unfinishing Em Anderson

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.
My guest in this episode is Nathan Waddell. Nathan is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the English Literature department. He’s got interests in George Orwell, in the modernist painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, and in many other aspects of early 20th century and inter-war culture.
Alongside that – and mostly outside of work – Nathan is also an
extremely keen pianist. (And actually he admitted that he spends more time playing the piano than he does reading).
That’s a subject for a future conversation though – because in this episode we talked about a mixture of unfinished things in relation to George Orwell, the writer who’s best known for his novels “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm”.
Nathan talks me through some stories that Orwell left unfinished when he died in 1950. We then go on to talk about “Half-Life”, an unfinished videogame with Orwellian themes. And, finally, Nathan tells me about his unfinished podcast, which began as a chapter-by-chapter commentary on “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Links of interest
Nathan’s podcast, Reading Orwell is available here:  https://drnjwaddell.co.uk/reading-orwell
The podcast I mention about the essay as a form is here: Free
Thinking, Essay Writing (broadcast 10 January 2024) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001v1v4
The LRB podcast is here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast

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unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

In this epsiode Guy Waites talks about his experience sailing solo round the world, spending months alone at sea as part of the Golden Globe Race.

Over the course of the race, Guy and the other entrants faced huge storms, enormous waves, and of course the immense psychological challenge of being alone for months and months.

But, incredibly, it wasn’t any of those challenges that prevented Guy from finishing his circumnavigation in one go. It was: barnacles. So many barnacles attached themselves to Guy’s boat that he was forced to stop to remove them.

Somewhat brilliantly, though, and despite having been excluded from the race, Guy decided to continue with his journey. He completed his circumnavigation after 287 days at sea – and also having run out of food for the last few of those days.

Find out more about Guy here: https://guywaitessailing.com/

Read about the Golden Globe Race here: https://goldengloberace.com/skippers/guy-waites/

Read about the Jester Challenge here: https://jesterchallenge.wordpress.com/what-is-the-jester-challenge/


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unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

In this episode Andy Jaggard tells the story of an unfinished memoir that was written by his father Gerald.

Andy discovered the memoir after his father died, and reading it opened up a maze of mysteries and unanswered questions.

The memoir includes a lot of reflection about Andy’s grandfather – who was called Captain William Jaggard and who established a well-known bookshop in Stratford-upon-Avon. Captain Jaggard firmly believed that he was descended from the printers (whose family name is also
Jaggard) who published the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work in 1623. In the end Andy hired a professional genealogist to find out whether his grandfather was right...

But what’s really central to the memoir is the personal story it tells. When Andy found it, it ended abruptly at a crucial moment in the story.

A mysterious call from an American researcher eventually prompted Andy to research his father’s life, and to finish the memoir. In the process, he discovered some truly extraordinary events in the history of his family.

The completed memoir was published in April 2023. It’s called "Shakespeare Press" - the memoir of Gerald Jaggard completed by Andy Jaggard.

Links of interest

The Shakespeare Press:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/shakespeare-press/andy-jaggard/9781739307707

Find out more about Gerald’s memoir on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shakespeare_press_book/

Find out more online: https://shakespeare-press.com/


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/message

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

My guest in this episode is Alix Beeston, who is a writer and a Senior Lecturer in English at Cardiff University, where she researches and teaches twentieth and twenty-first century film, photography, and literature.

Alix is the perfect guest – in the last few years she’s been studying unfinished creative work. She approaches unfinished films and literary texts as windows onto the realities of artistic production for women, including the systemic barriers that affect that labour, and also as constituting significant artistic work in its own right, even if it doesn't achieve the completion of a distributed film or a published book.

In summer 2023 she published Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film, a collection of essays that she co-edited with Stefan Solomon.

Links of interest

Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520381476/incomplete

Out of Sight: Modernist Writing and the Photographic Unseen: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-and-out-of-sight-9780197673010?lang=en&cc=gb


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unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

My guests in this episode to open Series 3 are Jen Simonic and Masey Kaplan. Together, Jen and Masey founded the Loose Ends project.

The Loose Ends project has created an enormous community of knitters, embroiderers, and crafters of all varieties around the world, who finish textile works that have been left incomplete when the original crafters have passed away or become ill.

Masey and Jen have some incredibly inspiring and moving stories about the unfinished projects that have been submitted to Loose Ends – as well as some very funny ones.

To submit an unfinished project to Loose Ends, to volunteer as a finisher or translator, and to donate, visit www.looseendsproject.org.


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/message

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email unfinishing.pod@gmail.com, contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.
This is a special episode of unfinishing, all about the Northern Writers Awards (NWAs), which are perfect for this podcast because they support works in progress. With huge thanks to the staff at New Writing North who run the awards, I went along to talk to some of this year’s winners, alongside judges and authors who have won in the past:
Will Mackie, Senior Programme Manager (Talent Development) and Programme Leader (MA in Publishing)
Dr Louise Powell, writer and winner of the Sid Chaplin Award (2023)
Farzana A. Ghani, writer and winner of the Northern Promise TLC Award (2023)
Lucy Irvine, agent – Peters Fraser + Dunlop (NWA Judge)
Sairish Hussain, author and Lecturer in Creative Writing (NWA Judge)
James Harris, author and 2019 winner of the Hachette Children’s Novel Award
Naomi Kelsey, author and winner of the Arvon Award (2020) and Northern Writers’ Fiction Award (2014)
You can find out more about the Northern Writers Awards here: https://newwritingnorth.com/northern-writers-awards/⁠

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