12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nadia de Vries

Nadia de Vries is a poet from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her selected works of poetry All My Dead Jesters, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, just came out with Tenement Press (2026). She also writes fiction in Dutch. Her latest novel Overgave op commando (2025; English translation Surrender on Demand by Sarah Timmer Harvey forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2027) is currently shortlisted for the Libris Prize, the biggest literary prize of the Low Countries.

1 - How did your first book  change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I always dreamed of becoming a professional writer. When my first book Dark Hour came out in early 2018, I started to believe my dream could come true. Now, in 2026, the dream has become an undeniable reality and I live in an ongoing state of bliss.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Ideas come to me in the shape of sentences, so poetry feels most natural to me. Some people get ideas in the shape of plots or arguments. I think those people tend to become novelists or critics first.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Most sentences come to me fully formed while I'm going about my day. The only thing I have to do is make sure I write them down before I forget them. I collect these sentences in my Notes app until I have enough of them to see a narrative or image unfold. I then start shaping the sentences into poems. I trim away as many lines as I can until only the essence of the poem remains. This process can take 10 minutes or 18 months, depending on how capricious the poem's central sentence is. It usually only takes one sentence for a poem to work as a poem.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Everything I write begins in the Notes app. I usually start getting really passionate about a project once I've thought of a title for it. There are titles that have lived with me for many years. But it takes the right amount of experience and thought to write a book that fits the title I've envisioned for it. I try to be patient so I don't ruin my ideas before they're ripe.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes! I love performing and reading my poems to people. It gives me a lot of confidence.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
The main question that runs through all in my work is: How vulnerable can a person be without getting ostracized? I often wonder what it takes for a person to be rejected by society. So far I've learned that people are willing to forgive sentimentality, but not cruelty.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The writer creates a private space for working people. Most people have to keep their emotions hidden to survive at work, or in daily life in general. These people need stories to decompress. This is why, as a writer, you cannot afford to be vain, insecure, or easily ashamed. You have to put it all out there so that people without the privilege of emotional visibility have a place to go.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I'm a very stubborn person, but in the case of my writing I think my stubbornness is earned. The way I format or phrase a sentence is never an accident and I get frustrated whenever an editor wants to change my work. Luckily most editors I work with know me by now, and they're very careful about touching my text, which I appreciate.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Never put your housekeys in your checked baggage and never date a man who fears more than he loves

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose to criticism)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it very challenging, and that's why it excites me. Each genre requires a completely different skill set, which is why some master novelists are shit poets, and why some brilliant poets can't tell a story, or make a point. I like to practice my skill in each genre because I feel it makes me a better writer across the board.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no routine, I live like an animal

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The inspiration never stops, if anything I have too many ideas and I have to make sure to filter out the ones that don't fit the project I'm working on. I also want to pace myself because I don't want to become one of those writers who puts out a book every six months. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Drum Mild tobacco

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Music! I know nothing about the technical parts of music, but I love listening to it, and other people's rhythms and melodies often give me ideas. I also like going to museums and looking at paintings. I can't paint or draw to save my life, but I find it very energizing to look at a medium that's alien to me on a practical level and still find creative meaning in it. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I eavesdrop a lot on public transport and steal language from conversations I overhear

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a masterpiece, drive along the PCH from Mendocino to Orange County with the love of my life (where are they?)

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Brain surgeon

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Lack of money and skill

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers

20 - What are you currently working on?
I just started collecting sentences for my third novel, which will hopefully be my first masterpiece. So far I have the first and final line in place. I'm giving myself three years to decide what goes in between.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Kimberly Campanello, An Interesting Detail

 

The Language

The books don’t know what’s inside their covers, or they don’t care. Just when you learned what was happening, what direction to face, how to move and what to carry where, the language changed. You were reassured it was all still working and the transformation would be total, just as before. We could just as easily go to the top of the dune and play with roots in the sand. We could even kneel down and twist them around our hands and wrists to hold ourselves down. As I understand it, the heart can be seen to beat if you can get a glow to show up properly around it. Any background will do.

