San Clemente

Grace Bailey

Growing together through chats with the best creatives from all over the world. Everything you want to know, and didn't know you wanted to know, without the formality and myth of 'greatness'. Part of the San Clemente magazine.

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April 23 · 41 min
Claire Adam: The Value of Reading
Claire Adam is a novelist born and raised in Trinidad, who studied Physics at Brown University before settling in London. Her debut novel Golden Child won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, and the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and was named one of the BBC's 100 Novels that Changed the World. In this episode, Grace talks to Claire about finding the voice of a reluctant narrator, what fiction can do that facts cannot, and why once you feel something in a book, it stays with you permanently. Love Forms was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. The Booker judges called it "a rare and low-pitched achievement" that "reads like a hushed conversation overheard in the next room." The Times described it as "every bit as good as her debut" and likened it to "a Claire Keegan story expanded by Elizabeth Strout." The FT said it "achieves a sort of alchemy." Find the book here or get it your local seller.
April 20 · 1 hr 4 min
Alex Kadis: AI in Music, Writing Funny Women, Second Generation Immigration in the 70's
Alex Kadis is a writer, music journalist and industry consultant. Half-British, half-Greek, she grew up in Leyton and Walthamstow and studied English Literature at Goldsmiths. She was Features Editor at Smash Hits in its heyday and has written for Sunday Times Style and Q Magazine, before moving into artist management and consultancy. Her debut novel Big Nobody is out now with Penguin Random House. Grace and Alex talk about the book's 1970s East London setting, the push and pull of immigrant identity, what it means to finally feel like a somebody, and what AI can and can't do with art. Xochitl Gonzalez called it a novel that "broke my heart one minute and had me really laughing the next." Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review, and the Guardian wrote that Kadis has produced "a debut that sparkles like Marc Bolan's eye makeup." Pandora Sykes called it "riotously funny, nostalgic, and immensely touching." Get the book here or at your local seller.
April 15 · 59 min
Ashley Hickson-Lovence: Ireland, Writing as Music and Making Life Your Book Club
Ashley Hickson-Lovence is a novelist, poet and lecturer in Creative Writing. He grew up in Hoxton and Holloway and is the author of The 392, Your Show, and Wild East, which won the East Anglian Book Awards 2024 overall and the Diverse Book Awards 2025 YA prize. His poetry collection Why I Am Not a Bus Driver came out in 2025, with the poem "Munster Road" highly commended for Best Single Poem at the Forward Prize and featured in the Forward Prize Book of Poetry 2026. His new novel About to Fall Apart is out now with Faber. It's been praised by Ferdia Lennon, Christine Anne Foley and Margaret McDonald. As we talk about, it's a real example of how literature can bring us closer to the overlooked figures in our lives. Candice Carty-Williams called The 392 "completely, overwhelmingly in a league of its own." Your Show was praised by The Observer for its "freestyle poetry" and "stirring" storytelling. Wild East earned him a Black Excellence Award nomination for Outstanding Contribution to Literature. You can get the book here or at your local seller.
April 13 · 41 min
Val Ravalgia: Electric Dreams at the Tate
Val Ravaglia is a curator born in Rome who has been based at Tate Modern since 2012, where she is now Curator of Displays and International Art. She holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium at Birkbeck and has curated or co-curated works by artists including Hito Steyerl, Rebecca Horn, Nam June Paik, Phyllida Barlow and Monster Chetwynd, as well as leading the rehang of the entire Tate Modern collection ahead of the opening of the New Tate Modern in 2016. Val most recently curated Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet at Tate Modern, which gives us a lot to think about as AI becomes a greater part of our conversations. The Daily Telegraph called it "a nerd's nirvana" with a premise that was "simple, smart, and electrifying." The Upcoming described it as "an engrossing exhibition" that revealed how artists "forged new creative frontiers." Studio International called it "an impressive amalgamation of research" with "scope and ambition" that ranked it among the most significant shows of 2024.
April 9 · 50 min
Liz Allan: Female Friendships, The Value of Literature & Australia
After moving from Australia to follow her dreams, Liz is now one of The Observer's 2026 Best Debut Novelists for her book In Bloom. She's been praised by The Guardian, Alice Slater, Saraid de Silva and Louise Hegarty for her complex depiction of girlhood in an isolated Australian town in the 90's. She's also been interviews for The Times about her book and her work as a teacher in the UK. She's even been noted in the BBC's wider list of 12 Books to Read in 2026. We get to talk about how grunge music became an empowering escape for girls like The Bastards of In Bloom and how female friendships have always been a strong support for Liz. Get the book ⁠here⁠ or at your local seller.
