Nell Stevens's The Original
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nell Stevens writes memoir and fiction. Her debut novel, Briefly, a Delicious Life was longlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Award. She ...
Little Atoms 955 - Matthew Specktor's The Golden Hour
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound, and the nonfiction books ...
Little Atoms 954 - Francesca Wade's Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Pr...
Little Atoms 953 - Daria Lavelle's Aftertaste
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Daria Lavelle writes fiction, most of which features at least one impossible thing. Her stories have appeared in Dark Matter, The Deadl...
Little Atoms 952 - Michael Pedersen's Muckle Flugga
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning poet and author of Boy Friends, which was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for the ...
Little Atoms 951 - Cate Baum's Land Of Hope
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cate Baum was born in Cambridge to a magician and a big band singer. She grew up in the East Anglian countryside, spending summers roaming the wilds o...
Little Atoms 950 - Eley Williams' Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eley Williams' collection of short stories Attrib. & Other Stories won the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize...
Little Atoms 949 - Simon Park's Wreckers
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Park is Associate Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Portuguese at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxfor...
Little Atoms 948 - Danielle Giles' Mere
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Giles is a writer and researcher based in Bristol. She has been published (writing as Danielle Vrublevskis) in Extra Teeth and Dear Damsels, ...
Little Atoms 947 - Megan Hunter's Days of Light
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Hunter is a prizewinning novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Her first novel, The End We Start From was shortlisted for Novel of the...
Little Atoms 946 - Ron Currie's The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ron Currie is the award-winning author of five novels. He has won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, ...
Little Atoms 945 - Xiaolu Guo's Call Me Ishmaelle
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for...
Little Atoms 944 - Dan Richards' Overnight
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Richards is the co-author of Holloway (with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood), and the author of The Beechwood Airship In...
Little Atoms 943 - Dani Heywood-Lonsdale's The Portrait Artist
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dani Heywood-Lonsdale has paternal roots on the tiny island of Molokai, Hawaii - referred to as the Sandwich Islands throughout her debut novel T...
Little Atoms 942 - Abdulrazak Gurnah's Theft
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Wa...
Little Atoms 941 - Sarah Hesketh's 2016
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Hesketh is a writer and editor from Pendle, in East Lancashire. She is the author of the poetry collections Napoleon’s Travelling Bookshe...
Little Atoms 940 - Stephen May's Green Ink
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen May is the author of seven novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian No...
Little Atoms 939 - Susan Barker's Old Soul
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Susan Barker is the author of four books. Her third novel, The Incarnations, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book...
Little Atoms 938 - Rachel Bower's It Comes From The River
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Bower is an award-winning poet and short story writer from Bradford. She is the author of two poetry collections and a non-fiction book on lite...
Little Atoms 937 - Caryl Phillips' Another Man In The Street
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford Unive...
Little Atoms 936 - Catherine Airey's Confessions
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Airey grew up in England in a family of mixed English-Irish descent, and now lives between County Cork and Bristol. On this episode of ...
Little Atoms 935 - Keon West's The Science of Racism
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Keon West is a social psychologist at the University of London. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University in 2010 as a Rhodes Scho...
Little Atoms 934 - Nicola Dinan's Disappoint Me
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, won the Polari First Book Prize, was shortlisted for t...
Little Atoms 933 - Sumit Paul-Choudhury's The Bright Side
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sumit Paul-Choudhury is an astrophysicist-turned-journalist, former editor-in-chief of New Scientist magazine and has served as a judge...
Little Atoms 932 - Ken Hollings' The Trash Project
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Hollings is a writer and broadcaster based in London. He is the author of The Bright Labyrinth, Welcome To Mars, The Space Oracle and Destroy All ...
Little Atoms 931- Lola Young's Eight Weeks
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey became one of the first Black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in North London, she s...
Little Atoms 930 - Miranda Sawyer's Uncommon People
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Miranda Sawyer has written about pop music since 1988, beginning on Smash Hits before moving to Select, The Face and the ...
Little Atoms 929 - Niall Williams' Time Of The Child
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Niall Williams was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels, including History of the Rain, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize...
