Episode 105: Jane Campbell on not seeking permission to live your life

In today’s episode we talk to Jane Campbell, the author of the short story collection Cat Brushing (published in the UK by Hachette and US by Grove/Atlantic). Her short story, “Cat Brushing,” was published in 2017 in the London Review of Books. Interpretations of Love is the name of her next novel, which is scheduled for Spring 2024.

Jane was born near Liverpool in the UK during World War 2. Her father was a doctor in the war with his regiment, and had been taken prisoner and was in a POW camp. By the time he came back, she was three and half years old.

She later moved to Zambia (Northern Rhodesia at the time), then studied in South Africa and then at Oxford, where she studied English. She married a lawyer and moved to Bermuda in 1968, divorcing 12 years later, and when she returned to Oxford, she studied Social Science, moved into mental health work and trained as a Group Analyst, which became her profession.

As we discuss in the interview, she has always written—she refers to herself as an involuntary writer—but was not focused on publication. We found her path to publication interesting and refreshing. At age 77, her first short story was published in the LRB, andshe was introduced to an agent. She now has a two-book contract. She is working on the second book, a novel that is scheduled to come out in Spring 2024.

We really loved talking to her in this wide-ranging interview, in which we touch on everything from portrayals of the elderly to existential angst. By the end, she’s even interviewing us. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

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Theme music is “It’s Time” by Scaricá Ricascá. Have a question you’d like us to try to answer, or a topic you’d love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here.  Thanks for listening, and get to work!

In this episode:n