Hi Stephanie! Please tell us a little about yourself…

I’m a secondary school teacher, writer, and broadcaster. I present a podcast Eccentric Circles, and my first novel came out in February! I’ve lived in London for ten years, but before King’s, I grew up in Paris and San Francisco. My grandfather was a Catholic priest, and A Private Man is a fictionalised version of that story.

You have ventured into many forms of media: an award-winning poet, an established journalist, and inquisitive podcast host. What have you taken from each role into your debut novel, A Private Man?

I think poetry gave me an eye for detail in my writing: I wanted each word in my novel to be pulling its own weight. Being a journalist became handy for the writing process, because it helped me with clarity. If you’re not answering the 5 Ws (Who, What, Where, When, Why), then you’re not telling a story properly, and this applies to writing a news article just as much as it does fiction. Being a book critic was as a masterclass in how to build a book: I was baffled by the process until I started paying attention to how other books had been structured and edited. And being a podcaster was helpful because your job as a host is to always be thinking of the best questions to ask: which ones will be the most interesting for your interviewee to be asked? What is going to show off their expertise in the best light? What will make them think about their work in new and invigorating ways? These principles have acted as great guides as I wrote my characters: what situations can I put them in to make them behave in psychologically revealing ways? It helped me to abide by the classic rule of ‘Show, don’t tell’.

What inspired your writing career while at King’s?

My first book, Amnion, is explicitly informed by my time at King’s. I was fascinated by the school’s preoccupation with its own sense of history, and what that says about elite educational institutions more broadly. I also had great English teachers who were able to impart a real sense of intrigue around the discipline of English Literature, such that I studied it at University and now teach it myself!

And so much of A Private Man is inspired by Renaissance art, and I do feel incredibly lucky to have studied History of Art at A-Level while at King’s.

Describe your perfect day of writing…

I’m not sure I know the answer to this question! I wrote so much of my novel in the holidays of my first year teaching, but that was because I had no time or energy during term time! When my first book was published I won a travel grant and was able to go to Rome to research A Private Man. Mostly this consisted of me walking around the city for hours - I don’t think I ever once used public transport.Travelling alone is great for eating out, because you can rock up to a fancy restaurant with no reservation and, more often than not, they can tuck you into a corner by yourself. I spent many evening like that, just with my notebook. That was pretty great!

What is at the top of your bucket list?

I want to go on a road trip all the way down through Italy, retracing the route my grandparents took when they fled the scandal of their marriage. They drove from Birmingham to Naples and got the ferry to Libya. I’d love to go to Libya too one day, but that one might have to wait…