San Clemente

Grace Bailey
  • 4.3 (6)
  • ARTS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Growing together through chats with the best creatives from all over the world. Everything you want to know, and didn't know you wanted to know, without the formality and myth of 'greatness'. Part of the San Clemente magazine.

  1. 29/08/2025

    Séan Hewitt: Why do we need bad people to write good books?

    Open, Heaven has been praised by Anne Enright, Kaveh Akbar, Ferdia Lennon, Michael Magee, The Guardian, The FT and became an Instant Irish Times Bestseller.  Seán Hewitt FRSL is a poet, memoirist, novelist and literary critic.    His debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire, won The Laurel Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their "30 under 30"  artists in Ireland. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism was published with Oxford University Press (2021).    His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, was published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA (2022). It was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards, for the Foyles Book of the Year in non-fiction, for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Polari Prize, the Michel Déon Prize, and for a LAMBDA award. He won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022.  300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World, illustrated by Luke Edward Hall, was published in 2023. A second collection of poetry, Rapture's Road, was published in 2024, and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. His work has been translated into more than 10 languages. He is Assistant Professor in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Get the book here or at your local bookshop.  Set in the English countryside, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year as two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives.   THE LITERARY DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR: a gloriously alive coming- of-age story about male friendship and diving into love for the first time.   On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own.   As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever. Enthralling and richly immersive, Open, Heaven is a debut novel about the freedom of youth, the sacrifices of friendship, and the possibilities of love in all its forms.

    1h 8m

  2. 14/08/2025

    Farah Nayeri: What Makes an Artist?

    What does it mean to make art? Can a robot do it? How did a sentient AI piece of art take over one of London's biggest galleries? Can art change the world? So many big questions, and, fortunately, an expert is here to talk us through it. Farah Nayeri is a world-renowned authority on art. She’s the host of the podcast CultureBlast where she interviews creative stars like Emma Thompson, Ai WeiWei and Marina Abramović. She’s the author of Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age. She’s a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Frieze and the Art Newspaper.  Follow Farah on Instagram for frankly incredible updates on the art world.

    38 min

  3. 30/07/2025

    Madhumita Murgia: We Need to Talk About AI, Here's How

    You are a voice in your community. AI is already impacting you life and your environment. Madhumita tells us why it matters that we get involved and where to go for guidance. Madhumita Murgia is the author of Code Dependent which was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction last year. She’s the first AI Editor for The Financial Times. She was previously Tech Editor for The Telegraph and Associate Editor for WIRED. She’s the host of the podcast Tech Tonic.  Code Dependent has been praised by The Guardian, The Times, Martha Lane Fox, New Scientist, The Telegraph and Shoshana Zuboff.  Get the book here or at your local bookshop.  Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency – and shatter our illusion of free will.AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

    49 min

  4. 18/05/2025

    Folakunle Oshun: Sculpture, Lagos Biennial & Art with Purpose

    Folakunle Oshun is an artist and curator currently based in Paris. He is the Founder of the Lagos Biennial, a non-profit contemporary art platform that privileges adventurous approaches to artmaking, presentation, and critical discourse–aspiring to broach complex social and political problems, cultivate new publics, and establish fresh modes of engagement within the city, as well as throughout the country and internationally. Its next exhibition is in 2026.  You might know Folakunle from his work curating the incredibly popular Lagos, Peckham, Repeat Exhibition for the South London Gallery. He was also invited to Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne as a guest curator for the group exhibition LOOK AT THIS in 2021. He also served as an advisor for the Africa Season (2020). His solo exhibition “Museum of Hope” opened in the same year at the Berliner Dom. Oshun earned a B.A. in Visual Art from the University of Lagos, majoring in Sculpture, and an M.A. in Art History. He was the first recipient of the Curator-in-Residence grant by the Potsdam City Council, Brandenburg, Germany, in (2017).   In 2021, Folakunle Oshun was invited as Guest Professor to the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe to lead the seminar “Spatial Politics and Story Telling.” He is currently a Doctoral candidate at the Heritage Laboratory, of Cergy University, École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, France. He also lectures at the university.

