Writers at Work

Anu Valia

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is writer, director, producer and actor Anu Valia, whose debut feature film, WE STRANGERS, is now streaming, very likely on your favorite service. Anu has already accumulated a resume bursting with achievement. Her first mainstream success was LUCIA, BEFORE AND AFTER, the short film she wrote and directed that won the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Jury Award.
She directed episodes of TV shows including NEVER HAVE I EVER, MIXED-ISH, LOVE LIFE, A.P. BIO, AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE BIG DOOR PRIZE, and THE AFTERPARTY. She became part of the Marvel cinematic universe as director of SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW, shown on Disney+. Now we have WE STRANGERS. Let me read to you the Rotten Tomatoes review.
"Quick-witted cleaner Rayelle takes a strange new job that spirals into the surreal when she claims she can speak to the dead. We Strangers is a darkly funny, sharp slice-of-life story about identity, power, and the quiet lines that divide us."
Any writer-director would be pleased with such a review. Let's find out what it means to Anu Valia.

Charlie English

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Charlie English, author of THE CIA BOOK CLUB. Its subtitle tells why I found, and I think you will find, Charlie's latest to be so fascinating: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature.
From its headquarters in Manhattan, the CIA Book Club secretly sent millions of banned titles, pamphlets and other reading material into the East. By the 1980s, illicit literature was so pervasive in Poland that the state censorship machine was rendered all but useless. Soon the Iron Curtain fell. As Charlie confirms with his amazing tale, books really can set us free. Charlie is a former reporter and editor for the Guardian and a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He's the author of three nonfiction books that demonstrate an open-minded curiosity. He'll be speaking with us from London.

Thomas Perry

You may have heard that Thomas Perry, the best-selling mystery writer, died this week at age 78. I was immediately saddened by the news, not just for the passing of a skilled, dependable, and imaginative author, but for the loss of someone who had become a friend. Though Tom and I were members of the mystery community, I hadn't had the pleasure of getting to know him and his wife, Jo, also an acclaimed writer, until fairly recently. They went quickly to the top of my list of people I would seek at conferences for companionship and counsel. In this interview, recorded in February, I trust you'll get a sense of why I so admired Thomas Perry. 
My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is author Thomas Perry, whose latest thriller is PRO BONO. Thomas had a long, exemplary career as a mystery and thriller writer. His debut, THE BUTCHER'S BOY, in 1983 won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.
It was the first in a series in which three subsequent novels appeared three separate decades apart. His VANISHING ACT, featuring his recurring character Jane Whitefield, was named by Parade magazine as one of the 101 Best Mysteries of All Time. Tom was a PhD in literature, wrote and or produced for such TV shows as Star Trek, The Next Generation and Simon and Simon.
He's enjoying well deserved attention these days, thanks to the FX series The Old Man, based on his 2017 novel of the same name. We of a certain vintage applaud Tom for creating a hearty protagonist who is AARP eligible but hardly in need of assistance.
Since then, he's published eight more novels, including additions to the Butcher's Boy and Jane Whitefield series. Last year's HERO introduced readers to Justin Poole, a private security agent for Hollywood celebrities and the 1%. Booklist, Kirkus and Deadly Pleasures magazine called HERO the best thriller of the year. How lucky we would all be if we maintain such high standards across more than four decades and through 31 novels.

Ben Shattuck

Before we begin, I want to tell you about an experience I had this week leading up to this Writers at Work interview. For the first time, I watched a movie as I was reading the short stories upon which it was based, not simultaneously, of course. I read the short stories in the evening, watched the film in the afternoon, read the short stories again, then watched the film one more time.
The short stories, two in a collection of 12, and the film were written by the same author, Ben Shattuck, who is our guest today. THE HISTORY OF SOUND is the name of the collection and the film, and they share more than a title. I found Ben's interpretation of his prose to be uncanny, not just on plot points, but on its ambiance, its pacing, its color, and so on. I was deeply engaged in both, not quite hypnotized, but residing deeply within the words and images.
Ben Shattuck is a writer and painter from coastal Massachusetts, a graduate and former teaching-writing fellow of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Review, The New Republic, the Paris Review Daily, and other publications. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries in New York, Boston, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the New Bedford Art Museum.
His debut short story, “Edwin Chase of Nantucket,” was selected to appear in the anthology PEN AMERICA BEST DEBUT SHORT STORIES 2017. It also appears in THE HISTORY OF SOUND collection. Ben's first book, SIX WALKS, was published by Tin House in 2022. That memoir tracks the author's retracing of six walks taken by Henry David Thoreau. His second book, THE HISTORY OF SOUND: STORIES, was published by Viking in 2024. The film THE HISTORY OF SOUND opens in the US on September 12.

