Writing Around the Kids Writing Around the Kids

Sam and Anna chat to Mira Shah about writing her debut novel during the pandemic and working around a full time job.
Mira V Shah is a #1 bestselling author and legal writer who lives in North London with her husband, three good dogs and a mediocre cat. She studied History at the University of Warwick before practising as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Mira wrote her first ever novel, HER, a psychological drama, which explores themes of flawed perception, trauma, race and class. 
HER is a #1 ebook bestseller and was published by Hodder & Stoughton in March 2023, with the paperback to follow on 23 November. Her second novel, THE HOUSESITTER will be published in 2024. 

This week Anna and Sam dive into a brilliant chat with graphic novelist Hannah Eaton. We find out her process of drawing and writing stories, including making time to write and the importance of reality TV! Plus an exclusive reading from Hannah’s short story Senior Boys.



Hannah Eaton has written and illustrated two acclaimed graphic novels: Naming Monsters (MyriadEditions, 2013) was shortlisted for the First Graphic Novel Prize and the Ninth Art Award, andBlackwood (Myriad 2020), a folk horror murder mystery of middle England, was featured in theGuardian’s Books of the Year 2020. She is currently working on a graphic memoir and an anthology of contemporary ghost stories.
Her work has been published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Asylum, Doll Hospital and The InkingWoman, and she has worked with children and adults - including street sex workers, neurodivergent parents and children experiencing difficulties in the school system - for more than 20 years as an(autistic) autism specialist support worker, teacher, learning mentor and creative workshop facilitator.

Anna and Sam talk to Luce Brett about writing from personal experience and becoming an advocate for women's health.
Luce is the author of PMSL the first incontinence memoir. It was published by Green Tree an imprint of Bloomsbury in 2020. PMSL was her first book and has been influential with healthcare professionals as well as patients and many women and men have contacted her to say it made them feel seen and heard for the first time. As well as being an author and journalist Luce international advocate for women's health. She has a strong history of saying the unsayable and challenging stigma around common but taboo conditions with kindness, insight and (sometimes bold) humour.

This episode comes with a trigger warning of depictions of birth and birth injury.

In this episode Sam and Anna speak with the wonderful Uju Asika, about her love of 'wild' writing, how much of yourself to put into your work and the joy of bringing a picture book into the world, plus Uju reads from her brilliant book Raising Boys Who Do Better.

Uju is a multi-award nominated blogger, writer, speaker and creative consultant. She is the creator of the popular family blog Babes About Town and the author of three books including her acclaimed debut Bringing Up Race: How To Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World. Hailed as 'timely and important' and one of the Best Books of September 2020 in the Evening Standard, Bringing Up Race earned a Starred Review in Publishers Weekly and was featured widely including Good Housekeeping, Woman's Hour, Marie Claire, Good Morning Sunday and The Observer. Uju's picture book A World For Me And You (Where Everyone Is Welcome) was published in 2022 and her latest book Raising Boys Who Do Better: A Hopeful Guide for A New Generation came out in June 2023. 
A former journalist, Uju has also been a screenwriter and script editor for some of Nigeria's spiciest TV dramas including the long-running soap Tinsel. Born in Nigeria, Uju grew up in the UK and has lived in London, New York and Lagos. She's based in north London with her husband Abiye and two teenage sons. In her down time, she enjoys bingeing Netflix, piling up more books than she can read and dancing in her kitchen.
You can keep up with Uju via her website ujuasika.com or her parenting blog babesabouttown.com and @babesabouttown across social media.

Anna and Sam speak to Cathy Hayward about her writing process, getting up early and running an independent
bookshop. Plus enjoy a reading from her novel The Girl in the Maze.

Cathy trained as a journalist and edited a variety of trade publications, several of which were so niche they were featured on Have I Got News for You. She then moved into the world of PR and set up an award-winning communications agency before ten years later, giving up the world of PR to become a bookseller. She took over Kemptown Bookshop in May 2022 with the aim of developing the shop into a community hub with events to engage new and established readers, celebrate local authors and support underrepresented writers. Devastated and inspired in equal measure by the death of her parents in quick succession, Cathy completed The Creative Writing Programme out of which emerged her debut novel The Girl in the Maze about the experience of mothering and being mothered. It won Agora Books' Lost the Plot Work in Progress Prize 2020 and was longlisted for the Grindstone Literary Prize 2020 and Flash500 2020. It was published by Agora Books in November 2021. She has since written two further novels and is working on a fourth. Cathy lives in Brighton – sandwiched between the Downs and the sea –  with her husband, three children, two rescue cats and one very lively Hungarian Vizsla puppy. 

This week Anna and Sam chat with Nicola Gill about her writing process, her road to getting published and how it felt to get published during the pandemic. Plus a reading from her latest novel Swimming For Beginners.

Nicola lives in London with her husband and two sons. At the age of five, when all the other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, she decided she wanted to be an author. Her ballet teacher was very relieved. Nicola is the author of The Neighbours, We Are Family and Swimming for Beginners.