The latest poetry title by Irish-American poet Kimberly Campanello, currently a Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds, is An Interesting Detail (Bloomsbury, 2025), an expansive collection of sequences, prose poems and stand-alone lyrics that extend a sheen of surrealism grounded in concrete moments. “The family walk the sandbar for sand dollars,” the poem “Family Walk” begins, “slip them between toes, foot to hand, and bucket them. The dollars dry to death on the condo patio. The family walk to the cave paintings. They find a wild horse in a sinkhole just before it dries to death at the level of their knees.” I describe the poems within as expansive, but at less than seventy pages of poems, this collection is compact, thick as stone and incredibly sharp. “begins with shouting / in sleep I am naked / on the carpet in a power stance,” opens the poem “Moving Nowhere Here,” “sensing an army nearby / I am charging the ghost / hanging on the back of the door [.]” Campanello’s poems begin with small objects or moments, offering descriptions that expand into larger ripples of narrative, akin to surreal kinds of field notes.

Much of the collection is constructed via the prose poem, each of which extend out their narratives, both echo and counterpoint to her more traditional lyrics, built of accumulated, almost stand-alone phrases and sentences. Two sides of the same poetic, one might say, the line-breaks articulating further spaces between phrases and thought, although not always where one might immediately think. “One remarkable item,” the prose poem “Receipt” begins, “found with a man buried near where I used to live, turned out to be a whistle made from a carved and highly polished human thigh bone. Dating suggests it belonged to someone who lived around the same time as him. To bring you up to speed on this, I’m certain they could squeeze me in here among the greats. It’s what I want. It’s important to let people know your wishes in advance.” Through Campanello, her surrealism is held with an anchor to the real, allowing elements of truth to shimmer across the skin of her narratives. As the poem “Use Value” begins: “If I had studied / STEM things might / have been different. / If I had fed / into the meeting / there would have / been an outcome. / The tin whistle / is a passion of mine. / Aren’t I lucky / to do what I’m / passionate about?” Her details are moments, and her moments are vast.

They Didn’t Expect 

hedges steeples the time it takes
to cut away the chutes purpling
lips down the promenade past
nations stepping forward fire
blocking fire important speech
looped in a darkened room
hardy sightseers in rainproof
jackets everlasting bunkers
farmers or farmers wives or
farmers children blown
up mundane tasks running
commentary along the bottom
of the tapestry build up
of bodies where do we go
when we die the lovers
eating their crêpes her
outrageously classy flowers
their rolling cigarettes like sex

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amorak Huey

Amorak Huey’s fourth book of poems is Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I feel like writers are supposed to say that the first book doesn’t change anything. Like, that’s the pure response. In some respects, certainly, it’s true. Having a book doesn’t make the next poem any easier to write. It doesn’t get rid of impostor syndrome. For me, at least, and for most poets, it didn’t come with life-changing money, or, like, any money at all. But still, publishing that first chapbook — The Insomniac Circus from Hyacinth Girl in 2014 — and then the next year my first full-length collection, Ha Ha Ha Thump from Sundress Publications — well, it was a huge personal achievement. The fulfillment of a lifelong dream. I was 44 when that first chapbook came out, and I remain super gratified by its publication. The ability to say yes when someone asks if I’ve published a book? It means something to me. It matters. My fourth full-length collection — Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy — came out in May. I think it’s the best thing I’ve written, but I don’t know that it’s hugely different from my first books. It’s just the next step.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I went to fiction first. Thought I was going to write the Great American Novel (I kind of still think that). But a poetry workshop in college, and a couple of workshops in my first, failed attempt at grad school changed things. One fiction professor used my piece in class as an example of a story that wasn’t actually a story. Another writing professor asked me how serious I was about being a fiction writer instead of a poet; I think maybe she meant to praise my poems, but her tone definitely implied something not so great about my fiction. Anyway, I got more praise for my poems than for my prose, and as an approval-seeking older child, that was probably what did it. I also try to watch my tone with my students, because I know how long they might remember even the most unintended dismissiveness.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I tend to write either rapidly or not at all. Periods of getting nothing done followed by periods of getting lots done. Some drafts come out near their final form; others require numerous and extensive revisions. All of which is to say I’m all over the place. I envy writers who have a regular routine or process.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m definitely a one-poem-at-a-time kind of writer, which of course leads to challenges when it’s time to assemble a manuscript. Poems start all sorts of places for me: with fragments of language, with images, with experiences I want to make sense of, sometimes with a title. My chapbooks have been projects where I’m circling the same concept or topic, but in general I’m writing only the poem in front of me. How it might fit into a collection is a question for later.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I am very much not a performance poet, but I love reading my work to an audience, and I love hearing other poets read their work. At least, when it’s a poet who understands how to read their work and who understands which of their poems work well when read aloud. Reading my poems aloud to myself, over and over, is a huge part of my composing process, so by the time they’re done, I think I have a sense of how or whether they work aurally as well as on the page.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

