about what tone your work should take. Whereas my experience of the Goldsmiths course was an eclectic and broad and interesting reading list that I would never have approached—I would have just carried on with the horror—and a year to take yourself very seriously and to put your writing above other things and a chance to discuss it with people. I think there is a real idea that it takes some of the creativity out of it or something—and there were a lot of people on the course who I know didn’t get anything out of it and said well I could have just done that at home—but I don’t think they would have done it at home. structo: You also do the Peckham Literary Festival. wyld: Yes, it will be the seventh one this year. We’ve been going for a long time, well it feels like a long time. There’ll be one in November. We haven’t got the dates sorted out yet, or… anybody booked. [Laughs] structo: Headliner: Evie Wyld! wyld: Yeah, absolutely. [Laughs] Supporter: Evie Wyld! But yeah it’s quite nice. It’s got to the stage now where I’ve got a lot of friends who have written books that I can call on and we have been doing quite a lot of talks with slideshows which are quite interesting. Trying to find ways of making readings less boring, because they can be quite... everyone switches off when you have six on the trot. The idea is to try and have people in conversation; a well-known author with a lesser-known author so the crowd are introduced to new work. At this point Wyld receives a text message and has to quickly nip up the road. Foolishly, she leaves me in charge of the shop. If I’d had the foresight to bring a van, all those lovely books would have been gone in no time. While she’s away a mysterious man comes in, who turns out to be collaborating with Wyld on a graphic novel. Wyld herself returns a moment later. wyld: It’s a bit of a memoir about growing up with a shark phobia and my childhood in Australia. structo: Sharks crop up in both of your books. wyld: Yeah, I like a shark. I had a really embarrassing interview for Granta on a stage where I, for some reason, said I would never write a book without a shark in it and it turned into a kind of what’s your shark kind of horrible embarrassing thing... people were like cupcakes!
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