On Better Words: Anna Zoe Quirke
A joyful platonic love story (complete with 80s style love declarations)
Anna Zoe Quirke is a queer and autistic author and librarian from the North of England. She lives in Manchester with her partner, Rachael, and their very angry tortoise, Sheldon. They’re at their happiest writing stories about queer and neurodivergent people finding and claiming their place in the world, exploring the literary wonders of the UK, or making a big ol’ mess in the kitchen baking things for their loved ones. Something to be Proud of is their debut novel.
🎧 Listen to the episode on Spotify below or search ‘Better Words’ in your podcast player 🎧
Things we talked about
The characters of Ollie and Imogen
Why Anna wanted to explore divorce and parental relationships through Ollie
The importance of having Imogen's autism part of the story
Ollie and Imogen's beautiful friendship love story
New Writing North and Anna's journey to publication
Other recommendations
Before we chat with our featured author, we always share some other recommendations. This week was a film/theatre review based on one of our favourite book clubs to date.
Prima Facie (National Theatre Live re-release)
Tessa has built a prestigious career as a barrister, a world away from her working-class roots. But when she is raped on a date with a colleague, she must reckon with everything she's believed about the law and justice. This is a stunning, thought-provoking and emotional novel. We want everyone to read it. Earlier this year we read and discussed Prima Facie and we finally got the chance to see the National Theatre Live recording of Jodie Comer performing in the West End. We were absolutely blown away by her incredible performance.
- Caitlin & Michelle
🎧 Search ‘Better Words’ in your favourite podcast player to get new episodes as soon as they’re live. We’ll be back with another episode next Wednesday! 🎧