Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Today Jonathan calls up newly minted Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, Arkady Martine, to talk about reading, writing, and working during the pandemic, how influence on writers is often quite different from what a reader might expect, the current state of space opera, her next novel, and a new novella coming late next year from Subterranean Press.

Books mentioned include:

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
• Rose House by Arkady Martine (forthcoming)
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
• The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler
• Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

World Fantasy Award nominee Molly Gloss joins Gary to chat about listening to fiction on her commute to the horses, taking some solace in novels with pastoral settings (including SF), the eerie feeling of reading Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day at the very beginning of the lockdown, recent reprints of her classic novels by Saga Press, her long friendship with Ursula K. Le Guin, and her award-nominated retrospective collection Unforeseen.

Books mentioned include:

• Unforeseen: Stories by Molly Gloss
• The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
• Wild Life by Molly Gloss
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
• A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
• The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Horseman by Tim Pears
• This is Happiness by Niall Williams

Ten minutes with… is a regular series of short podcasts presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Gary kicks of the second series of Ten Minutes with by spending a few minutes with Hugo and Nebula-nominated K.M. Szpara discussing the appeal of audiobooks, young-adult mysteries and horror stories (and their value in learning about plotting), what it’s like to launch a novel at the very beginning of the lockdown, and his own forthcoming work.

Books mentioned include:

• Docile by K.M. Szpara
• First, Become Ashes by K.M. Szpara (forthcoming April 2021)
• Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
• The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
• The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
• In the Hall with a Knife: A Clue Mystery by Diana Peterfreund
• Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
• Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas

This year has thrown everyone for a loop. We were all supposed to travel, to have jobs to go to, to see one another, to not be sick or scared or just weary of the world — so many things should have been different. But this is 2020 – the year that keeps on giving – and we can only live in the world we have.

When COVID hit, without much, thought, Coode Street launched what was to become the Ten Minutes with… series of short podcasts – a daily series of 104 episodes where Gary and Jonathan individually talked to readers, writers, and editors from around the world about what they were reading, what they would recommend to other readers, and what they were working on. It stretched from March 29 to 16 July and people seemed to enjoy it, find a bit of distraction daily. We did too, but we needed a break.

What we realised during the break was that doing those episodes was – at least for Jonathan – helping cope with everything. A welcome distraction and engagement, so we’re bringing them back. Starting Monday, 10 August (Perth time) Coode Street will return to daily publication of the Ten Minutes with… series for the foreseeable future. We didn’t say we’d do a hundred episodes when we started the first time and we’re not saying that now, but we wouldn’t be surprised.

The first episodes will be:

• Brooke Bolander (Monday 10/8)
• Daniel Abraham (Tues 11/8)
• AT Greenblatt (Wed 12/8)
• Molly Gloss (Thurs 12/8)
• Alec Nevala-Lee (Fri 13/8)

We will be talking to Amal El-Mohtar, Arkady Martine,  Sarah Gailey, and R F Kuang soon. After that,  who knows where the podcast will take us. Join us to find out.

You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, or download episodes directly from Podbean.