Little Atoms
Episodes
Little Atoms 608 - Ben Fergusson's An Honest Man
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist Ben Fergusson joins Neil to talk about An Honest Man, the final book of his Berlin Trilogy. They discuss writing against the backdrop of 1989...
Little Atoms 607 - Madeline Stevens' Devotion
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Madeline Stevens joins Neil to talk about her first novel, Devotion. They discuss the drafts and graft that come before a debut novel, how Madeline's ...
Little Atoms 606 - Julian Hoffman's Irreplaceable
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Julian Hoffman joins Neil to talk about his latest book Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places. They discuss the aborted attempt by Boris Jo...
Little Atoms 605 - Niven Govinden's This Brutal House
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Niven Govinden joins Neil to talk about his new novel This Brutal House, about family and protest in the vogue ball community of 1980s New York. Govin...
Little Atoms 604 - Ben Smith's Doggerland
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Smith is a lecturer in creative writing at Plymouth University, specializing in environmental literature and focusing particularly on oceans, clim...
Little Atoms 603 - Richard Osmond's Rock, Paper, Scissors
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Richard Osmond joins Neil to talk about his latest collection, Rock, Paper, Scissors, inspired by his experiences during the London Bridge terror...
Little Atoms 602 - Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror
02 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion is her first...
Little Atoms 601 - Rachel DeLoache Williams' My Friend Anna
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel DeLoache Williams is an ex-Vanity Fair photo editor and author of My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress. She tells Neil about her fr...
Little Atoms 600 - Laura Cumming's On Chapel Sands
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It's the 600th Little Atoms! and Neil welcomes Laura Cumming back to the show. Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since...
Little Atoms 599 - Claire McGlasson's The Rapture
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Claire McGlasson is a journalist who works for ITV News and enjoys the variety of life on the road with a TV camera. She lives in Cambridgeshire. ...
Little Atoms 598 - Lee Jackson's Palaces of Pleasure
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lee Jackson is a Victorian enthusiast, creator of the popular online resource on the social history of Victorian London, www.victorianlondon.org,...
Little Atoms 597 - Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for w...
Little Atoms 596 - Caroline Crampton's The Way To The Sea
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Crampton is a writer and editor who contributes regularly to the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday and the New Humanist. She has appeared as a bro...
Little Atoms Live at Idler Festival w. Josh Cohen
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Recorded live at the Idler Festival 2019 at Fenton House, Hampstead. Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Professor of Modern Litera...
Little Atoms 595 - Carolina Setterwall's Let's Hope For The Best
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Carolina Setterwall was born in 1978 in Sala, Sweden. She studied Media and Communication in Uppsala, Stockholm and London and has worked within the m...
Little Atoms 594 - Angela Saini's Superior
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Saini is an award-winning British science journalist and broadcaster. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Observer, New Scientist, Wired, Ne...
Little Atoms 593 - Keith Kahn-Harris' Strange Hate
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and writer. He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, associate lecturer at Birkbeck College, and associate fel...
Little Atoms 592 - Anna Sherman's The Bells of Old Tokyo
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Sherman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied Greek and Latin at Wellesley College and Oxford before moving to Tokyo in 2001. The B...
Little Atoms 591 - Richard King's The Lark Ascending
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard King is the author of the acclaimed How Soon Is Now?, which was named Sunday Times Music Book of the Year, and Original Rockers...
Little Atoms 590 - Wayetu Moore's She Would Be King
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book and is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern Califo...
Little Atoms 589 - Nathaniel Rich's Losing Earth
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nathaniel Rich is the author of the novels Odds Against Tomorrow and The Mayor’s Tongue. His short fiction has appeared in ...
Little Atoms 588 - Pete Brown's Pie Fidelity
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pete Brown is a British author, journalist, blogger and broadcaster specialising in food and drink, especially the fun parts like beer and c...
Little Atoms 587 - Joanne Ramos' The Farm
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a BA from Princeton University. After working in ...
