The anthropology of storytelling: Archaeology, liminality & the body with Ruthy Mason

In this episode of The Writing Life Podcast, debut novelist Ruthy Mason shares how she explores the creative possibilities of liminality and transformation in Death Do Us – a haunting story that peels back the veil from the institution of marriage and exposes the rot underneath.   Ruthy Mason is a writer based in North London. After studying archaeology and anthropology at University College London, she completed a master’s in creative writing at the University of Cambridge, and is now working towards her PhD at Anglia Ruskin University. She won the Michael Holroyd Prize for Re-creative Fiction and was shortlisted for the Mslexia Fiction Competition. Death Do Us is her first novel.   She sat down with NCW's Steph McKenna to discuss why she chose to focus on the period between engagement and marriage in her protagonist’s life, the parallels between the work of archaeologists and writers, the challenges of second-person narration, and much more.