Other

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

The Cultural Frontline

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

The Cultural Frontline: where arts and news collide.

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

The Cultural Frontline: Karen Lord: What makes a great story?

Magazines & Reviews

CROPKaren Lord Photo - credit Marlon James.jpg

18/04/2020 GMT

Karen Lord: What makes a great story?

BBC World Service - The Cultural Frontline, Karen Lord: What makes a great story?

Sci-fi writer Karen Lord on the power of great storytelling.

What makes a great story? Perhaps it’s the characters, a gripping plot, or a narrative that helps us understand the world we live in. The award winning writer Karen Lord tells us what really goes into writing fiction and she shares an extract from her recent short story ‘The Plague Doctors’, a dystopian tale of social inequality exposed by a future pandemic. ‘The Plague Doctors’ was published as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's anthology Take Us to a Better Place.

Sci-fi meets forbidden love in a novel that spans centuries and continents. That’s just one of the descriptions used to describe the critically acclaimed novel, The Old Drift.  Its author Namwali Serpell talks to the Cultural Frontline about three moments in her life that shaped her as a storyteller.

Plus Amy Brady, the writerof climate fiction column Burning Worlds, on why sci-fi offers us the opportunity for both immersion and escapism.

Presented by Nawal al-Maghafi

Image: Karen Lord 
Image credit: Marlon James

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Cultural Frontline

Karen Lord: What makes a great story?

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

About BBC World Service