Little Atoms 586 - Hamid Ismailov's The Devils' Dance
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Born in 1954 in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 due to what the state d...
Little Atoms 585 - Andrea Lawlor's Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrea Lawlor lives in Western Massachusetts and teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College. Lawlor is a fiction editor for Fence and the auth...
Little Atoms 584 - Season Butler's Cygnet
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season Butler is a writer, artist and dramaturg born in Washington, DC. Through her work, she explores her interest in identity and otherness, the opp...
Little Atoms 583 - Dan Richards' Outpost
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Richards is the co-author of Holloway (with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood) and the author of The Beechwood Airship Int...
Little Atoms 582 - Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of The Children of Jocasta and The Amber Fury, which was shortlisted for ...
Little Atoms 581 - Iain Reid's Foe
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Iain Reid is the author of two critically acclaimed, award-winning books of nonfiction. His internationally bestselling debut novel, I’...
Little Atoms 580 - Bret Easton Ellis' White
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bret Easton Ellis is the author of several novels, including Imperial Bedrooms, Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Glamora...
Little Atoms 579 - Bev Thomas' A Good Enough Mother
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bev Thomas was a clinical psychologist in the NHS for many years. She currently works as an organisational consultant in mental health and other servi...
Little Atoms 578 - Jarett Kobek's Only Americans Burn in Hell
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novella ATTA, a psychedelic biography of the 9/11 bomber Mohamed Atta, w...
Little Atoms 577 - Isabella Hammad's The Parisian
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Isabella Hammad was born in London. She won the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction for her story 'Mr. Can’aan'. Her writing has appeared in Conjunction...
Little Atoms 576 - Will Ashon's Chamber Music
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Will Ashon is the author of Strange Labyrinth (Granta, 2017) and two novels. He previously ran BIG DADA records where his artists inclu...
Little Atoms 575 - Temi Oh's Do You Dream of Terra-Two?
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Temi Oh graduated from King’s College London in 2015 with a BSci in Neuroscience. While at KCL, Temi founded and ran a book-club called “Neuroscie...
Little Atoms 574 - Steve Brusatte's The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He grew up in the Midweste...
Little Atoms 573 - A K Benjamin's Let Me Not Be Mad
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A K Benjamin is a Clinical Neuropsychologist, specialising in diagnostics and acute rehab. Previously he was a screenwriter, spent two years as a cont...
Little Atoms 572 - Hanna Jameson's The Last
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hanna Jameson wrote her first book at the age of seventeen. Paul Rees of Q Magazine described her as writing like 'an angel on speed'. She has worked ...
Little Atoms 571 - Adam Foulds' Dream Sequence
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Foulds most recent books are In the Wolf's Mouth; The Quickening Maze, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Encore Award a...
Little Atoms 570 - Damian Barr's You Will Be Safe Here
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a...
Little Atoms 569 Jan Carson's The Fire Starters
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical ...
Little Atoms 568 - Luke Turner's Out of the Woods
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Luke Turner is a writer and editor based in London. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio ...
Little Atoms 567 - Lewis Dartnell's Origins
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lewis Dartnell is a Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster. He has won several awards for his science writing, and contri...
Little Atoms 566 - Yara Rodrigues Fowler's Stubborn Archivist
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Yara Rodrigues Fowler grew up in a Brazilian-English household in London, where she still lives. She has a BA in English from Oxford and an MA in Comp...
Little Atoms 565 - Ken Hollings' The Space Oracle
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Hollings is a writer, broadcaster, cultural theorist and lecturer based in London. He is the author of the books Destroy All Monsters, Welcome To ...
Little Atoms 564 - Fatima Bhutto's The Runaways
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1982. She grew up in Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of four previous books, most recently the ...
Little Atoms 563 - Max Porter's Lanny
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Max Porter is the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, which has been translated into twenty languages worldwide, and been made into a stage pl...
Little Atoms 562 - John Lanchester's The Wall
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He has worked as a football reporter, obituary writer, book editor, restaurant critic, and deputy editor ...
