Tag Archives: creative

Syrie James: It’s So Important to Get the Details Right



Syrie James is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels, as well as a screenwriter. Our conversation explores Syrie’s creative process, which involves a deep immersion in the lives of the real women writers who are the heroines of some of her most successful novels. Steeped in research about the lives and times of her characters as well as an abiding belief in the power of romantic relationships, Syrie’s novels explore the inner lives of the women at their center. Her novels about the writers Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte explore what inspired these mother’s of the novel to write. In our conversation I attempt to turn this question on my guest to explore the story behind the story in her work.


Real Cancer to REAL



Today’s episode marks an ending of sorts and a new beginning. It is a lacuna, an interval, a gap. One door is closing and another opens. Today’s episode is the space between the Real Cancer podcast and the REAL podcast.

REAL will continue to feature conversations with individuals who‘ve faced the humbling encounter with reality that is cancer, and it will also explore other ways in which we engage with reality in the lives we live. REAL will broaden out the focus, exploring each week—through conversations with creative people of every type—the biggest questions we face in life: What does it feel like to be alive? How can we live meaningfully? Given the complexity of life—good and bad, hard and easy, exhilarating and depressing—how do we get on with living?