Welcome to a new episode of We’d Like a Word with Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan.
On this episode they talk to author Stephanie Scott about her brilliant debut novel What’s Left of Me is Yours and the topic of cross-genre books.
The book is literary fiction but is also a romance, a thriller and seamlessly dips its toe into several other genres, thus proving that it’s very limiting to consider books solely on ‘what shelf they would go on in book shops’.
There’s also an element of true crime in that the novel was inspired by a real life case involving a wakaresesaya – a professional Japanese ‘breaker-upper’ who was employed to seduce someone in order to shatter a marriage. These agencies really exist and the topic is discussed in the podcast, as is Stephanie’s fascinating family background and history.
STEPHANIE SCOTT is a Singaporean and British writer who was born and raised in South East Asia. She read English Literature at the Universities of York and Cambridge and holds an M.St in Creative Writing from Oxford University. She was awarded a British Association of Japanese Studies Toshiba Studentship for her anthropological work on What’s Left of Me Is Yours and has been made a member of the British Japanese Law Association as a result of her research. She has also won the A. M. Heath Prize, the Jerwood Arvon Prize for Prose Fiction, and was runner up for the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award.
Also mentioned on the show:
And we could hardly leave the podcast without mentioning two other debut novels – one by former guest Sue Clarke and one by your very own host Paul Waters. Note to Boy and Blackwatertown are now on sale wherever you find good books!
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We’d Like A Word is hosted by Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan and goes out fortnightly. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, Podcast Radio and many other podcast sites. Or you can listen to it via the hosting site – Anchor FM – by clicking here.
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