Little Atoms 561 - Ece Temelkuran's How To Lose A Country
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist and commentator. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and ...
Little Atoms 560 - Dr Julia Shaw's Making Evil
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Shaw is a scientist in the Department of Psychology at University College London (UCL). Her academic work, teaching and role as an expert wit...
Little Atoms 559 - Deborah Lipstadt's Antisemitism Here And Now
20 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Her books include The Eichmann Trial, Den...
Little Atoms 558 - Kristen Ghodsee's Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Kristen R. Ghodsee was travelling in Europe, and spent the summer of 1990 witnessing first-hand the initial hope an...
Little Atoms 557 - Georgina Harding's Land of the Living
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Georgina Harding is the author of three previous novels: The Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game and, most recently, Painter of ...
Little Atoms 556 - Simon Garfield's In Miniature
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Garfield is the author of seventeen acclaimed books of non-fiction including Timekeepers, A Notable Woman (as editor), To th...
Little Atoms 555 - Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh. He is a contributing editor at the Ne...
Little Atoms 554 - Adam Weymouth's Kings of the Yukon
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Weymouth's work has been published by a wide variety of outlets including the Guardian, the Atlantic and the New Internationalist. His interest i...
Little Atoms 553 - Thea Lim's An Ocean of Minutes
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Thea Lim’s novel An Ocean of Minutes is out now from Quercus/Hachette in the UK, Viking/Penguin Random House in Canada, and Touchston...
From The Archive - Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation
01 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To see in the New Year, here's a repeat of our Interview with Ottessa Moshfegh from August. Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England...
From the Archive - Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt
25 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For Christmas Day, here's a repeat of our interview from June 2018 with Adam Kay. Adam Kay is an award-winning comedian and writer for TV and film, in...
Little Atoms 552 - David Frye's Walls
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
David Frye is a professor and historian, whose research has taken him around the world and involved him in numerous archaeological digs since receivin...
Little Atoms 551 - Jeff Jackson's Destroy All Monsters
11 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Jackson is the author of Mira Corpora, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His short fiction has appeared in Guernica...
Little Atoms 550 - Paul Ewen's Francis Plug: Writer in Residence
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This week Padraig Reidy talks to Paul Ewen. Paul Ewen is a New Zealand writer based in south London. His work has appeared in the British Council's&nb...
Little Atoms 549 - R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries
27 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
R. O. Kwon is the author of the novel The Incendiaries. Her writing is published in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Pla...
Little Atoms 548 - Thomas Page McBee's Amateur
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Page McBee was ‘masculinity expert’ for Vice and the first trans man ever to box at Madison Square Garden. His essays and reporta...
Little Atoms 547 - Robert Olen Butler's Paris in the Dark
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including&nbs...
Little Atoms 546 - Richard Skinner's Writing a Novel
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Skinner is a novelist, poet and critic. His most recent book, The Mirror, was described as ‘beautifully written . . . immersive . . . c...
Little Atoms 545 - Rose George's Nine Pints
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rose George is the author of A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World, and The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, wh...
Little Atoms 544 - Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall
22 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Moss is the author of six novels and a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her nove...
Little Atoms 543 - Jonathan Ames' The Extra Man
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Ames is the author of nine books including The Extra Man, Wake Up, Sir!, and You Were Never Really Here, all published by Pushkin P...
Little Atoms 542 - Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ivy Pochoda is a novelist and writer, previously a world ranked squash player. Her novel Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book...
Little Atoms 541 - Patrick deWitt's French Exit
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick deWitt is the author of The Sisters Brothers, which won the Governor General's Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize an...
Little Atoms 540 - Michael Redhill's Bellevue Square
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Redhill is the author of nine novels including Consolation, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Martin Sloane, a finalist ...
Little Atoms 539 - Adam Rutherford's The Book of Humans
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. He studied genetics at University College London, and during his PhD on the developing eye, he...
