Read Smart Podcast: The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction launches new series

March 2, 2020

We’re excited to announce the new Read Smart Podcast.

Hosted by BBC’s Razia Iqbal, Read Smart follows the success of the 2019 episodes produced to celebrate the prize’s 21^st anniversary.

Each month Razia will be exploring the world of non-fiction and its increasing popularity.  Expect to hear from prize winning authors, judges and publishing insiders. We also go behind the scenes at the 2020 prize, which is awarded this autumn.

We kick off Episode 1 looking at troublemakers and freedom of expression for non-fiction writers. This episode features the investigative journalist, writer and filmmaker David France, whose account of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s, How to Survive A Plague, won The Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. Razia is also joined by Yasemin Congar, who translated I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan, which was longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize in 2019, and was written and published from prison, and by Hannah Trevarthen from English PEN.

Catch up on Series One now, where we had winners in-conversation including Philippe Sands with Anna Funder, Antony Beevor with Margaret MacMillan, and Helen Macdonald with Philip Hoare. We also followed the 2019 prize from longlist through to the winner announcement, going behind the scenes with the judges and hearing the moment when Hallie Rubenhold was named the winner during the glittering awards ceremony at London’s Science Museum back in November. Razia also caught up with Hallie the day after she won to hear about the whirlwind of media interviews and what inspired her to write about the untold lives of the five women killed by Jack the Ripper.

The next episode airs at the end of March, where we speak with movers and shakers in the non-fiction publishing world.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is also generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Entale.