‘For me, beauty and disgust don’t really exist in binary.’ AK Blakemore’s discovery of tales of The Great Tarare, a French showman with an insatiable appetite, was the perfect setting for her to explore her love of the grotesque and abject. Shortlisted for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize, her novel ‘The Glutton’ explores the almost folkloric life of the soldier-turned-street performer, as he tours around France eating everything from nails and stones to snakes and puppies. Blakemore also talks about her childhood living on the 24th floor of a tower block in southeast London, experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations, and the symbolic power of food in literature. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello, this is Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
My guest today is the author of two full length collections of poetry and her debut novel, the Manning Tree Witches, a fictional account of the Essex Witch trials.
It was a bestseller at Waterstones Book of the Month and winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize in 2021.
Her poetry has been widely published and anthologized and she's been shortlisted for this year's Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024 with her d exuberant second novel, The Glutton, which, set to the backdrop of revolutionary France, is based on the true story of a peasant turned freak show attraction.
AK Blake Moore.
Welcome to the program.
Hello.
What does AK stand for?
Amy?
Katrina.
That's my middle and first name.
And I like the way it makes me sound like a gun, basically.
And also is gender neutral, isn't it?
I mean, you could be anyone writing under your initials.
I mean, I mainly.
That wasn't part of the intention.
It was mainly because I sort of had, until very recently a full time, very boring office job.
And a lot of my poetry is quite sort of intimate, shall we say.
And I didn't want the people I work with being able to Google me.