Little Atoms 538 - Jean Hannah Edelstein's This Really Isn't About You
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Hannah Edelstein is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. She writes regularly for numerous outlets including The Guardian and The Pool, and ...
Little Atoms 537 - Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sophie Mackintosh won the 2016 White Review Short Story Prize and the 2016 Virago/Stylist Short Story competition, and has been published in Granta ma...
Little Atoms 536 - Nell Stevens' Mrs Gaskell and Me
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nell Stevens has a First in English and Creative Writing from Warwick, after which she went on to study Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard, ...
Little Atoms 535 - Amy Sackville's Painter to the King
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to do an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford, and...
Little Atoms 534 - Tim Parks' Out of My Head
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Born in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He is t...
Little Atoms 533 - Miriam Toews' Women Talking
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Toews was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She has published four novels and a memoir of her father, ...
Little Atoms 532 - Lauren Groff's Florida
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lauren Groff is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels – Fates and Furies (named by Barack Obama as his favourite...
Little Atoms 531 - Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the B...
Little Atoms 530 - Michael Donkor's Hold
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Donkor was born in London, to Ghanaian parents. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, undertook a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal...
Little Atoms 529 - Melissa Harrison's All Among The Barley
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted ...
Little Atoms 528 - William Atkins' The Immeasurable World
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
William Atkins’s first book, The Moor, was shortlisted for the Thwaites Wainwright Prize. He works as an editor and his journalism has appeared...
Little Atoms 527 - Madeline Miller's Circe
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Madeline Miller has a BA and MA from Brown University in Latin and Ancient Greek, and has been teaching both for over a decade. She has also studied a...
Little Atoms 526 - Gavin Francis' Shapeshifters
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Gavin Francis is a GP, and the author of True North, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins, which won the Scottish Book of ...
Little Atoms 525 - Laura Lippman’s Sunburn
23 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Lippman has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction. Since the publication of What the Dead Know, each of her hardcovers has hit th...
Little Atoms 524 - Miranda Doyle's A Book of Untruths
16 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Miranda Doyle's family come from the tiny island of Coney in Sligo Bay. She grew up in Edinburgh alongside three brothers and a suspicious number of i...
Little Atoms 523 - Dorthe Nors' Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dorthe Nors was born in 1970 and studied literature at the University of Aarhus. She is one of the most original voices in contemporary Danish literat...
Little Atoms 522 - Fred Pearce's Fallout
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Fred Pearce is an award-winning journalist and author, reporting from 87 countries. He is the environment consultant of New Scientist m...
Little Atoms 521 - Sarah Churchwell's Behold, America
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, Univers...
Little Atoms 520 - Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Winton has published over twenty books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into many different languages. Since his first no...
Little Atoms 519 - Sharlene Teo's Ponti
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sharlene Teo was born in Singapore in 1987. She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of ...
Little Atoms 518 - Fern Riddell's Death in Ten Minutes
25 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Fern Riddell is a historian specialising in sex, suffrage and culture in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. She appears regularly on TV and radio, a...
Little Atoms 517 - Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Kay is an award-winning comedian and writer for TV and film, including Mitchell & Webb and Very British Problems. He previousl...
Little Atoms 516 - Inara Verzemnieks & Among the Living and the Dead
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Inara Verzemnieks teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, and has been a ...
Little Atoms 515 - Daniel Trilling's Lights in the Distance
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Trilling is the editor of New Humanist magazine and has reported extensively on refugees in Europe. His work has been published in th...
Little Atoms 514 - Aida Edemariam's The Wife's Tale
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aida Edemariam, whose father is Ethiopian and mother Canadian, grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University a...
Little Atoms 513 - Ziyad Marar's Judged
28 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ziyad Marar is the author of Intimacy (2014), Deception (The Art of Living) (2008) and The Happiness Paradox (2003)...
Little Atoms 512 - Lucy Wood's The Sing of the Shore
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lucy Wood is the critically acclaimed author of Diving Belles, a collection of short stories based on Cornish folklore, and Weathering, a debut novel ...