My new book explores fatherhood and masculinity and mortality. I think all poetry is about mortality. I don’t know if I read this somewhere or if I made it up, but I think one of the defining characteristics of a poem is that it knows it’s going to end, while prose is in denial about that. Every poem is an elegy.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Let me quote Jen Benka here: “We know the secret to survival. It is saying. It is naming. It is telling. It is recording. It is singing. To soothe our fears. To fuel our inner fire. To remember all those who came before on whose shoulders we stand. To illuminate and ignite new guiding lights.”

That’s the role of the writer.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Working with a good editor is an amazing, inspiring experience. The best editors know how to help you unlock what’s possible in your writing. I worked with Maggie Smith on both Boom Box and Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy before they were accepted for publication, and her care and thoughtful response made both books better. my experience with the editors at Sundress has been similarly excellent. Erin Elizabeth Smith worked with me on Ha Ha Ha Thump and Boom Box; Jeremy Michael Reed was the editor for Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy. Again, the books are so much better for their attention. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

My friend, colleague, and collaborator W. Todd Kaneko talks about the need for writers to keep the “life of art” distinct from the “life of commerce.” One is about writing poems, the other about getting them in front of an audience. Both are work. Both are important. But they are not the same.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

I have this kind of half-baked theory. All writing is, at its core, about the human experience: how we live, love, grieve, and die on this planet. But each genre brings different forces to bear on that experience. Poetry centers language: the search for words to describe what cannot be described. Fiction centers narrative: the cause-and-effect relationships between events in a character’s life. Essays center memory’s flawed relationship to truth: the leaky vessel that holds all of our experiences. There’s overlap, of course, and you can’t always draw a bright line between genres, but for me, as I approach a piece of writing, the questions that interest me most in relationship to the topic determine what genre I work in.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

My days begin by getting teenagers out of bed, fed, off to school. They end with soccer-practice carpools, choir concerts, nagging about homework, laundry, what’s for dinner, what’s for dinner, what’s for dinner. I’m not complaining, it’s all good stuff. But as for writing? I have no routine. I fit the words in around the edges of my life the best I can. Some seasons are better than others.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Sometimes I just let it stay stalled. We need breaks. But the answer is reading. I always go back to the page. Find the poems that make me feel something. Those are the ones that make me, like, “I want to make something like that.” Reading refills the water trough, even when the season is dry.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Kudzu blossoms in spring.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Music, for sure. I almost always listen to music while I’m writing. Many of the poems in Boom Box, my 2019 book, are explicitly engaged with music, specifically the metal I listened to in high school. Plug here for Jason Isbell, probably my current favorite artist.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Wow, that’s a long list. My favorite poet is Traci Brimhall. My favorite book is Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas. My favorite poem is Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song.” And if we’re looking at poets who were early, formative influences on my writing, the list includes David Kirby, Bob Hicok, Jorie Graham, Adrienne Rich, Larry Levis, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Robert Lowell, and Emily Dickinson. I could go on. More recent influences include Matthew Olzmann, Natalie Diaz, Rebecca Hazelton, Jericho Brown, Catie Rosemurgy, Karyna McGlynn, Franny Choi, Natalie Shapero, Danez Smith, Solmaz Sharif, Jamaal May, and Leila Chatti. There are others. Like I said, it’s a long list. Not that I think anyone would necessarily see those poets’ work in my own, but still, their poems have arranged my brain, changed how I see the world and the possibilities of poetry. I read a lot, and read like a sponge soaking up pieces of pretty much every poet I read and wringing their language back out into my own.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Visit Paris. Watch a game in Dodger Stadium. Attend the Manchester Derby at Old Trafford. Writing-wise, so many of my ambitions are the usual foolish ones involving fancy kinds of recognition that are beyond my control. Maybe finish and publish my novel. That one is at least partly within my control.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I mean, the honest answer is playing first base for the Dodgers, though I guess the window has closed on that. I was a newspaper journalist for a lot of years, and sadly, the window has kind of closed on that, too.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Writing has just always been there. I can’t imagine not doing it.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Presently re-reading the amazing book of poems 1919 by Eve L. Ewing. I read it last year and knew immediately I was assigning it in class someday, and so this spring I put it on the list for my advanced poetry section. I recently finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and can’t stop thinking about it. As for last great film, I’m not sure. I saw Knives Out and Emma right before the pandemic shut everything down, and both were super fun. Does that count?

