Books Up Close: The Podcast

In this episode I talk to Seth Insua about his novel Human, Animal (2025)Seth Insua is an Anglo-Spanish writer and artist. He was born in Kent in 1989. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a First in English Language and Literature. His debut novel, Human, Animal, was published by VERVE Books in 2025 and Letras de Plata in Spanish the following year. It was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club with Sara Cox, and shortlisted for both the inaugural New Adult Book Prize and the Book of the Year: Discover by the British Book Awards. He lives with his husband, David, between Newcastle upon Tyne and Madrid.Episode notes: Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 'Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading...' Roland Barthes, S/Z (the proairetic code)Book recs: Saleem Haddad, Floodlines (go back and listen to my interview with Saleem!) Josh Silver, Fruit FlyFollow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Seth at sethinsua.com or @sethinsua on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I talk to Torrey Peters about her story 'Stag Dance' from the collection of the same name.  Torrey Peters’ first novel, Detransition, Baby won the PEN/ Hemingway Award 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book. A Times Top Ten bestseller, it was longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her follow-up Stag Dance is a quartet of short stories that explore trans life past, present and future.Episode notes: William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity Strunck and White, The Elements of StyleBook recs: Halldor Laxness, Independent People (trans. J. A. Thompson) Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling (trans. Anne McLean) João Guimarães Rosa, Vastlands: The Crossing (Alison Entreckin)Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Sasha on IG @sashajdm. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I talk to Sasha Debevec-McKenney about her poem 'WHAT AM I AFRAID OF?' from her collection Joy is My Middle Name.Sasha Debevec-McKenney is the author of the poetry collection Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo, 2025). She received her MFA from New York University, was the 2020–2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and a 2023-2025 Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in places like The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Drift, and Granta. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut and is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University.Episode notes Diane Seuss, frank: sonnetsBook recs: Yasmin Zaher, The Coin Steven Duong, At the End of the World There is a Pond Elisa Gonzales, Grand TourFollow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Sasha on IG @sashajdm. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I talk to Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant about their edited book Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (2025).Dan Sinykin is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at Emory University and Johanna Winant is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College.Episode notes William Carlos Williams, 'The Red Wheelbarrow' Winant, 'The Claims of Close Reading' 'No Crisis', LARB 'Close Reading is a Conversation', The American Vandal  Morten Høi Jensen, The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic MountainBook recs:  Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, The Leopard Solvej Balle, On The Calculation of Volume, Vol III Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal Mark Haber, Lesser Ruins Mircea Cartarescu, SolenoidFollow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Johanna on BlueSky and Dan on BlueSky or Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I talk to Sara Ahmed about her book No is Not a Lonely Utterance: the Art and Activism of Complaining (2025).Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her most recent book is No is Not a Lonely Utterance: the Art and Activism of Complaining, which was published by Allen Lane in September 2025, and which follows on from The Feminist Killjoy Handbook also published by Allen Lane in 2023. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019),  Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (201$), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations Objects, Others all published by Duke University Press. She blogs at feministkilljoys.com and has a newsletter https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/.Sara's book recs:  Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Survival is a Promise; Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, The Cancer Journals, The Black Unicorn, A Burst of LightFollow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Follow Sara on Bluesky (@saranahmed) or Instagram (@feministkilljoyatwork). Please leave feedback here. Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this new episode, I talk to Saleem Haddad about his novel Floodlines (2026), which came out yesterday, Feb 12.Saleem Haddad was born to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father. His writing spans novels, short stories, essays, and film and television. His debut novel, Guapa (2016), won the Polari Prize and was awarded a Stonewall Honour. His second novel, Floodlines, is published by Europa Editions.Episode references: Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World Stephen King, On Writing Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird  Clarice LispectorSaleem's Book recs: Fernando Pessoa (trans. Richard Zenith), The Book of Disquiet Yasmin Zaher, The Coin Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (trans. Hazem Jamjoum), No One Knows Their Blood TypeFind Saleem on Instagram and at his website.Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this new episode - the start of season 2!!!! - I talk to the amazing Elaine Castillo about her novel Moderation (2025).(Also I said Dostoyevsky in the episode but obviously meant Tolstoy, so sorry).Named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, Elaine Castillo is the author of the debut novel America is Not the Heart, the book of literary criticism How to Read Now, and her most recent novel, Moderation, recently named a New Yorker Best Book of 2025,  a TIME Must Read Book of 2025, and a Best Book of 2025 by Kirkus Reviews. She works so her rescue German shepherd Vincent can live a better life.Episode references: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss Jane Austen, Persuasion Toni Morrison, Paradise J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings and 'On Fairy Stories' Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Émile Zola, Germinal Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed Karen Hao, Empire of AIFollow the show (and Elaine) on Instagram.  Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this festive holiday special, I talk with Prof. Holly Furneaux about Charles Dickens' classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Professor Holly Furneaux teaches and researches Victorian literature and culture at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality, and the history of emotions. Following her first book Queer Dickens (2009) she has continued her fascination with Dickens. She was adviser on the BBC series Dickensian and an organiser of the annual Dickens Day for over a decade. Holly's latest book is Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict (2025), which develops her interests in war and emotion, explored in Military Men of Feeling (2016). She is now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period.Episode references: Dickens, Household Words Preface to Bleak House Michael Slater, Charles Dickens Paul Davis, 'Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture-Text' Charles Dickens, 'Somebody's Luggage'Follow the show on Instagram.  Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Michael Donkor about his novel Grow Where They Fall (2023); we talk about a passage from p.83 of the paperback edition.Michael Donkor studied English at Wadham College, Oxford and then undertook a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway,  London. The Observer named him as one of 2018's best debut authors for his first novel Hold (4th Estate) and in 2019, he was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel Grow Where They Fall was published by Penguin in 2024. He has judged the Betty Trask Prize, the BBC's National Short Story Award and he regularly reviews for the Guardian.Episode references: Isabella Hammad, Enter GhostFollow the show on Instagram. Find Michael on Instagram (@m_donks) and X (@MichaelDonkor).Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd. 