Aug 29, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
Séan Hewitt: Why do we need bad people to write good books?
Open, Heaven has been praised by Anne Enright, Kaveh Akbar, Ferdia Lennon, Michael Magee, The Guardian, The FT and became an Instant Irish Times Bestseller. Seán Hewitt FRSL is a poet, memoirist, novelist and literary critic. His debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire, won The Laurel Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their "30 under 30" artists in Ireland. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism was published with Oxford University Press (2021). His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, was published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA (2022). It was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards, for the Foyles Book of the Year in non-fiction, for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Polari Prize, the Michel Déon Prize, and for a LAMBDA award. He won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World, illustrated by Luke Edward Hall, was published in 2023. A second collection of poetry, Rapture's Road, was published in 2024, and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. His work has been translated into more than 10 languages. He is Assistant Professor in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. Set in the English countryside, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year as two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. THE LITERARY DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR: a gloriously alive coming- of-age story about male friendship and diving into love for the first time. On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own. As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever. Enthralling and richly immersive, Open, Heaven is a debut novel about the freedom of youth, the sacrifices of friendship, and the possibilities of love in all its forms.
Aug 14, 2025 · 37 min
Farah Nayeri: What Makes an Artist?
What does it mean to make art? Can a robot do it? How did a sentient AI piece of art take over one of London's biggest galleries? Can art change the world? So many big questions, and, fortunately, an expert is here to talk us through it. Farah Nayeri is a world-renowned authority on art. She’s the host of the podcast CultureBlast where she interviews creative stars like Emma Thompson, Ai WeiWei and Marina Abramović. She’s the author of Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age. She’s a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Frieze and the Art Newspaper. Follow Farah on Instagram for frankly incredible updates on the art world.
Jul 30, 2025 · 49 min
Madhumita Murgia: We Need to Talk About AI, Here's How
You are a voice in your community. AI is already impacting you life and your environment. Madhumita tells us why it matters that we get involved and where to go for guidance. Madhumita Murgia is the author of Code Dependent which was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction last year. She’s the first AI Editor for The Financial Times. She was previously Tech Editor for The Telegraph and Associate Editor for WIRED. She’s the host of the podcast Tech Tonic. Code Dependent has been praised by The Guardian, The Times, Martha Lane Fox, New Scientist, The Telegraph and Shoshana Zuboff. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency – and shatter our illusion of free will. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.
May 18, 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
Folakunle Oshun: Sculpture, Lagos Biennial & Art with Purpose
Folakunle Oshun is an artist and curator currently based in Paris. He is the Founder of the Lagos Biennial, a non-profit contemporary art platform that privileges adventurous approaches to artmaking, presentation, and critical discourse–aspiring to broach complex social and political problems, cultivate new publics, and establish fresh modes of engagement within the city, as well as throughout the country and internationally. Its next exhibition is in 2026. You might know Folakunle from his work curating the incredibly popular Lagos, Peckham, Repeat Exhibition for the South London Gallery. He was also invited to Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne as a guest curator for the group exhibition LOOK AT THIS in 2021. He also served as an advisor for the Africa Season (2020). His solo exhibition “Museum of Hope” opened in the same year at the Berliner Dom. Oshun earned a B.A. in Visual Art from the University of Lagos, majoring in Sculpture, and an M.A. in Art History. He was the first recipient of the Curator-in-Residence grant by the Potsdam City Council, Brandenburg, Germany, in (2017). In 2021, Folakunle Oshun was invited as Guest Professor to the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe to lead the seminar “Spatial Politics and Story Telling.” He is currently a Doctoral candidate at the Heritage Laboratory, of Cergy University, École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, France. He also lectures at the university.
May 18, 2025 · 54 min
Rochelle Harrington: Representation on Screen, Embarrassing Auditions & Travel Bucket Lists
Actress Rochelle Harrington is one of the new stars of Netflix's hit series, Geek Girl. Inspired by Holly Smale's series of novels, Geek Girl follows the geeky and socially awkward Harriet Manners who's recruited by a top modeling agent and unexpectedly embarks on a modeling career. Playing Harriet's best friend and fellow model, is acting newcomer, Rochelle Harrington as Natalie "Nat" Grey. Watch the show on Netflix here.