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m making my way through a third draft of the novel I mentioned above. It’s historical fiction, set in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Writing a novel is a trip. 98,000 words, multiple drafts, and I still don’t know if it’s going to turn out to be anything worth reading.

12or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tania Hershman

Tania Hershman's [photo credit: Naomi Woddis] third short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, was published by Unthank Books in May 2017, and her debut poetry collection, Terms & Conditions, by Nine Arches Press in July. Tania is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open, and two short story collections, My Mother Was An Upright Piano, and The White Road and Other Stories, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). Tania is curator of short story hub ShortStops (www.shortstops.info), celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. Hear her read her work on https://soundcloud.com/taniahershman and find out more here: www.taniahershman.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book, a short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories, was published, by Salt Publishing, inSeptember 2008 and it really was life-changing. I have found – and other authors have said the same – that Life Before A Book is completely different from Life After A Book. To see your name on the spine of a book, for me that was a childhood dream come true. But it was also terrifying, to be “out there”, to have other people reading what really only I and maybe another 10 people had ever seen. To be reviewed, oh my! I learned from this that it's not important what I think my own stories are about, to let go of them once they are in the world (I did know this on a small scale from having individual stories published), to allow others to say what they think my work means, and to enjoy hearing that. Accepting praise is uncomfortable, especially, it seems, for women. The collection was commended for the (then) Orange Award for New Writers, an award open to novels, novellas and short story collections, and to be one of only two books – and the only short story collection – singled out by the judges was utterly life-changing, it gave me a enormous confidence boost. They said something like “We are interested to see what she does next”, and I thought, Gosh, someone wants me to do some more of this. So I did.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I actually came to fiction first, 20 years before poetry! I wrote short stories when I was a child, inspired by the stories of Roald Dahl, and then started taking my first writing workshops in my late 20s. My first short story was published 7 years later, and my first book, a collection of short stories, came out in 2008. I was also a science journalist, I did that for 13 years, a job I loved.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

All of the above! I am always writing, generally I hear the first line in my head. Poetry I write out loud, and prose seems to come when I have my fingers on the keyboard or the page. Nothing EVER comes out perfect in a first draft and I think anyone who says it does is not being entirely truthful. Some pieces I write quickly, some pieces take years – regardless of their length. I don't do research, that's not how I work, or, rather: everything is research, everything I read, everything I see, hear, watch.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I never consciously worked on a “book” until my PhD in creative writing, which I passed in December. All my collections were a compilation of all the pieces I had written to that date which I was happy with that hadn't yet been in a book. And there are several pieces that are in both my third short story collection and my first poetry collection, both of which came out last year, I like the idea of creating conversations across books. I am not a fan of grand pronouncements in terms of where a poem or story or other piece begins, I have found that the minute I try and pin down my “process”, it is likely to change! That said, stories often come to me as a voice, I can hear a character, a first line. Poems come through sound, through a combination of words, a first line. Then I follow the character or the sounds and see where they lead.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love doing readings, performing my own work. Writing for radio has played a major role in my writing career so I am always thinking about how a piece will sound aloud when I am writing, I read them out to myself, it's part of my writing process. I love that connection with an audience, especially now that I can perform my poems mostly by heart, so I can look at the audience and see them looking at me. I love it. It's almost like a stand-up routine for me, I like to chat as well as read!

