The lives behind words

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about Anna Stroud's writing life: she composes on a second-hand, offline laptop called Gandalf. No notifications, no internet rabbit holes, no algorithmic nudges - just a writer, a machine, and whatever ghosts she has summoned onto the page.

That detail captures the charm of The Hidden Lives of Writers, a South African podcast that prefers the messy, private business of writing to the mythology of literary celebrity. In this 55-min episode, Anna Stroud, hosts Fiona Snyckers and Gail Schimmel draw out Stroud's route from journalism and copywriting to fiction, and the moment an MA in Creative Writing gave her permission to take herself seriously as a writer.

Stroud, recognised nationally as one of South Africa's most promising new fiction writers, is an especially interesting guest because her debut, Who Looks Inside, is anything but cosy. The award-winning novel slips between realities as a woman returning from South Korea for her mother's funeral finds the past waiting at home. Critics have called it atmospheric, haunting and unsettling.


Warm, curious and quietly revealing, this is a podcast about writing that understands that writers are often their own strangest characters.