Field Ramble

Fieldzine

For those who love the latest in fiction, non fiction and poetry. Field is a  platform for new and exciting work from across the UK and beyond.  'One of the best literary podcasts out there.' Max Porter "An utterly immersive joy." Sinéad Gleeson 'An accessible and in-depth discussion that gets beneath the topsoil of the published page.' Andrew Mcmillan 'One of the most consistently sensitive, attentive and politically astute literature podcasts around.' Keiran Goddard www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine 

  1. 6d ago

    Field Ramble with M.John Harrison

    Send us Fan Mail Few writers have reshaped British speculative fiction as quietly, or as radically, as M. John Harrison. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he has dismantled genre tropes across science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction—earning accolades from the Arthur C. Clarke Award to the Goldsmiths Prize. Hailed by writers including Olivia Laing and Robert MacFarlane as one of the most brilliant prose stylists alive today, his work is instantly recognisable.  Beautifully strange, subversive and written with a poet’s economy.   Now, in his latest, Booker-longlisted novel The End of Everything, he confronts the corrosive and alien presence of capitalism in a world inexplicably unraveling. Refusing easy answers or heroic arcs, the reader is taken to  an England where the disaster at hand is too vast, complex, and banal to fully articulate. A society where adaptation is the stuff of fiction and whose inhabitants can only think to keep going as an apocalypse of sorts rumbles on. It is eerily familiar stuff - a world unmoored from truth and made hostile by the reflex to exploit. PRAISE FOR THE END OF EVERYTHING ‘M.John Harrison is the closest thing we have to a present-day Wyndham or Ballard’ - The New Statesman  The End of Everything elucidates humanity's disintegrating existence with strange clarity' - The Guardian  'At once surreal, seductive, shrewdly funny and wholly terrifying' - Julia Armfield @fieldzine  www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine

  2. Apr 30

    Field Ramble with Zakia Sewell

    Send us Fan Mail Happy Beltane to those that celebrate, here's an extra episode to welcome those longer days that are on the way.  It’s an extended interview with author and broadcaster Zakia Sewell about the journeys and discoveries that make up Finding Albion, her search for another Britain. Born out of her 2020 radio 4 series (My Albion) - it is a rejection of a narrow and exclusionary vision of Englishness in favour of a unifying sense of national identity.  Centred around the wheel of the year and a pursuit that took Zakia the length and breadth of  our island Finding Albion is as much an exploration of our shared colonial past as it is the weird and wonderful folk customs and traditions that continue to bind our communities together.  What emerges is a (much needed) hopeful vision of our future and the offer to pursue a deeper sense of who we are. 'Hopeful and Inspiring' - Caroline Lucas 'Finding Albion offers up much-needed alternative national identities and stories for us to keep close and cherish. A timely book' - Jeremy Deller.  Huge thanks to Huw Marc Bennett and the mighty Albert's Favourites for the use of Huw's music.  Music used:  Carol Haf (Summer Carol)  Gwenith Gwyn (White Wheat)  Taken from Huw's latest album 'Heol Las,' get your copy direct from Huw's band camp page.  If you fancy getting a copy of the Finding Albion why not help the wonderful  Gloucester Road Books (Bristol) celebrate their fifth birthday by ordering it from their website.  If you enjoyed this episode, follow the pod and share with those you love. x @fieldzine  www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine

  3. Apr 24

    Field Ramble with Makenna Goodman and Ben Lerner

    Send us Fan Mail Dreams and Lies This month Sam talks to Makenna Goodman about her latest novel Helen of Nowhere. Published by Fitzcarraldo and described by Jo Hamya as ‘the perfect fairytale for our times’, it is the story of Man - an academic dogged by allusions of disgrace and a publicly failed marriage. He seeks to start again and live a ‘good life’ far from the city and is drawn into the wilds to view a house which seems to offer him escape. Set over five acts, Man is first question by Realtor, the estate agent seeking to sell him his dream home and then the eponymous Helen, the house’s former resident, whose ghost dextrously possesses the narrative as all pretence of reality falls away.  Meanwhile, Lara meets with Ben Lerner to hear all about the quite superb Transcription. The writer, father of one and narrator of Ben's new novel has travelled to Providence where he went to college, and where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety year old mentor and father of his friend, Max. But after his narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.  What unfolds from this dreamlike, nightmarish, circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate the memories that make us who we are, and a moving exploration of the experience of being a son, of becoming a man and of trying to be a ‘good’ father.  Our own tape disintegration on this episode was entirely unintended but beautifully serendipitous. If you enjoy the episode, share it with friends, lovers, loved ones and book clubbers. Big love x Helen of Nowhere is published by Fitzcarraldo Transcription is published by Granta Music used on this episode:  Hermanos Gutierrez - Nuevo Mondo  Ian Hawgood - Upwards Eyes EP @fieldzine  www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine

  4. Mar 26

    Field Ramble with Madeleine Dunnigan and John Grindrod

    Send us Fan Mail This month Sam talks to Madeleine Dunnigan about her debut novel Jean. It is set over the long, blazing summer of 1976  at Compton Manor, an isolated boarding school on the south downs. An oubliette, attended by a ragged assortment of boys who have all run out of road elsewhere. Jean is there too, searching desperately for himself among a violent mix of prejudice, antisemitism and predatory intentions. With no reliable actors in his life and cast away in the wilderness of the pre-internet era, he must navigate abandonment and his own irrepressible desire.  Meanwhile Lara speaks to John Grindrod  about his fantastic new work of social history, Tales of the Surburbia. Throughout LGBTQ+ history, suburbia has been seen as somewhere to escape from. A place where hetrosexuality rules, where difference will not be tolerated and one where you’ll never find a soulmate. But for many, those streets of twitching curtains and pebble-dashed semis were - or still are - a place to call home. Tales of the Suburbs explores the untold 20th century tale of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people in suburbia. Through remarkable archive material and original interviews. Jean is published by Daunt Books  Tales of the Suburbs is published by Faber Music Used on this episode Small Town Boy - Jose Gonzalez (Sommerville, Bronski, Steinbachek) There is a Light That Never Goes Out - Cyrus Nabipoor (Marr, Morrissey) Hand On your Heart - Jose Gonzalez (Stock Aitken Waterman) @fieldzine  www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

For those who love the latest in fiction, non fiction and poetry. Field is a  platform for new and exciting work from across the UK and beyond.  'One of the best literary podcasts out there.' Max Porter "An utterly immersive joy." Sinéad Gleeson 'An accessible and in-depth discussion that gets beneath the topsoil of the published page.' Andrew Mcmillan 'One of the most consistently sensitive, attentive and politically astute literature podcasts around.' Keiran Goddard www.fieldzine.com www.patreon.com/fieldzine 

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