    1h 3m

  5. 18/05/2025

    Rochelle Harrington: Representation on Screen, Embarrassing Auditions & Travel Bucket Lists

    Actress Rochelle Harrington is one of the new stars of Netflix's hit series, Geek Girl. Inspired by Holly Smale's series of novels, Geek Girl follows the geeky and socially awkward Harriet Manners who's recruited by a top modeling agent and unexpectedly embarks on a modeling career. Playing Harriet's best friend and fellow model, is acting newcomer, Rochelle Harrington as Natalie "Nat" Grey. Watch the show on Netflix here.

    55 min

  6. 18/05/2025

    Marianne Brooker: Assisted Dying, Austerity and Creativity

    Intervals has been praised by The Guardian, the Observer, Publisher’s Weekly, Elinor Cleghorn (author of Unwell Women) and Prospect Magazine. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.  Marianne Brooker is based in Bristol, where she works for a charity campaigning on climate and social justice. She has a PhD from Birkbeck and a background in arts research and teaching. She won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for Intervals, her first book.  Get the book here or at your local bookshop.  What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker’s mother was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She made a workshop of herself and her surroundings, combining creativity and activism in inventive ways. But over time, her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. Determined to die in her own home, on her own terms, she stopped eating and drinking in 2019. In Intervals, Brooker reckons with heartbreak, weaving her first and final memories with a study of doulas, living wills and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care. Blending memoir, polemic and feminist philosophy, Brooker joins writers such as Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson, Donald Winnicott and Lola Olufemi to raise essential questions about choice and interdependence and, ultimately, to imagine care otherwise.

    30 min

  7. 18/05/2025

    Santanu Bhattacharya: Widening Queer Narratives, Character Development & Comedic Genius

    Santanu Bhattacharya grew up in India, and studied at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. He won the Desmond Elliott Prize Residency in 2023, and the Mo Siewcharran and Life Writing Prizes in 2021. His first novel, One Small Voice, was an Observer best debut novel of 2023, and was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and the Society of Authors’ Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. He now lives in London. Deviants has been praised by The Guardian, The i Paper and The Financial Times. Santanu’s first book One Small Voice has been celebrated by Max Porter, Nikesh Shukla, Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Irish Times and The Guardian.  Get the book here or at your local bookshop.  Vivaan, a teenager in India’s silicon plateau, has discovered love on his smartphone. Intoxicating, boundary-breaking love. His parents know he is gay, and their support is something Vivaan can count on, but they don’t know what exactly their son gets up to in the online world. For his uncle, born thirty years earlier, things were very different. Mambro’s life changed forever when he fell for a male classmate at a time, and in a country, where the persecution of gay people was rife under a colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality. And before that was Mambro’s uncle Sukumar, a young man hopelessly in love with another young man, but forced by social taboos to keep their relationship a secret at all costs. Sukumar would never live the life he yearned for, but his story would ignite and inspire his nephew and grand-nephew after him. Bold and bracing, intimate and heartbreaking, Deviants examines the histories we inherit and the legacies we leave behind.

    1h 25m

  8. 17/05/2025

    Lucy Steeds: Women in Art, Provence & Feasts

    The Artist has been praised by The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Yael van der Wouden (The Safekeep), Sarah Perry (Essex Serpent) and is a Best Book of 2025 for Good Housekeeping and Stylist. It’s longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Lucy Steeds is a novelist and a graduate of the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in World Literatures from the University of Oxford. She has lived in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Singapore. The Artist is her first novel. Get the book here or at your local bookshop.  PROVENCE, 1920 Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire.

    56 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.3
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Growing together through chats with the best creatives from all over the world. Everything you want to know, and didn't know you wanted to know, without the formality and myth of 'greatness'. Part of the San Clemente magazine.

Information

  • Creator
    Grace Bailey
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Grace Bailey
  • Show Website
    San Clemente