In this episode I talk to Victoria Adukwei Bulley's poem 'The Ultra-Black Fish' from her collection Quiet (2022). You can also read the poem at Granta.Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber & Faber in the UK and in North America by Knopf, Penguin Random House.Episode references: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals Saidiya Hartman, Waywards Lives, Beautiful Experiments  Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet and Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being Layli Long Solider, Whereas Rickey Laurentiis, Death of the First IdeaFollow the show on Instagram. Find Victoria on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this SPOOKY Halloween special, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Kaja Franck about a section from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.Dr Kaja Franck is a Lecturer in English Literature and Programme Lead for the online MA: Literature & Culture  at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research centres on monsters and monstrous animals. She has previously published on the depiction of werewolves in Dracula (1897), the Canadian Gothic and YA fiction, alongside organising international conferences on werewolves, vampires and faeries in literature and popular culture. Her monograph, The Ecogothic Werewolf in Literature: Wolves, Woods and Wilderness, emerged panting into the wild this year. More recent publications include chapters on troll horror, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-8) and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). She has a soft spot for terrible shark horror.Episode references: E. Gerard, The Land Beyond the Forest Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves John Polidori, The Vampyre Clemence Housman, The Werewolf Emily Habeck, Shark Heart Rachel Yoder, NightbitchFollow the show on Instagram. Find Kaja on twitter (@kajafranck). Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Danielle Cameron about the opening paragraphs of Joan Didion's essay 'Goodbye to All That' from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968). Danielle is a British Mauritian writer and academic based in London. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of East Anglia, and her interdisciplinary research focuses upon interrelationships between the writing of age in literature and sociological developments. Danielle is currently writing her first book, which explores how adulthood (as defined by marriage, mortgage and career) is a neoliberal construct, and the ways in which novels both reproduce and resist this norm. From the 2024/25 academic year, Danielle will be working as a Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science at the London School of Economics, where she will be teaching on the School’s flagship interdisciplinary course LSE100.Episode references: Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now Danielle's book recs: Elaine Castillo, Moderation; Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York and The Intuitionist; Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind; Vauhini Vara, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age; Ariel Saramandi, Portrait of an Island on FireFollow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Danielle and LSE100 on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a section from Harry Nicholas' memoir A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar : A Journal of Self (and Sexual) Discovery (2023) - it's on p.103 of the UK paperback. You can buy Harry's book from bookshop.org or your local indy store.Harry Nicholas is a writer, campaigner and gay trans man living in London. He has written for The Guardian, GQ and Dazed. A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar is his first book.Episode references: Travis Alabanza, None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary; Jack Parlett, Fire Island: A Queer History; Lou Sullivan, Youngman: Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan; Matthew Todd, Straight Jacket: Overcoming Society's Legacy of Gay Shame. Nicola Dinan, Bellies; Andrew McMillan, Physical; Joelle Taylor, The Night Alphabet; Shon Faye, Love in Exile; Hugo Greenhalgh, The Diaries of Mr Lucas.Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Harry on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Jane Yeh's poem 'This Morning,' from her collection The Ninjas. You can read the poem online, and buy this collection from your local bookshop, or at Bookshop.org.Jane Yeh was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. Her collection Discipline (Carcanet, 2019) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was named a Next Generation poet by the PBS for her collection The Ninjas (Carcanet, 2012), and her first collection, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Forward, Whitbread, and Jerwood Aldeburgh poetry prizes.Episode references: Jane's 'craft book' recs: Rishi Dastidar (ed.), The Craft;  Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird; Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town Jane's recs: Morgan Parker, The Magical Negro; Hala Alyan, The Twenty-Ninth Year; Terrance Hayes, LightheadFollow the show on Instagram. Find Jane on Instagram, Bluesky, and her website. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Richard Scott's poem 'Still Life with Snail, Oyster, Spoon and Shallot Vinegar' from his collection That Broke into Shining Crystals (2025). You can buy this book, and his previous collection Soho, from your local bookshop or from Faber.Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and most recently That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Episode references: Still lives: Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 'Still Life' and N. Adama, 'Still Life of Oysters and a Prawn on a Ledge, with a Snail and a Butterfly' Sappho, trans. Anne Carson Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures The Letters of Emily Dickinson Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, A Treatise on StarsFollow the show on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a passage from Okechukwu Nzelu's Here Again Now (p.47 of the UK paperback). You can buy this book and Nzelu's previous novel from your local bookshop or at Bookshop.org.Dr Okechukwu Nzelu FRSL won a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North in 2015. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read and distributed to all staff and students at three universities. His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Diverse Book Awards. He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a non-executive director of ALCS and CLA, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Episode references: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf John Milton, Paradise Lost Janet Burroway (with Elizabeth and Ned Stuckey-French), Writing Fiction Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow George Eliot, Middlemarch John Williams, StonerFollow the show (and Okechukwu) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a passage from the end of chapter 1 of Abigail Bergstrom's new novel Selfish Girls. You can buy this and her previous book What a Shame from your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.Abigail Bergstrom is an author and writer, she has written for national magazines and broadsheets including the Guardian, Sunday Times, the Telegraph, Grazia and ELLE, and she reviews books for the quarterly magazine, Konfek. She writes the substack newsletter ‘Something to Say,’ offering writing advice and cultural commentary to thousands of readers worldwide. Her debut novel What a Shame was published to critical acclaim and the screen rights were optioned by Severn Productions. Her second novel Selfish Girls publishes this summer. She is also the founder of Bergstrom Studio, a literary agency and publishing consultancy that has represented many Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling authors whose books have won literary prizes and awards. She has been listed in the ‘The Bookseller 150’ which names the industry’s most influential and she sits on the advisory board for Cheltenham Literature festival.Episode references: Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; The Bone Project Melissa Febos, The Dry Season and Body Work; Guadalupe Nettel, Still Born; Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection; Georges Perec, ThingsFollow the show (and Abi) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Peter Scalpello's poem 'Performance Archive', which you can read online at Berlin Lit. You can also buy Peter's first collection Limbic from your local bookshop or at Cipher Press.Peter Scalpello is a poet and psychotherapist from Glasgow, based in London. Their work has appeared in Five Dials, Granta, The London Magazine and the New York Times, among other publications. Peter’s debut, Limbic, was Highly Commended for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Poetry, and adapted into a stage production at the University of Edinburgh. Their second book, Mirrorstage, will be published with Cipher Press in 2026.Episode references: Jacques Lacan; Paul B. Preciado; So Mayer; Nisha Ramayya; Oluwaseun Olayiwola; Isabel Waidner Peter's book recs: T. Fleischmann, Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through; Andrew McMillan, Physical; Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy and Fourth Person Singular; Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes; Shon Faye, Love in Exile.Follow the show on Instagram, and more information a human-made transcript on Substack. Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!You can buy The Emperor of Gladness at a local bookshop or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the opening of the story 'Shut Your Mouth' from Marni Appleton's collection I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY. Buy the book from a local indie bookshop, Bookshop.org, or Indigo Press.Marni Appleton is a writer living in London. She holds a PhD in creative and critical writing from the University of East Anglia. Her fiction has been published in literary journals such as The London Magazine, Banshee and The Tangerine. I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY is Marni’s first book, and was published by the Indigo Press in February 2025.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the opening passage from Gurnaik Johal's new novel Saraswati (2025). Buy the book from a local independent bookshop or Bookshop.org.Gurnaik Johal’s short story collection, We Move, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Tata Literature Live! Prize and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 2022. Saraswati, his first novel, is out on 12th June.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I review Sophie Lewis' Enemy Feminisms.These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!You can buy Enemy Feminisms from your local bookstore or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a passage (p. 55 of the hardback) from Tawseef Khan's novel Determination (2024). Buy the book from a local independent bookshop or Bookshop.org.Tawseef Khan is a qualified immigration solicitor and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Liverpool, where he examined the fairness of the British asylum system. He is also a graduate of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where he received the Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. His fiction has appeared in Lighthouse and Test Signal: a Northern anthology; his non-fiction in the New York Times, The Face and Hyphen. His debut non-fiction book Muslim, Actually was published by Atlantic in 2021 and his novel Determination was published in 2024. He lives in Manchester.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I review Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection (2022/5), trans. by Sophie Hughes. These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!You can buy Perfection from your local bookstore, Fitzcarraldo, or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read a passage from Amy Key's Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life (2023). Buy the book from a local independent bookshop or Bookshop.org.Amy Key is a writer based in London. She is the author of Arrangements in Blue (Jonathan Cape, 2023), chosen as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Granta and shortlisted by Foyles for their Non Fiction Book of the Year 2023. She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe (Salt, 2013) and Isn’t Forever (Bloodaxe, 2018). Her essays have appeared in the collections At The Pond (2019) and By the River (2024) published by Daunt, as well as Granta, Vogue, The Observer, The Poetry Review, Independent and elsewhere. She writes the substack So Glad I’m Me.Episode links:Amy Key, ‘A Bleed of Blue’; Roddy Lumsden; Joni Mitchell, Blue; The Crystals, ‘Please Hurt Me’; Kathryn Scanlon, Kick the Latch; Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume; Shon Faye, Love in Exile; Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story; Melissa Febos, Body Work and The Dry Season.