May 18, 2025 · 30 min
Marianne Brooker: Assisted Dying, Austerity and Creativity
Intervals has been praised by The Guardian, the Observer, Publisher’s Weekly, Elinor Cleghorn (author of Unwell Women) and Prospect Magazine. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Marianne Brooker is based in Bristol, where she works for a charity campaigning on climate and social justice. She has a PhD from Birkbeck and a background in arts research and teaching. She won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for Intervals, her first book. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker’s mother was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She made a workshop of herself and her surroundings, combining creativity and activism in inventive ways. But over time, her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. Determined to die in her own home, on her own terms, she stopped eating and drinking in 2019. In Intervals, Brooker reckons with heartbreak, weaving her first and final memories with a study of doulas, living wills and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care. Blending memoir, polemic and feminist philosophy, Brooker joins writers such as Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson, Donald Winnicott and Lola Olufemi to raise essential questions about choice and interdependence and, ultimately, to imagine care otherwise.
May 18, 2025 · 1 hr 24 min
Santanu Bhattacharya: Widening Queer Narratives, Character Development & Comedic Genius
Santanu Bhattacharya grew up in India, and studied at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. He won the Desmond Elliott Prize Residency in 2023, and the Mo Siewcharran and Life Writing Prizes in 2021. His first novel, One Small Voice, was an Observer best debut novel of 2023, and was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and the Society of Authors’ Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. He now lives in London. Deviants has been praised by The Guardian, The i Paper and The Financial Times. Santanu’s first book One Small Voice has been celebrated by Max Porter, Nikesh Shukla, Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Irish Times and The Guardian. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. Vivaan, a teenager in India’s silicon plateau, has discovered love on his smartphone. Intoxicating, boundary-breaking love. His parents know he is gay, and their support is something Vivaan can count on, but they don’t know what exactly their son gets up to in the online world. For his uncle, born thirty years earlier, things were very different. Mambro’s life changed forever when he fell for a male classmate at a time, and in a country, where the persecution of gay people was rife under a colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality. And before that was Mambro’s uncle Sukumar, a young man hopelessly in love with another young man, but forced by social taboos to keep their relationship a secret at all costs. Sukumar would never live the life he yearned for, but his story would ignite and inspire his nephew and grand-nephew after him. Bold and bracing, intimate and heartbreaking, Deviants examines the histories we inherit and the legacies we leave behind.
May 17, 2025 · 56 min
Lucy Steeds: Women in Art, Provence & Feasts
The Artist has been praised by The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Yael van der Wouden (The Safekeep), Sarah Perry (Essex Serpent) and is a Best Book of 2025 for Good Housekeeping and Stylist. It’s longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Lucy Steeds is a novelist and a graduate of the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in World Literatures from the University of Oxford. She has lived in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Singapore. The Artist is her first novel. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. PROVENCE, 1920 Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire.
May 16, 2025 · 1 hr
Jenni Daiches: The Power of Historical Fiction, The Jewish Diaspora & Solidarity
Jennifer Daiches, daughter of the Scottish critic and biographer David Daiches, was born in Chicago, educated in the US and in England, before moving to Scotland in 1971. From 1978 to 2001 she worked at the National Museums of Scotland in various capacities, including Head of Publications and script co-ordinator for exhibitions. She is a freelance writer and lecturer, writing on literary and historical subjects as Jenni Calder (having been married to the poet Angus Calder until 1982) and fiction and poetry as Jenni Daiches. An area of special interest has been Scottish emigration, particularly to North America, and questions of identity. Other key interests include Scottish literature and women writers. Jenni is also a biographer, writing book on Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Orwell and Naomi Mitchison. See her full bibliography here. Somewhere Else has been longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Miriam Margolyes is among its fans, saying “I wept and laughed and wished I had written it.” Get the book here or at your local bookshop. Rosa Roshkin is five years old when her family are murdered in a pogrom and she is forced to leave behind everything she knows with only a suitcase of clothes and her father’s violin. An epic generational novel about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jenni Daiches’s Somewhere Else explores today’s most difficult and urgent questions, not least of which: how to find identity in displacement.
