Episode 5

Huma Qureshi - on short stories and taking your fiction seriously

Published on: 10th November, 2021

Huma Qureshi is a former Guardian and Observer journalist and is the author of the memoir How We Met and her latest book Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, is a short story collection about the distance between people - between mothers and daughters and between lovers. It includes the "The Jam Maker" which won the Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize 2020. We talk about what drove Huma to set herself the challenge of writing 10 short stories in a fairly short period of time, the importance of short story prizes as a way of setting yourself deadlines and challenges, and how motherhood both affected her confidence as a writer but also gave her an urgency to get the words on to the page.

Links

Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love - Huma Qureshi

How We Met - Huma Qureshi

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

A Ghost in the Throat - Doireann Ni Ghriofa


You can find Huma Qureshi on instagram @humaqureshiwriter

You can check out all the book recommendations from the podcast at our bookshop on bookshop.org which helps support independent booksellers

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About the Podcast

Not Too Busy To Write
Writing amongst life's many other demands
Penny Wincer is not too busy to write. Except of course, sometimes she is too busy to write as much as she would like. Join Penny as she has conversations with other writers about writing, publishing and creativity whilst juggling all the demands on them such as motherhood, caring and other paid work.

Penny Wincer is the author of Tender (Hodder, June 2020), a mother of two, a non-fiction writing coach and an Australian and long-term resident of London. She’s currently writing her second narrative non-fiction book, Home Matters (July 2024) and working on her first novel.

About your host

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Penny Wincer

Penny Wincer is the author of Tender: The Imperfect Art of Caring (Hodder, June 2020) and is a single parent to two kids, one of whom is disabled. She is also a non-fiction book coach and an Australian and long-term resident of London. She’s currently writing her second non-fiction book and working her first novel.