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I review Anthony Passeron's Sleeping Children (2022/5). These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!You can buy Sleeping Children your local bookstore or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the opening of Lola Olufemi's Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (2021). Buy the novel from a local independent bookshop, Bookshop.org, or directly from Hajar Press.Dr. Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher who  completed her doctorate based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in processes of materialist resistance and collective conceptualisations of futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (2021), the forthcoming Against Literature (2026) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I review Saou Ichikawa's novel Hunchback (2023). These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!You can buy Ichikawa's novel from your local bookstore or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the opening of Seán Hewitt's Open, Heaven (2025). Buy the novel from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.Seán Hewitt’s debut poetry collection, Tongues of Fire, received the Laurel Prize and was shortlisted for many awards, including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. All Down Darkness Wide, his memoir, was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and for the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and he has collaborated with the artist Luke Edward Hall on 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World. His second collection of poetry is Rapture’s Road. Hewitt lectures at Trinity College Dublin, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2022, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Open, Heaven (2025) is his first novel.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, I review Torrey Peters' book Stag Dance (2025). These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already! You can buy Torrey Peters' book from your local bookstore or Bookshop.org.Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Richie Hofmann's poem 'Breed Me', first published in Poetry. You can buy Richie's other books from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.Richie Hofmann’s new book of poems, The Bronze Arms, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. He is also the author of A Hundred Lovers and Second Empire, and his poems appear in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry.Follow Richie on most social platforms @richiehof. Find the transcript, the poem we discuss, and more about the episode on Substack. Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the start of chapter 4 of Noreen Masud's A Flat Place (2023), pages 98-9 in the UK paperback edition. Buy the book from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her academic monograph, Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the MSA First Book Award 2023 and the University English Prize in 2024. Her memoir-travelogue, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton [Penguin] and Melville House Press, 2023), was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award, the Jhalak Prize, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Books are my Bag Reader Awards.Follow Noreen on Instagram (@NoreenMasud) and Bluesky (@noreenmasud.bsky.social).Find the transcript, the extract we discuss, and more about the episode on Substack. Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read Andrew McMillan's Pity (2024). Buy the novel from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physical was the only ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers’ award (2014). It was shortlisted the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. In 2019 it was voted as one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018, a Poetry Book of the Month in both The Observer and The Telegraph, a Poetry Book of the Year in The Sunday Times and won the inaugural Polari Prize. His third collection, pandemonium, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and 100 Queer Poems, the acclaimed anthology he edited with Mary Jean Chan, was published by Vintage in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards. Physical has been translated into French, Galician, German and Norwegian editions, with a double-edition of physical & playtime published in Slovak in 2022. He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, was published by Canongate in 2024, and was named as one of the top 20 books of 2024 by The Independent. It has been translated into numerous languages including Norwegian, Swedish, French, German, Turkish and Slovak.Find the transcript, the extract we discuss, and more about the episode on Substack. Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this episode, we read the ending of Olivia Sudjic's Asylum Road (2021). Buy the novel from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.Olivia Sudjic was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels (Asylum Road and Sympathy), and Exposure, a non-fiction exploration of art-making, feminism and anxiety in the digital age.Find the transcript, the extract we discuss, and more about the episode on Substack. Follow the podcast on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In this trailer, hear Chris Lloyd introduce his new podcast, a spinoff of the Books Up Close YouTube channel. The first episode drops FEBRUARY 14.  Please subscribe now and be ready for it.Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.Please leave feedback here.Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.