This week Nebula and World Fantasy award winner, Premee Mohamed, joins Gary and Jonathan from somewhere in the wilds of Canada to discuss writing, reading, building a career, and her fabulous new novella, The Butcher of the Forest. We also discuss the projects Premee has planned for the rest of the year, including forthcoming new novel The Siege of Burning Grass, which you can pre-order now.
As always, we’d like to thank Premee for making time to join us, and hope you enjoy the episode.
For our second episode of 2024, we’re joined by the inimitable Kelly Link, whose forthcoming first novel The Book of Love is already receiving stellar advance reviews (including one from Gary in Locus). Kelly explains how the novel evolved, it connections to various genres from romance to supernatural horror, the importance of valuable encouragement from friends such as Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, the challenges of shifting from short fiction to a long novel, managing multiple narrative viewpoints, and maintaining the balance between the interiority of the characters and the large-scale history and spectacle of the fantasy elements. She also updates us a bit on Small Beer Press and her own plans for future work.
As always, our thanks to Kelly. We hope you enjoy the podcast!
All round good guy Scott Edelman was at the recent World Fantasy Convention, and took Gary and Jonathan out for lunch and a chat. That chat became the latest episode of Eating the Fantastic, Scott’s terrific podcast.
And just like that, our end-of-year hiatus is done and the Coode Street Podcast is back! Gary and Jonathan return from their annual break and kick off a brand new season with discussions of recent news events in science fiction, how our thoughts about books and ideas change over time, 50th anniversaries of famous books, the delightfully happy news that Gary got married(!!!), and the sad news about the passing of several friends of the podcast, including Howard Waldrop, Terry Bisson, and Rick Bowes.
As it always is at the start of a new year, it’s great to be back. We’re filled with optimism for the year ahead and plan to get at least our scheduled 26 episodes out this year, as well as some special episodes, and to travel to Scotland for the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.
For now, though, we hope you enjoy the new episode!
For the 2023 instalment of the Very Coode Street Gift Guide, we invited some old friends to share their recommendations of books read in 2023: Alix E. Harrow (whose very worthy Starling House was a favorite, officially excluded from discussion because of her participation in the episode), award-winning Locus reviewer Ian Mond, and distinguished novelist James Bradley, whose nonfiction Deep Water: The World in the Ocean will be out next year.
The books mentioned during the podcast are listed below.
James Bradley recommended:
The Deluge, Stephen Markley
Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link
Translation State, Ann Leckie
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
Alix E. Harrow recommended:
Menewood, Nicola Griffith
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi
He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan
The Magician’s Daughter, H.G. Parry
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett
Ian Mond recommended:
Conquest, Nina Allan
Terrace Stories, Hilary Leichter
In Ascension, Martin MacInnes
Him, Geoff Ryman
I am Homeless if this Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore
Gary recommended:
Mr. Breakfast, Jonathan Carroll
The Essential Peter S. Beagle (2 vols.), Peter S. Beagle
Airside, Christopher Priest
Lost Places,Sarah Pinsker (and also Monstrous Alterations, Christopher Barzak; Jewel Box, E. Lily Yu; & The Privilege of a Happy Ending, Kij Johnson)
Jonathan recommended:
The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi
The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill
Hopeland, Ian McDonald
As always, our thanks to Alix, James, and Ian for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the podcast and that the guide is of some help at this time of the year.