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Front Row: Kirsty Lang talks to American writer AM Homes

Kirsty Lang talks to American writer AM Homes

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Kirsty Lang talks to American writer AM Homes

AM Homes, writer of darkly comic fiction, talks about her novels, short stories and memoir

Kirsty Lang talks to the writer AM Homes whose darkly comic novels about contemporary America are a perfect reading companion for our times

AM Homes won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 for her novel May We Be Forgiven, beating off stellar competition from Hilary Mantel, Kate Atkinson, Barbara Kingsolver and Zadie Smith.  

Kirsty Lang has been finding AM's darkly comic novels and short stories perfect reading for the lockdown. Her writing penetrates contemporary America, with characters who are pulled apart by accidents, trauma, jealousy, chance encounters and who must examine their lives in order to start over again.  The stories are wickedly funny, relentless in their pace and often redemptive. 

In this extended Front Row interview, AM talks to Kirsty about recovering from Covid-19, growing up in Washington DC and her fascination with Nixon; why she loves to write male protagonists, her lack of inhibition when writing sex scenes - and the challenges of satirising our strange times. 

She also reads from and talks about her memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, which tells the story of how she was given up for adoption on the day she was born. Her birth parents were a twenty-two year old woman and an older married man. Thirty-one years later, her birth mother tracked her down.

Presenter : Kirsty Lang
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
Studio Manager: Nigel Dix

Harry Silver.....David Seddon
Narrator.....Darcey Halsey
Richard Novak.....Tony Pasqualini
Emergency Operator.....Adriana Sevan 
Patty.....Lisa Pelikan

Main image above: A. M. Homes

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Kirsty Lang talks to American writer AM Homes

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