Susana M. Morris

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Susana M. Morris, author of the new POSITIVE OBSESSION: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER.
For the uninitiated, Butler, who died suddenly in 2006 at age 58, was an American science fiction and speculative fiction writer who won the Hugo, Locus, and NEC Nebula awards for her work. In 1995, Butler became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
An Associate professor of Literature, Media and Communications at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Susana Morris is a black feminist scholar and a cultural critic whose writing has appeared in Cosmo, Ebony, and Gawker, among other publications. She is the author of several works including CLOSE KIN AND DISTANT RELATIVES: THE PARADOX OF RESPECTABILITY IN BLACK WOMEN'S LITERATURE. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University.
In its review of POSITIVE OBSESSION, the New York Times wrote, “Morris creates a rounded portrait of a working writer whose unrelenting discipline was complicated by her self-doubts, her financial instability, and her obsession with the craft of writing. It's a portrayal that helps illuminate the real person behind the mythical figure of our imagination.”
I say it is all that and more. I found POSITIVE OBSESSION to be a virtual tutorial on the writing life, filled with invaluable counsel from Susana Morris and her formidable subject on what is required to make a career writing the kind of books one wants to write, regardless of perceived obstacles. For that, I'm most grateful to Susana, and I'm glad to have a chance to tell her so.

Chris Lang

With me today on Writers at Work is Chris Lang, writer, creator and executive producer of UNFORGOTTEN, the beloved British crime drama broadcast in the States on PBS Masterpiece. It's now in its sixth season. Chris began his career in TV as an actor, but fairly early on he wrote episodes of THE BILL, the long-running UK police procedural.
In short order he wrote episodes of a number of TV series, including THE TUNNEL, the British-French adaptation of the Danish-Swedish crime series THE BRIDGE. Then he began a run of shows he created, leading to UNFORGOTTEN that launched in the UK in 2015.
The series, which blends the reexamination of cold cases and an intimate gaze into the complicated lives of the investigating police officers, proved immediately popular. It has survived the departure of its star, Nicola Walker. Chris, who co-founded the production company TXTV, has had many other successes at home with popular series, some of which are available here to stream. His latest, I, JACK WRIGHT, is a family drama during comparisons to SUCCESSION. You can find it on BritBox.
I hope he and you will forgive me when I suggest you visit Chris Lang's Wiki page. He's won and been nominated for too many awards to list here. The New Statesman says Lang is such a good writer, plot, dialogue, juicy subtext, he can do them all. And quite often I'll add.

Paul Muldoon

I'm joined today on Writers at Work by Paul Muldoon, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Irish Literature Prize for Poetry, among other acknowledgments. Some 30 collections of his poems have been published. Paul taught at Princeton and Oxford and served as poetry editor of the New Yorker.
Of his poetry, Clair Wills, author of Reading Paul Muldoon, wrote, “Muldoon stands by the entrance or rabbit hole and seems to invite us inside.” Critics, she reported, agree that Muldoon's poetry is playful, tricksy, erudite, given to complex rhyming structures, full of references to seemingly unconnected objects and events, that it mucks around with cliche and is often frustratingly obscure.
Undeniable, in other words. But today we won't be discussing Paul Muldoon's poetry. At least I don't think so. I contacted Paul to talk about Visible from Space, the new album by Paul Muldoon and Rogue Oliphant. Each song on Visible from Space marries Paul's lyrics with music and vocals by different members of Rogue Oliphant, a collective featuring Cait O'Riordan of the Pogues, David Mansfield of Bob Dylan's band, Warren Zanes of the Del Fuegos, among others. Produced by Tony Visconti, Visible from Space arrives on September 12th. Until then, you can find a few videos on YouTube.
It isn't Paul's first venture into rock. He wrote lyrics for The Handsome Family and co-wrote the title track of Warren Zevon's album My Ride’s Here. Paul also edited THE LYRICS: 1956 TO THE PRESENT by Paul McCartney. He's been in bands for years, including Wayside Shrines, whose members Chris Harford and Ray Kubian contribute to Visible from Space.

Denise Mina

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Denise Mina, the much admired and much honored writer from Scotland. Denise is best known for her crime novels. THE GOOD LIAR, available now, is her latest, but that is but a part of her impressive resume.
Her first novel, GARNETHILL, was published in 1998 to spectacular reviews here in the States and. And leading to the Garnethill trilogy. Then came FIELD OF BLOOD, the first of Denise’s novels featuring journalist Patty Meehan. It led to a crime series broadcast on BBC.
Established as a superior crime writer, Denise began to have her plays performed on radio and in theaters. Her short story, “Ida Tamson,” the tale of a grandmother trying to save her late daughter's child from her gangster's father, became her play of the same name. “Peter Manuel: Meet Me” reimagines the true story of a man who spent 11 hours carousing with a serial killer.
She's written comedies and documentary for TV. One of the latter was the investigation of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Denise adapted Stig Larson's Millennium trilogy for a series of graphic novels. All that while continuing to write more than a dozen novels of her own, set in different countries and different periods. She seems never to have shirked from a challenge. Denise was inducted into the Crime Writers' Association Hall of Fame.