‘“I would read an excerpt in Edinburgh and the idea of Mrs Death would be met with a cheer and a ‘yay!’. And exactly the same excerpt down in Bloomsbury [would have] everyone crying, me crying, big hugs at the end … What it has got me thinking is, I wonder if there is a geography of mourning, a geography of grief.” All the reactions are welcome, though. She still thinks one of the scariest things about death is that it is so often surrounded by silence.’

Taboo-busting poet Salena Godden talks to the Guardian about her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death, missing performing and why Brits struggle to speak about her novel’s all too timely subject.

“You should read this collection at least twice. The first time, horse it into you—then study the technique.”

Naoise Dolan reviews That Old Country Music in The Stinging Fly.

“One of the great Scottish crime writers is back”: The April Dead by Alan Parks is crime Book of the Month in The Times.

“I would think to myself, why do some people rise up and fight while others do nothing?” she said. “Are people justified in doing anything and everything possible for the sake of justice? How do we balance our desire to fight for change against our desire to protect the ones we love? These are questions the characters have to deal with. I do not have answers — I much prefer to ask questions.”

Imbolo Mbue discusses her new novel How Beautiful We Were in the New York Times.

To celebrate the first ever Gray Day – a celebration of the life and work of Alasdair Gray on 25th February 2021 – there will be a special Gray Day Broadcast, featuring guests like Ali Smith, Yann Martel, Gemma Cairney, Irvine Welsh, Ewen Bremner and more to be announced!

[update: Now that the Broadcast has run it is still available to view.]

‘It moves at an exhilarating lick, as befits its pop culture propensities, but with highbrow sensibilities, its concerns including the Kabbalah, whether the world is made of words, the origins of the alphabet, the mythopoetic nature of the hero’s journey and what angels look like … the genius of the book is that despite it seeming like an elegant orrery, all these wheels within wheels are a carapace, a psychic armour against a grief (and it’s not the grief you were expecting). Beneath this truly beautiful astrolabe is a beating human heart’

‘As the early drafts of the book developed I started collecting deaths, near deaths and unmourned deaths, invisible deaths and celebrity death and writing about them. I also started testing the work out at my poetry gigs. I’d slip an excerpt of the book into my poetry shows to see how Mrs Death landed with my poetry friends and with spoken word and book festival audiences. I began to notice different responses in different cities and different counties … I’m fascinated by this and hope to examine it further: I wonder if here in the UK we exhibit grief and talk about death and mourn a little differently county by county? Do we mourn differently geographically?’

Salena Godden is featured on the Waterstones blog about writing her debut novel, Mrs Death Misses Death, and how we respond to death across the country.