Writers at Work

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.

Heather Clark

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is writer and literary critic Heather Clark, whose latest is THE SCRAPBOOK, her fourth book and debut novel.
Heather may be best known for RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that, she published THE ULSTER RENAISSANCE: POETRY IN BELFAST 1962-1972 and THE GRIEF OF INFLUENCE: SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES. A recipient of a PhD from Oxford, Heather also published essays and criticisms in major media in the US and UK.
THE SCRAPBOOK can be summarized as the story of an intense first love haunted by history and family memory, as it is on the dust jacket. I found it fascinating on several levels. Set in 1996, we indeed experience a tenuous love affair between two students, an American from Harvard and a visiting German, Anna. Anna, the American, follows Christoph to his home and he shows her his Germany, aware that her grandfather was among the GIs who witnessed the devastation at the Dachau concentration camp while his grandfather fought for the Wehrmacht, the Nazi armed forces. Thus we are treated to a subtly applied history lesson, one that deals with collective guilt and cultural divide even decades after the World War ended.
What motivates Christoph and whether things will end well is a source of suspense as we accompany Anna venturing into worlds not her own.

Adriana Trigiani

With me today on Writers at Work is Adriana Trigiani, who has amid a remarkable career in the arts, primarily as a writer. Her current novel is THE VIEW FROM LAKE COMO, which she describes as a story of a woman who decides to build a life she can live in, and the house that goes along with it.
The woman is an Italian-American from New Jersey. The house is in Carrera, Italy. And if you know anything about me and my work, you can pretty much guess that I love this novel.
Adriana first drew notice as a playwright, then wrote for such TV programs as The Cosby Show. Her first screenplay, Three to Get Married, was produced in 1986. Almost 30 years later, she wrote and directed the major motion picture Big Stone Gap based on her novel of the same name. She adapted her novel Very Valentine for Lifetime and directed the feature film Then Came You. Adriana wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Queen of the Big Time, the story of her father's hometown of Rosetto, Pennsylvania.
She hosts the podcast You Are What You Read and is the co-founder of the Origin Project, an in-school writing program in Appalachia that serves more than 1700 students in her home state of Virginia. As a bestselling novelist, Adriana may be best known for her Big Stone Gap series and also her Valentine trilogy.
As I understand it, Adriana has published a novel in each of the past 20 years. Many of those books celebrate her Italian heritage and working women who are tireless in the pursuit of their ambitions. I should add here that Adriana is tireless in her commitment to her readers. I'm very eager to meet and converse with a writer after my own heart.

Tom Mead

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Tom Mead, whose latest novel, THE HOUSE AT DEVIL'S NECK, confirms he is a new master of the locked-room mystery. For the uninitiated, a locked-room mystery is a tale in which the crime in question is committed in circumstances under which it appears impossible for the perpetrator to enter the scene, commit the crime, and then leave undetected. Or at least that's what Wiki tells me. Typically, there's a supernatural element or the appearance of a supernatural element. The likes of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe wrote locked-room mysteries in its golden age. More recently, Rachel Howzell Hall, Stieg Larsson, Adrian McKinty, and Ruth Ware, among others, have written well received locked-room tales.
Perhaps it says more about me than the form itself, but frankly, I can never figure out how the crime is committed and by whom, and thus how to write a locked-room mystery is beyond me.
THE HOUSE AT DEVIL'S NECK is Tom Mead's fourth novel featuring Joseph Spector, a retired magician and now an amateur investigator. The series is set in the late 1930s in and around London, and Tom fully exploits the atmosphere of the time and place. Nearby, and occasionally in opposition to Spector, is Inspector George Flint of Scotland Yard, a deliberate man unlikely to be swayed by anything other than facts.
With a wink now and then, Tom taps into all the tropes and yet produces tales that drip with nostalgia, yet surprises and delights.