Trust, Education & Writing as Resistance w/ AL KENNEDY

From Stories, Poems & Music - The Creative Process by Novelists, Poets, Non-fiction Writers, Musicians, Screenwriters, Playwrights & Journalists on Writing - Creative Process Original Series

March 3, 2026 · 34 min · Season 16 · Episode 1221

About this episode

AL Kennedy discusses the importance of being fully expressed, the themes of her latest novel, and the role of fiction in truth-telling.

"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?" My guest today is  AL Kennedy . She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel  Day , as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant. Her latest novel,  Alive in the Merciful Country , takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy. (0:00)  Finding Your Voice On the  Alfred Wolfsohn…

People in this episode

Guest: AL Kennedy

Topics covered

trust
education
writing as resistance
fiction
activism
state power

Keywords

trust
education
writing
fiction
activism
state power
surveillance
comedy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Spy Cops

Books & works: Day, Alive in the Merciful Country