Season 2: Kate Mosse in Conversation With Alison Jean Lester

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to be able to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.

This week’s episode features bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, author of eight novels and newly published non-fiction book, An Extra Pair of Hands, her personal story of becoming a carer in middle age. In conversation with author Alison Jean Lester, Kate talks about her experience of caring for her father through Parkinson’s, supporting her mother during widowhood and living, and caring for, her mother-in-law Grandma Rosie, as well as the need to celebrate, and better support, the 8.8 million of invisible carers across the UK holding families together. This episode supports Age UK Birmingham.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest

Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

BLF Series 2, Episode 1: Kate Mosse

Intro

Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

This week’s episode features bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, author of eight novels and newly published non-fiction book, An Extra Pair of Hands, her personal story of becoming a carer in middle age. In conversation with author Alison Jean Lester, Kate talks about her experience of caring for her father through Parkinson’s, supporting her mother during widowhood and living, and caring for, her mother-in-law Grandma Rosie, as well as the need to celebrate, and better support, the 8.8 million of invisible carers across the UK holding families together.

This episode supports Age UK Birmingham.

Alison Jean Lester

Hello, everyone. This is Alison Jean Lester, novelist and author of the memoir Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying. Absolutely delighted to be here talking with Kate Mosse, novelist, playwright and author of An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring, Aging, and Everyday Acts of Love. Kate Mosse is an international best-selling novelist, playwright, and nonfiction author, with sales of more than 8 million copies in 38 languages, renowned for bringing unheard and under heard histories to life. She's a champion of women's creativity. She's the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sits on the executive committee of Women of the World and is a visiting professor of contemporary fiction and creative writing at the University of Chichester. Her latest novel, The City of Tears, was published in January 2021. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and mother-in-law. And she's there right now ready to talk with us. Hello, Kate.

Kate Mosse

Hello, good morning.

Alison Jean Lester

Good morning to you, I am so pleased to have been paired with you and to have had the chance to read An Extra Pair of Hands. It's very close to my heart as it is to I think a lot of us in our 50s and, I think you said in another interview, you're approaching 60?

Kate Mosse

I am, yes. 60th birthday in October.

Alison Jean Lester

Right and I remember very palpably when my parents’ parents were dying, and thinking, they're talking to their friends all the time, their friends are also going through this. And my friends and I will also be going through this at the same time. The first thing that struck me in reading, very early on, right in the first pages of this book, where you said the many things that it's about, and the one that really pierced me was trying and failing simultaneously. Can you see that? Can you see that very human duality, that tension in your fictional stories as well? Or was that very palpable to you in talking about just your own life?

Kate Mosse

That's a great question, actually, Alison because one of the key things for all of us who write in different genres, is how similar the skill is for writing each different type of book. And there is, for me, it was very liberating writing nonfiction. I've written some nonfiction before, but this is by far the most personal book I've ever written. But actually, the skill and the way that I went about writing it was the same as the way that I go about writing a novel, which is you need to put characters on the page, you need to put emotions on the page. And so that particular thing about trying and failing, and succeeding simultaneously, everything existing in the moment is at the heart, I think of any human experience, in that we all are, whether it's a made-up character or us in our own lives, mostly we're trying to do our best. And often you can have that wonderful feeling that you've got it right. You know, you did the right thing, at the right time. But particularly when you're writing about care, when as you say, there is no alternative ending. The ending, if you're a carer, is almost always going to be in the death of the person you care for. You know, living well and dying well are the same story, you know dying well is part of living well, you know, and it will come to us all, doesn't matter who we are, how immortal we feel, in the end it will come to us all. So, I think that that is at the heart of what it means to be a carer. But obviously in a piece of fiction, I can decide the ending, I can change the ending, I usually finish before my characters die, you know and certainly the lead characters unless, that's part of the story. And so, I wanted to have that sense that whatever you do, will never change things. You know, all you can do is make a - horrible word and it's been much overused at the moment, I'm obsessed with the Olympics, and, you know, it's the word appears on every interview, the journey. But all you can do as a carer is make the journey, as brilliant as it can be for the person you're caring for. And by association yourself.

Alison Jean Lester

Exactly. Because you're not the doctor, you're the comforter and the lifter.

Kate Mosse

And, you know, the book is full of lite...