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Coralie Bickford-Smith has had something of a double career. On the one hand she is a book cover designer with Penguin. She has been at the publisher for 17 years, working with Penguin's art director Jim Stoddart, and has created many distinctive titles for the brand, perhaps most significantly its Cloth Bound Classics series.

Alongside this work, she has also written and illustrated three books. The first, The Fox and the Star, was a huge success on its release in 2015, winning the Waterstone's Book of the Year award. Bickford-Smith's books feature exquisite illustration and design, making them charming for both children and adults.

With all this success, you might think Bickford-Smith's career has been a dream. Yet in her conversation with CR's editor Eliza Williams on the podcast she also discusses the difficulties she had finding her way into being a designer, and other challenges – including a dread of public speaking – that she has had to overcome along the way.

In recent years, Catherine Hyland has established herself as a creator of enigmatic, often magical images that explore different communities around the world.

She has twice been a winner in the Creative Review Photography Annual – initially in 2018 for her series Rise of the Mongolians (commissioned by WeTransfer), which looked at a sumo wrestling group in Mongolia, and also in 2019 for The Traces Left Behind, her ongoing project exploring the lives of a group of North Korean defectors in London.

Here, she talks to Eliza Williams about getting started in photography, developing her distinctive style, and the challenges of bringing a project together when everything seems to be going wrong.

For this special edition of the CR Podcast, CR Editor Eliza Williams is joined by Associate Editor Rachael Steven and Staff Writer Aimée McLaughlin to discuss which have been their favourite Christmas spots this year, and which ones deserve to go in the dumper.

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This week on the CR Podcast, we talk to photographer Sophie Ebrard about her creative highs and lows.

Read about Sophie's photo series I Didn't Want To Be A Mum: http://bit.ly/2kOFV4e

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This week, the CR Podcast chats with James Sadri of Led by Donkeys, talking about his best and worst moments.

CR Editor Eliza Williams talks to renowned author and artist Oliver Jeffers about his creative process and the highs and lows of his career