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I have a background in science, which I like to call a “framework for curiosity”, and I used to be a journalist, so I am all about questions. I think my writing is less about answering than about expressing the questions in new ways. I have many concerns, I am fascinated by so many things, from why we human beings behave as we do, to issues around love and death. I will never run out of questions – I think humanity is mostly dealing with the same issues it always has, just in new ways, with new technologies. What are we doing here? What's the meaning of it all? Exploring these through my poems and stories rarely give me any answers but they writing them does give me one source of meaning, of purpose, especially when the miraculous happens and someone who is not me, another person, tells me that they connected with and were affected by my writing. That is a joy, something I never take for granted.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I don't believe in shoulds, or putting pressure on writers to be anything at all in our culture, to write about anything in particular in any particular way. We are too good at pressuring and sabotaging ourselves, stressing ourselves out and not giving ourselves permission to do what we want to do in the way we want to do it.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working with an editor, working with Jane Commane, my publisher at Nine Arches Press, was one of the best experiences of my writing life! I wish I had been edited more, it didn't happen at all with my three story collections.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

When I was putting together my half of 'Writing Short Stories: A Writers and Artists Companion', I finally found, after 15 years, a wonderful book specifically about writing short stories, called “Ron Carlson Writes a Story”, by, of course, Ron Carlson. A tiny book, it's packed full of wisdom, and the part I loved the most is where he says “The writer is the one who stays in the room”. Sometimes all I want to do, when I've written something I like, is to jump up, go off, do something else. My way of “staying in the room” is often to play online scrabble with random strangers, it calms that twitchiness, keeps me in the chair a little longer.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?

It felt like a natural progression, from short stories and flash fictions towards poetry. For years people would ask me why my flash fictions weren't actually poems, and I was very resistant, not being a fan of poetry. But I slowly opened myself up to the possibility of poetry, helped by some fantastic teachers who showed me that poems weren't all like the ones I read at school, which didn't engage me at all. I began to see how poetry can be even sparer than flash fiction, and how using the shape of the words on the page could enhance what I was trying to do, adding ambiguity, leaving more gaps for the reader to fill in. I fell in love with the line break!

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

No routine, nothing at all. As a writer of short things, there is no pressure on me to meet some sort of word count, and I don't put any pressure on myself to write anything at all. After 20 years, writing is like breathing for me, it is vital and necessary to my wellbeing. Going for a walk, clearing my head, very often helps, opens up a space for a poem to emerge (it's mostly poetry these days, and hybrid odditites).

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I don't worry, as I said, about being stalled or blocked. I never worry about not writing. I like to let the urge to write build up, until I have no choice, I simply must write.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

EVERYTHING. I can't stress this enough. Everything I read, watch on TV, listen to on the radio, read in magazines, often science magazines. Music inspires me, film inspires me. I never understand the question “Where do you get your ideas from?” Just being alive in the world fills me with ideas, with questions.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Too many to list here. I find new favourite writers all the time, in fiction, poetry, non-fiction... Einstein Dreams by Alan Lightman was an early work that gave me permission to try to do what I'd been thinking of, write short stories inspired by science. A glorious book. Then short stories by Ali Smith, and poetry, oh so much poetry! Adrienne Rich, James Tate, Louis Macneice. And more recently non-fiction and hybrid books – Maggie Nelson, Mary Ruefle, Anne Carson, oh my. Don't start me off...

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a film script. I've been trying. I love film and there aren't enough women writing films. I have ideas.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Well, I studied maths and physics, but I was terrible at it, so perhaps not that. I was a science journalist for many years, I loved that job.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

There was never a moment when that was a choice. I was a reader first, I read everything, and then I began to write around the age of 6 or 7. I didn't believe I could do that as a profession, but I am living the dream I had as a child, earning my living from writing (or writing-related work, to be honest!), writing what I love. I can't believe it, it's really a miracle, a blessing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book was Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, a gorgeous mix of popular science and memoir, beautifully written, moving and educational. The last great film was Arrival, I loved that, it's so much more than a film about aliens, it's about language and reality. And with a great female main character.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I may be working on a Long Thing, a hybrid collage of fictions, memoir, images and uncategorizables. Maybe.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;