Episode 2

Tessa Hadley on the pleasures of fiction

Published on: 19th February, 2025

Tessa Hadley is an award winning author of eight novels, many short story collections and one of my personal favourite writers. In this conversation Tessa talks with me about the pleasures and irresponsibility of the short story, her first novella The Party, writing as a performance and the benefits of publishing for the first time in mid life.

This series of the podcast is sponsored by award winning audio book app xigxag

Listeners of Not Too Busy To Write can receive their second book FREE

To redeem, download the xigxag app from the App Store or Google Play. 

Go to My xigxag/Settings, then click on Account. 

Under Vouchers, click on the ‘Enter code’ button and add your voucher code NTBTW to your account. 

After your first purchase, your second title will be free!

You can purchase The Party on xigxag here.

Links

The Party - Tessa Hadley

Free Love - Tessa Hadley

Bad Dreams - Tessa Hadley

The Best Intentions - Ingmar Bergman

Going Home - Tom Lamont

Long Island - Colm Toibin

Parades End - Ford Maddox Ford

Writing Literary Fiction with Tessa Hadley - Curtis Brown Creative

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack

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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 two narrative non-fiction books, Tender and Home Matters and a non-fiction writing coach. She's an Australian and long-term resident of London, a mother of two teenagers, an unpaid carer and always attempting to get just a little more writing done.

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.