Douglas Stuart

Bryony Gordon's Mad World

The Telegraph

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Winning the Booker Prize is a serious coup for any writer, but for author Douglas Stuart the achievement is personal as well as professional: successfully channeling childhood trauma into art. The result is his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, which follows the childhood of a young boy, Shuggie, and his alcoholic mother, Agnes, and was loosely based on Douglas' own life growing up in Glasgow. Douglas joins Bryony from his home in New York to discuss why representation drives his desire to write, and to explain why sometimes just getting by is the bravest thing you can do. Plus he gives listeners a cheeky glimpse into the subject of his next book.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The telegraph. Podcasts.
0:07.0	High listeners, Brian here.
0:09.0	Just a quick warning that there's some colorful language in this podcast
0:13.0	so it might not be one to listen to with children around.
0:16.0	Right, now that's out of the way.
0:18.0	I hope you enjoy this show.
0:22.0	I had written from a place of trauma and personal loss
0:25.0	and to take trauma and to turn it into a booker
0:28.0	into any art for anybody, I think is one of the best things you can do.
0:34.0	This week on Mad World and thrilled to welcome a writer
0:37.0	whose first novel was rejected by an astonishing 32 publishers.
0:43.0	But thankfully, for the reading public,
0:45.0	someone eventually picked it up.
0:47.0	And last year, it won the Booker Prize.
0:51.0	Shaggy Bane, that book, traces the life of a young boy
0:54.0	and his alcoholic mother in Glasgow.
0:56.0	And it's inspired by the author's own upbringing.
0:59.0	It's a portrait of addiction and all that comes with it
1:02.0	and has been described as bleak.
1:04.0	But for me, it's a book that is absolutely filled with love.
1:08.0	And so I had to ask if he could come on the podcast.
1:11.0	Please welcome to Mad World, the fantastic Douglas Stewart.
	...

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