For this episode I spoke to American writer Jo Ann Beard about her latest collection Festival Days and her previous collection The Boys of My Youth.

We talked about fact, fiction, creative writing, journalism, how her experience of a workplace shooting in which people died changed her writing career, writing for the New Yorker, writing about death or proximity to death, how she feels about using people's stories, and how she constructs her work piece by piece, very, very slowly.

I found out about Jo Ann's work from William Fiennes, who told me about an essay called The Fourth State of Matter, which is included in The Boys of My Youth and was published by the New Yorker. Here is a link to that essay:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter

You can buy Festival Days here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/festival-days-jo-ann-beard/5000893?ean=9780316497220

You can buy The Boys of My Youth here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boys-My-Youth-Ann-Beard/dp/0316085251

She recommended Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mothers-Sparta-Memoir-Dawn-Davies/dp/125013370X

The other book she recommended was The Tender Land by Kathleen Finneran:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tender-Land-Family-Love-Story/dp/0618340742

Finally, you can buy my books here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/andrew-hankinson

Thank you for listening.