Little Atoms 928 - Simon Critchley's On Mysticism
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Critchley has published books on a wide expanse of ethical and philosophical subjects, including the bestselling The Book of Dead Phil...
Little Atoms 927 - Jeff Young's Wild Twin
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Young is a writer for stage, screen and radio. Until recently a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University, he is th...
Little Atoms 926 - Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of seven novels, including The Devil and Webster, You Should Have Known (adapted as the 2020 HBO seri...
Little Atoms 925 - Jonathan Coe's The Proof Of My Innocence
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as Bournville, What a Carve Up! and&nbs...
Little Atoms 924 - Francesca Segal's Welcome To Glorious Tuga
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Innocents (2012) a...
Little Atoms 923 - Dava Sobel's The Elements of Marie Curie
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dava Sobel is the internationally renowned author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter. She was an award-winning former science reporter for the ‘N...
Little Atoms 922 - Xan Brooks' The Catchers
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Xan Brooks is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He was one of the founding editorial team at the Big Issue magazine in London...
Little Atoms 921 - Lynne Peeples' The Inner Clock
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lynne Peeples is a freelance science journalist, specialising in the environment, public health and medicine. She holds a M.S. in Biostatistics from H...
Little Atoms 920 - Kate Summerscale's The Peepshow
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 200...
Little Atoms 919 - Ekow Eshun's The Strangers
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ekow Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, editor, curator, broadcaster, and author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated f...
Little Atoms 918 - Garth Greenwell's Small Rain
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness. His novel What Belongs to You won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was lo...
Little Atoms 917 - Rumaan Alam's Entitlement
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Bo...
Little Atoms 916 - Donal Ryan's Heart Be At Peace
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Donal Ryan is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim....
Little Atoms 915 - Irenosen Okojie's Curandera
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short s...
Little Atoms 914 - Shahnaz Habib's Airplane Mode
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shahnaz Habib is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. She translates from her mother tongue, the south Indian language of Malayalam, and has tra...
Little Atoms 913 - Harriet Constable's The Instrumentalist
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Harriet Constable is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker living in London. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Economist, and ...
Little Atoms 912 - James Shapiro's The Playbook
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Shapiro, who teaches English at Columbia University in New York, is author of several books, including 1599: A Year in the Life of William ...
Little Atoms 911 - Clare Beams' The Garden
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Clare Beams is the author of the novel The Illness Lesson, which was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize,and the story ...
Little Atoms 910 - Ralf Webb's Strange Relations
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. His poems, essays, and short fiction hav...
Little Atoms 909 - Hanna Pylväinen's The End Of Drum-Time
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hanna Pylväinen is the author of the novel We Sinners, which received a Whiting Award and a Balcones Fiction Prize. To research The End of ...
Little Atoms 908 - Adam Higginbotham's Challenger
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Higginbotham is a British writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ and Smithsonian. He is the aut...
Little Atoms 907 - Rebecca Watson's I Will Crash
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Watson is an Assistant Arts Editor at the Financial Times and one of the Observer's ten best debut novelists of 2021. She has b...
Little Atoms 906 - Alan Murrin's The Coast Road
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alan Murrin is an Irish writer based in Berlin. His short story, "The Wake," won the 2021 Bournemouth Writing Prize and was shortlisted for short...
Little Atoms 905 - Yael Van Der Wouden's The Safekeep
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher. She currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Du...
Little Atoms 904 - Jon Savage's The Secret Public
24 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jon Savage is the author of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock and Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945. On this episod...
Little Atoms 903 - Julia Armfield's Private Rites
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Julia Armfield's work has been published in Granta, The White Review and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. In 2019, s...
Little Atoms 902 - Noreen Masud's A Flat Place
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Noreen Masud is a lecturer in twentieth century literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. On this episode of Li...
Little Atoms 901 - Clare Pollard's The Modern Fairies
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and playwright based in London. She is the author of five poetry collections and the former Editor of the&...
Little Atoms 900 - Kevin Barry's The Heart In Winter
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Barry is the author of four novels and three story collections. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, t...
Little Atoms 899 - Rachel Khong's Real Americans
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by N...
Little Atoms 898 - Ayana Mathis's The Unsettled
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ayana Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times best seller and has been translated into sixteen lang...