This episode is all about how to put together a live solo one-hour show and other comedy things as comedian, director and teacher Alex Farrow joins me on the podcast.  Teaching is a performance and lot of former teachers find their way into comedy. Alex had to figure out how both teaching and comedy work over Zoom during lockdown, as he continued to work in both capacities. Between writing and performing his newest Fringe hour, 'Philosophy Pig' and organising the Mind Oxford Gala through his main comedy home, Jericho Comedy in Oxford, Alex has amassed loads of great advice on how to get s ..read more

Freelance Pod is back with some comedy-focussed episodes! I've made a little entry into the comedy industry during lockdown, and the pod is following me into this wild new world...  Please note the new url for the newsletter, Writing by Moonlight, which is now on Buttondown: https://buttondown.email/suchandrika/ If you were already a newsletter subscriber, you'll have moved over to the new newsletter with me - if you're not and love reading it, why not subscribe now?  Now, onto this episode...  PR, comedian, comedy promoter and podcaster Vix Leyton is the guest on this episode ..read more

Journalist, poet and publisher / writer of media criticism newsletter Conquest of the Useless, Mic Wright guests on this episode. This is the last one of the current second season. Don't worry though, I'll be back with more great guests later in the year!  Mic both works within the media, and makes a living critiquing it, through his newsletter and Twitter feed. Digital platforms have allowed all kinds voices to be heard, and fair criticism of our media industry is vital. On this episode, Mic tells me how he does it, how it impacts upon him and what advice he'd give to a new journalist.&n ..read more

Lauren Razavi joins me on this episode to talk about the future of work, how writers can use influencer tools to benefit their careers and what the digital nomad lifestyle might look like post-COVID-19. At a tricky moment when we're gingerly leaving lockdown and wondering how our offices are going to work (or, if you're freelance like me, if you'll ever get to work anywhere other than home, help!) it's helpful to speak to Lauren, who's spent a lot of her career writing and speaking about what work could look like in the years to come. Having worked on content for Google and on the future of wo ..read more

In 2011, two years after American radio producer and reporter Kim Fox had moved to Cairo to take up a teaching role at The American University of Cairo, the Egyptian Revolution happened, in response to increasing police brutality on what would turn out to be the dying days of President Hosni Mubarak's presidency.  Kim spent time at the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, which involved up to 2 million people. Over a decade later, the scenes she witnessed in Cairo are being repeated in Minneapolis after George Floyd's death, and around the world. Kim also tells me about how her students use s ..read more

Alex Bertulis-Fernandes is a comedian and writer. She's been doing stand-up for the past year, and she is writing a memoir while being mentored on the Penguin WriteNow mentoring scheme*.  Alex and I met at the late, much-loved Clean Prose writers' space a few months ago, at a memoir-writing workshop taught by writer Cathy Rentzenbrink. Alex was actually the person who broke some comedy news to me last week - that I was a nominee for the Funny Women Stage Awards 2020 - she had been in the same position last year, and she happened to see this year's announcement before I did!  On this ..read more

Freelance writer and author Flora Baker has combined memoir and a self-help guide in her first book, The Adult Orphan Club. Flora lost her mother at 20, and her father at 30, just a few years ago. We 'met' via the Young Orphans Whatsapp group, although thanks to lockdown we have not yet met in person.  After her mother's death, Flora went travelling for five years, and detailed her adventures on her blog, Flora the Explorer. She admits now that the travelling allowed her to postpone doing the work of grieving, as the day-to-day adventures pushed her mourning aside. She's written the book ..read more

MEL Magazine's deputy editor Alana Levinson joins me remotely from Los Angeles on this episode, to talk about how necessary editing is for good writing - but it's been devalued in a digital world where any of us can press publish whenever we like.  Sometimes, editing can feel like a judgement on the quality of our writing [bad, we assume], but Alana wants to reassure freelance journalists looking to pitch MEL that editing is a collaboration, to make the article the best that it can be.  And yes, she also delves into the origins of The Great Solicited Dick Pic Experiment by MEL writer ..read more

When I saw Marie Foulston's tweet about the lockdown houseparty that she threw in a spreadsheet, I knew that I had to invite her onto the podcast to hear all about it! Marie is now a freelance creative producer and playful curator, and was most recently Curator of Videogames at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. During her time working there, she was Lead Curator of the 'Videogames: Design/ Play/ Disrupt' exhibition, and you can read more about it in this New York Times piece: 'Playing Games Can Be Hard Work. So Can Choosing Which Ones to Display'. Marie tells me about the anxiety of ..read more

Joining The Writers' Hour every morning for one week early on in lockdown helped me break through the cobwebs and write the outline of the book that I've been working on for the past year, in fits and starts. I used the hour to write longhand, which always helps unlock my creativity.  The Writer's Hour is a simple idea: every weekday morning between 8 and 9am BST, the founders of The London Writers' Salon, Parul Bavishi and Matt Trinetti, hold a Zoom meeting where writers turn up, enter into the chat box what they want to achieve in that session and then... write. For an hour. With the we ..read more