Talking Of Books

01 Feb 2020: Hafsa Lodi has covered fashion in the region for a decade, and is a seamstress and designer herself. Her non-fiction book Modesty: A Fashion Paradox is an in-depth look into a multi billion dollar retail sector that is no stranger to controversy.

08 Feb 2020: Montegrappa Writing Prize winner Stacey Siebritz explains what the prize means to her, and UK literary agent Luigi Bonomi explains the role he'll play mentoring her and helping take her manuscript 'The Leap' to publication.

08 Feb 2020: Tayari Jones shares the sofa with Annabelle Corton on Talking of Books live at the Emirates Festival of Literature 2020 to discuss her novel 'An American Marriage’ which traces the lives of Roy, a man wrongly convicted of a crime, and his wife Celestial. 

08 Feb 2020: The man behind the scenes of 17 of Sir David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, award-winning cameraman Gavin Thurston, shares his secrets on how to capture cheeky monkeys at their cheekiest and chats about his book 'Journeys in the Wild: The Secret Life of a Cameraman’.

08 Feb 2020: Scottish artist Ross Collins has illustrated over 100 books for children and written a few too. He shares his insights on drawing for children in favourites like ’There’s a Bear on My Chair’ and 'This Zoo Is Not for You’.

08 Feb 2020: Bestselling Australian author Markus Zusak explains to the Talking of Books team the pressure of finishing a book that was 13 years in the making, and why his daughter is perhaps the sharpest critic of his productivity.

08 Feb 2020: Historical fiction writer, Esi Edugyan, explains to Annabelle Corton the ideas and process behind ‘Washington Black’ the story of an eleven-year-old slave who finds himself pursuing a promise of freedom.

08 Feb 2020: The former foreign minister of Somaliland, Edna Adan Ismail, joins Annabelle Corton live at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature to discuss her work reducing maternal mortality.

08 Feb 2020: Poet Kevin Crossley-Holland met Syrian refugee Nujeen Mustafa here in Dubai at the 2017 Litfest which resulted in him writing her story 'Everyday Wonders: The Girl from Aleppo’. They discuss their collaboration on the eve of a multinational choir performing their work at the Festival Finale.

08 Feb 2020: Sara-Jane Arbury and Fiona Ross are the wordsmiths behind 'Roald Dahl’s Rotsome and Repulsant Words’. They explain to Annabelle Corton how their lively lexicon lets children discover etymologies, definitions and fascinating language facts along the way.

07 Feb 2020: Sustainability campaigner Tony Juniper asks ‘What has Nature Ever Done for Us?’ in his new book and explains to Sonal Rupani that 100% of our economic development comes from what nature provides yet still, we take most of it for granted.

07 Feb 2020: Henry Firth and Ian Theasby are the boys from Bosh! and they’re here to help everyone eat more plants. They’re the most popular vegans on YouTube, reaching more than half a billion people in their first year alone. They chat with us about how and why they gave up meat and what it means to live life on the veg.

07 Feb 2020: Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock overcame a challenging childhood to pursue a career as a space scientist. She discusses the role that 'The Clangers' played in inspiring her to look to the skies as a very young child and everywhere that’s taken her since, including writing ‘Dr Maggie’s Grand Tour of the Solar System’.

07 Feb 2020: Roma Agrawal is an award-winning structural engineer who builds really big things. She chats about why she promotes engineering careers to kids and about her first book, ‘Built'.

08 Feb 2020: UAE astronauts Hazzaa al Mansouri and Sultan Al Neyadi chat about life on a space station and training with world-record breaking female NASA astronaut Christina Koch.

07 Feb 2020: Harry Baker and Chris Read are 'Harry and Chris’ the UK’s favourite (if only?) Comedy-Rap-Jazz duo. Hear them chatting about pandas, robot wars, bullying and mathematics with Sonal Rupani.

25 Jan 2020: It's a popularity contest this week as Shadi Moazami director and founder of MAIA Luxury Communications, and Tamreez Inam, bookstagrammer and LitFest Team member, discuss, compare and contrast two books connected by popularity and celebrity culture: The Kim Kardashian Principle by Jeetendr Sehdev and New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi and K-Pop by Fatima Bhutto.

25 Jan 2020: Dubai-based journalist, bookworm and former editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, Louise Nichol, tells us how she gets her reading fix as a busy mother of three, and what books she’s enjoyed recently, from Nadiya Hussain's raw and honest memoir Finding My Voice to Oliver Jeffers’ dazzling work as a children's author and illustrator, to an enigmatic, dangerous and fashion forward assassin in Luke Jennings’ pacey and racy Codename Villanelle series.

25 Jan 2020: The controversial and - some might say ‘murderous’ - act that’s got the whole book world talking – it really divided our listeners on the show! And a big question about the value of historical artefacts and the stories objects from the past can tell us.

18 Jan 2020: The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature announced a ground-breaking venture with Dubai Police and the Penal and Correctional Institutions to publish Tomorrow, I Will Fly, a book of essays written by men and women inmates in Dubai jails.