Tender Buttons

• 041 Garth Greenwell: Grammar of Touch

  In this episode, we speak to acclaimed poet and novelist Garth Greenwell about his latest novel, Small Rain. We speak about chambers of mind and body within the architecture of the novel, and touch as something with the power to both connect us with and alienate us from our animal corporeality. We explore the embodied nature of syntax in Garth's work, and the ways in which pain can shatter this. We question the 'arts of living' and discuss the necessity of uncertainty and contradictions within fiction, and the importance of sitting with discomfort. We speak about civility, neighbourliness, political division and the myriad ways in which our lives are dependent on others. Garth Greenwell is the author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His novella Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City. References Small Rain by Garth Greenwell Cleanness by Garth Greenwell What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell Introducing Myself by Ursula K. Le Guin Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Garth's work. This conversation was recorded in person at Albatross Café in Bristol.

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• 040 Ralf Webb: Queer Masculinities

  This is a special live episode, hosted at Storysmith to mark the launch of Strange Relations by Ralf Webb. We think about the contemporary crisis in masculinity through the lives and work of mid-century American writers John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin, considering how their legacies might inform the current moment. We speak about the censorship of radical elements of these writers' work, including elements of their politics, queerness and intimacy, and consider the role of their interpersonal and intertextual relationships in understanding their work. We speak about what it means to reclaim space in the canon and expanding terms such as bisexuality, as well as notions of boyishness. We discuss the relationship between poetry and prose, the use of novelistic techniques in non-fiction and the ethical responsibility involved in writing about well-known literary figures. Ralf Webb is a poet, writer and editor based in Bristol. His debut collection of poems, Rotten Days in Late Summer was published by Penguin in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. Webb’s poetry and critical writing has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, and The Poetry Review. He currently manages a creative writing mentorship programme in collaboration with Folio and First Story, which supports school-age writers from low-income backgrounds. References Strange Relations by Ralf Webb Late Days in Rotten Summer by Ralf Webb Warped Pastoral: Ralf Webb and Sam Buchan-Watts in conversation Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Ralf's work.

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• 039 Jen Calleja: Vehicle

  In this episode, we speak to author, translator and musician Jen Calleja about her inventive novel, Vehicle. We discuss what it means to write a verse novel and the politics of translation. We discuss the use of archive and the ways in which experimental writing can meet transformative politics and possibilities. We speak about bringing the energy and ethos of DIY punk to the novel and the literary world more generally, through the importance of radical independent publishing and the role of collective writing, as well as the dangers of censorship within the arts. Jen Calleja is a poet, short story writer and essayist who has been widely published, including in The White Review, The London Magazine, and Best British Short Stories (Salt). She was awarded an Authors’ Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors to work on Vehicle, and was shortlisted for the Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize for an excerpt from the novel. She was also longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text. Prototype published her short story collection I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For in 2020. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library. Calleja played and toured in the DIY punk bands Sauna Youth, Feature, Monotony, Gold Foil and Mind Jail spanning a period of over a decade as both a drummer and a vocalist. She is also a publisher at Praspar Press. References Vehicle by Jen Calleja I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For by Jen Calleja GOBLINS by Jen Calleja and Rachel Louise Hodgson Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jen's work.

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• 038 Jason Okundaye: Living Archives

  In this episode, we speak to writer Jason Okundaye about his recent book, Revolutionary Acts. We discuss archives as living, moving things, and non-linearity as a mode of articulating queer Black histories. We think about the role of body language, tone of voice, feelings and vulnerabilities in the act of embodied transcription. We think about the notion of 'archival pleasure' and understanding the body and desire as sites of history. We discuss the necessity of oral histories being relational as opposed to extractive, and what it means to push against the 'deficit paradigm', recording stories of Black gay abundance, desire and celebration, as well as making space for mess and discomfort, refusing neat and simplistic narratives of unity within political activism. Jason Okundaye was born to British-Nigerian parents in South London in 1997. He writes essays, features, and profiles on politics and culture for publications such as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, British Vogue, GQ, Vice, Dazed, and i-D. He also co-curates the digital archive ‘Black and Gay, Back in the Day’ documenting Black LGBT life in Britain since the 1970s. His first book, Revolutionary Acts, a social history of Black gay men in Britain, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2024. References Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain by Jason Okundaye Visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Jason's work.

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• 037 Helen Oyeyemi: The Surreal City

  In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Helen Oyeyemi about her most recent novel, Parasol Against the Axe. We discuss the use of non-linearity when attempting to write about a complex city like Prague. We chat about the city as a dissociative state, and the relationship to surrealism and conflicting histories. We speak about the intimate relationship between reading, writing and desire, and the way that books can reveal details about the reader, as well as the author. We explore the book as a living object which shifts across time and space, and the use of play and perplexity across Oyeyemi's work. We discuss what it means to resist master narratives and embrace slippery, shapeshifting narrators, subverting the reader's expectations. We examine a hunger for novels which require the reader to work, and what it means to be actively involved in the process of meaning-making. Helen Oyeyeymi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won a Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread, What Is Not Yours Is Yours, and Peaces, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best Young British Novelists. References Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyeymi Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyeymi Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyeymi White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyeymi The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi De Profundis by Oscar Wilde Prague Tales by Jan Neruda

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