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For our first episode after quite a long break, we talk to Eley Williams, author of Attrib. and Other Stories and The Liar’s Dictionary. Eley was recently named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and we thought this was the perfect excuse to invite her on the show.
On this episode, Eley reads from her story Bees and talks to us about the misuse, challenge and joy of language. Eley also shares her (hypocritical!) editing advice, her journey to publication and passion for small press publishing.

Eley Williams is the author of a collection of short stories, Attrib., which was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2018. Her second book, The Liar’s Dictionary, won the 2021 Betty Trask Award and was a Guardian Book of the Year.
With stories anthologised in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story (Penguin Classics, 2018) and Liberating the Canon (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2018), Eley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Show notes: Livia Franchini, Dostoevsky Wannabe, Nell Stevens, Shaler’s Fish by Helen McDonald, Ali Smith, Granta, Scratch Books
Podcast music is by Andrew Everitt
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- Briefly, a Delicious Life – Nell Stevens£9.99
- Reverse Engineering II£9.99
- Public Library and Other Stories£9.99
- The First Person and Other Stories£9.99
- Other Stories and Other Stories – Ali Smith£8.99
- Reverse Engineering£9.99
- The liar’s dictionary – Eley Williams£8.99
- Our Available Magic – Livia Franchini£4.99
- Liar’s Dictionary – Eley Williams£14.99
- Attrib. and Other Stories£9.99