In Conversation with Sofie Drew
SD: When I was 15, I entered this thing called BBC New Creatives. Then with some piece of writing, which looking back was really bad, but it somehow got through and I went to this development day in London. Unfortunately, it did happen during the pandemic so then a lot of stuff ended up being online. But anyway, I got to direct and write another audio drama which is awesome, and it’s in the BBC archives somewhere, I guess. A producer contacted me after finding that and then asked me to do this.
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In Conversation with Rachel Bulman
RB: I've always enjoyed the variety of it. I really like trying out different styles, but I think there’s definitely an underscore to my writing in terms of theme. I like playing with issues of power and I always write about nature. I always have plants or birds or water of some kind in my stories, and I haven’t ever really been able to eradicate that. I have tried, but I think that it’s suited to prose most of all.
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In Conversation with Catherine Hurcombe
CH: I think I’m always quite drawn to mythology and folkloric stories. That's what I like to read. That's what I've always got a lot of pleasure out of. Things like fairy tales as well, I’ve always been quite a prolific reader of those, so I think it just leaks through into my writing because I think writing is a form of escapism. It's like reading. So all I want to write is things which are more divorced from the real world.
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In Conversation with Josie Sullivan
J: …but she talks about how everything around us has a voice, and we can’t necessarily… We don’t necessarily have the right to claim that voice as ours but we can try to, like, tip over a rock or look at a leaf and try to translate it to the best of our ability. For a lot of things that could be our responsibility, if we see something that needs a voice we can try our best. So, I think ghosts are a part of that, they are a way we try to give voice to some things we can’t talk about.
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In Conversation with Swarnim Agrawal
Yeah it has, because for instance I signed up for my writing nature module, and so I had to do nature writing, and I am not a person who is very close to nature, I would say. So, it was like walking around noting things down- it has helped a lot and also helped my mental wellbeing as such. And this piece I wrote near Christmas when the Christmas lights were coming on. So, it’s like, back in India we have a festival of lights, Diwali, where the lights go on most houses and buildings. I was seeing all these photos from my friends and relatives, and here I saw the Christmas lights- I was kind of drawing parallels.
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In Conversation with Ben Blackwell
B: So that’s why I get, sometimes, quite caught up in the idea of perception and what people think, what’s going on in their heads. So I really like reading Virginia Woolf, for example, because she does this quite a lot. She does differ in her approach though because she goes into multiple characters' heads describing how they see the world. I tend to do it a bit differently- I tend to pick one central character and then close off their heads from everyone else, leaving the reader to speculate: “what are they thinking?” Because quite often that is the source of conflict in the story.
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In Conversation with Charlotte Smethers
C: I think my rule with comedy is that it either needs to be, like, some form of social commentary, or it needs to be entirely bizarre and absurd. Otherwise, I think it falls flat, and I’m not really interested in it.
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In Conversation with Molly Arabella Kirk
MAK: One big influence is Sylvia Plath. […] I love how she can make the mundane into something haunting and beautiful, and that’s what I really try to do with my own work. Sometimes I’ll talk about something that you’d do in everyday life — I literally wrote a poem about biting my nails — and I thought, this is kind of Plath-esque, because she can just take something you do everyday, something overlooked, and turn it into something darker and more thought-provoking. From there, it can become a metaphor for something else.
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In Conversation with Becky Connolly
BC: The structure came about because I wanted it to be a clear comparison; I didn’t want it to be something where it could be blamed on a change in environment, or something like that. So it was very clear to me. The character… I wanted her to be someone at an exciting stage of her life… someone happy and successful. Obviously sixth form can be stressful, but you’re also looking forward to university; so much is changing.
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In Conversation with Indy Grant
IG: (Mythological retelling) deals with really interesting themes and narratives, especially about women, Persephone being one. Helen is another, whether we think of her as Helen of Troy or Helen of Sparta, and how we only really think of her in relation to these two men, and the war that she — she doesn’t cause — but the war that she is a part of. A lot of mythology deals with women being misused, mistreated — women as objects, women as prizes, so, to sort of, retell it in a way where women have more control over their narrative was quite fun.
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In Conversation with Oliver Fiore: Part II
OF: I like the idea of making a community. Especially with creative writing, because it’s so vulnerable, I love the events we do, when we’re all reading our own work. I love the idea that someone can be comfortable enough to read something they’ve produced, maybe for the first time. Those are my favourite type of events, when we do readings, and I also just love Enigma conceptually. It’s really fulfilling my late Victorian, or modernist, like: I will make a journal! This is our brainchild.
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In Conversation with Oliver Fiore: Part I
OF: …something… that draws me to (poetry) is the capturing of the moment. I write pretty much exclusively lyric poetry, as in poetry that doesn’t necessarily need a narrative, because the moment is such a — you don’t have to obey time in a moment. And whilst a moment’s always surrounded by time, it doesn’t always have to obey it. I think the most beautiful things we have are those snapshots… So I suppose this poem is really a poem about why I like writing poetry.
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In Conversation with Charis Odoki
CO: I think the whole idea behind Ben (from “Chandeliers from Abroad”) is that he feels a lot. And to almost not understand your head and your heart– like with Boni, he’s very blunt, he’s sort of aggressive– he definitely comes across as aggressive. But with Ben, there’s so much emotion, and he’s struggling to reconcile with it. He’s someone who likes art, and all these sorts of things, and sometimes you just want to break free from race or religion or gender, or any of those brackets, and just have your own emotions and reconcile that with the world.
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In Conversation with Anna Young
AY: It’s important to me that I write, seeing as the content is quite dark and disturbing, with some element of humour. I think that the narration really helps with that. Obviously it’s quite creepy, especially as there’s a plot twist as well, so I needed somebody who’s likeable and funny at the start to make the plot twist seem more shocking.
SL: It’s the Fleabag-effect.
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