“When I write, I want to smash through something.”

“Writing is something without which you die.”

“New technologies have fundamentally changed what it means to be a writer.”

Just You and the Page opens in 1971, with the dramatist Michael Wall hammering out his plays on a portable typewriter. It concludes in 2020, when the novelist and academic Josie Barnard is teaching students to compose novels on Instagram. Between them are Booker prize winners; a poet whose life was changed by a profound religious conversion; a translator for whom Pushkin has meant everything; a distinguished environmental journalist; a famous diarist; a nature writer who restored a wood, and a political activist who fled her country and is writing now in exile. 

Sue Gee has interviewed twelve distinctively different writers, all old friends, looking at what has shaped them: at struggle, inspiration and dedication to their art.  Part memoir, part literary biography, published in extraordinary times, Just You and the Page is above all about resilience.

“I loved this wonderful and admirable book. Sue Gee has written an important celebration of  friendship, solitude, writing and reading. Each portrait of her twelve writer-friends is compelling and memorable. A book to savour.” – Peter J. Conradi

Featuring:

Dramatist: Michael Wall
Novelists: Anna Burns, Penelope Lively, Charles Palliser, Darragh Martin
Poet: Hilary Davies
Nature writer: Ruth Pavey
Writer in exile: Afra
Environmental journalist: Marek Mayer
Diarist: Roy Strong
Translator: Antony Wood
Multimodal writer: Josie Barnard 

You can now rewatch the online launch of Just You and the Page on our Youtube channel here: