Just You and the Page: Encounters with Twelve Writers

Just You and the Page opens in 1971, with the dramatist Michael Wall hammering out his plays on a portable typewriter. It concludes in 2020, when the novelist and academic Josie Barnard is teaching students to compose novels on Instagram. Between them are Booker prize winners; a poet whose life was changed by a profound religious conversion; a translator for whom Pushkin has meant everything; a distinguished environmental journalist; a famous diarist; a nature writer who restored a wood; and a political activist who fled her country and is writing now in exile. Sue Gee has interviewed twelve distinctively different writers, all old friends, looking at what has shaped them: at struggle, inspiration, and dedication to their art. Part memoir, part literary biography, and published in extraordinary times, Just You and the Page is above all about resilience. Featuring: Michael Wall, Penelope Lively, Hilary Davies, Anna Burns, Ruth Pavey, Afra, Marek Mayer, Roy Strong, Charles Palliser, Antony Wood, Darragh Martin, and Josie Barnard.