May 15, 2025 · 6 min
(Bonus) Hansal Mehta: Directing, Finding Your Voice & Compassion
Hansal Mehta Winner of the National Award for Best Direction in 2014, Hansal Mehta talks about his Netflix drama starring Bollywood’s beloved Kareena Kapoor, Buckingham Murders. He’s best known for Shahid (2013), Citylights (2014), Aligarh (2016), Omertà (2018), Scoop (2023), Modern Love Mumbai (2022) and Scam 1992 (2020). He is known for films that depict social and political realities in deeply polarised and troubled times. His films are remarkable for their understanding of characters and their worlds, while telling important stories. His films Shahid (2013) and Omertà(2018) premiered as official selections at different editions of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Aligarh (2016) a moving tale about a professor suspended by university for being gay premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2015. His films have traveled to festivals around the world and have been extensively written about and discussed in both international and local forums. Watch the Buckingham Murders on Netflix. When a teen boy’s murder rattles a quiet English town, a grieving detective uncovers the hidden hostilities beneath its idyllic surface…
May 15, 2025 · 9 min
(Bonus) Luna Carmoon: Bringing Sexy Back, Film and Psychoanalysing Siblings
Luna Carmoon talks about her film, Hoard, starring Joseph Quinn (Gladiator II, Stranger Things). Now Hoard is out, premiering at the 80th Venice Film Festival, Luna’s nominated for the 2025 BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. This makes her a member of BAFTA Breakthrough and she’s already Sundance Ignite Fellow. Luna is also a regular director of music videos for Fontaines DC. Hoard has been praised by The Guardian, The Times, Time Out and the BFI. It has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Watch Hoard on MUBI here. The story follows Maria - a teenager whose mother used to be a hoarder. Now (set in the 90s) she lives in a foster home where a previous resident Michael inspires her to revisit her childhood memories and passions that she has repressed.
May 15, 2025 · 1 hr
Benjamin Markovits: Finding Purpose, Writing the Family and Intergenerational Understanding
Benjamin Markovits grew up mostly in Texas. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics – an experience he wrote about in Playing Days, a novel. Since then he has taught high school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review. He has published seven novels, including Either Side of Winter, about a New York private school, and a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron: Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment and Childish Loves. In 2009 he won a Pushcart Prize for his short story Another Sad, Bizarre Chapter in Human History. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. Markovits lives in London and is married, with a daughter and a son. He teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. His latest novel, The Rest of Our Lives, has been praised by Sarah Hall, Clare Chambers, Lucy Caldwell, The Guardian, the Observer, TLS and many more. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home? When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife. So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son – on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.
May 14, 2025 · 44 min
Rosanna Pike: Medieval Women, the Wisdom of Animals and Trickerie
Rosanna Pike became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller with her debut novel, A Little Trickerie. It’s been longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and has been praised by the Guardian, the Telegraph, Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry) and Ferdia Lennon (Glorious Exploits). Rosanna studied English literature at Exeter University. She is a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative and the Faber Academy. She lives in south-west London with her family. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. Her mother has taught her that if you’re not too bound by the Big Man’s rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. But now her ma is gone. As she journeys through the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb discovers that there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything…
May 13, 2025 · 47 min
Rowe Irvin: Novels vs Plays, Art on the Page and Avoiding Goodreads Reviews
Rowe is one of the Observer's Best Debut Novelists of 2025. She's an artist and writer who has been praised for Lifecycle of a Moth by Lucy Rose, Molly Aitken and Gabrielle Griffiths. Get the book here or at your local bookshop. An itchy feeling. A wrinkle in the forest. A cracking twig. A coming sound. Myma, do you hear it? Myma, do you hear? Myma? Maya and Daughter live in complete isolation in a secluded woodland, their days aligned with the light and changing seasons, a complex pattern of routine and ritual. Daughter has never questioned the life her mother has chosen for them; the life that has meant she's never met another soul, or known anywhere except their forest home. But one day, when Daughter is almost sixteen, a red-haired stranger steps into the confines of their territory. Where there was always two, suddenly there are three - and the carefully constructed world that Maya has built to keep her daughter safe may not survive it. Urgent, haunting and thrillingly alive, Life Cycle of a Moth explores both the tenderness and ferocity of maternal love, asking what we might find ourselves capable of - and willing to sacrifice - in order to shelter those we hold dear.
May 12, 2025 · 55 min
Karen Jennings: The Legacy of Apartheid, The Satyricon and Getting Trapped in a Lift
Dr Karen Jennings is longlisted for this year's Women's Prize with her novel Crooked Seeds. Her book An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2022. Crooked Seeds was described by the Guardian as "a perfectly realised fictional creation." It's a book of the year for the Guardian, Irish Times and CrimeReads. It's also been praised by the Observer, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Get the book here or at your local seller. Deidre is a victim, of her family, her society, her history. That is how she sees herself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical. Until the police take her back to her family home… In a Cape Town where water is rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequences of apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to day in squalor – largely created by herself – borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyone she knows. Then she is contacted by the police, and taken by a respectful constable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in a shattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she has to accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother, her parents’ golden boy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it truly is to be a victim.

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