大象传媒

A pacifist, a philosophical mystic, Nobel Prize nominee nine times, the author of over 50 books: Aldous Huxley was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962, a year before his death. Matthew Sweet looks at the influence of his books including Brave New World, and The Doors of Perception and how they fit into his wider literary career, which began with editing Oxford Poetry, publishing social satires and writing articles for Vanity Fair and British Vogue. Matthew's guests are:

Charlie Jane Anders - the author of a young adult trilogy which begins with Victories Greater Than Death. She has written journalism for New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Wired, and has a TED talk called 'Go Ahead, Dream About the Future'.

Michael Dirda - a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post as well as a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. His books include a memoir and a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Nisi Shawl - writer, editor and journalist whose work has been published in Semiotext(e), Strange Horizons, and Asimov's Science Fiction, amongst other places

Producer: Luke Mulhall

This conversation is one of a series organised with the Royal Society of Literature which you can find in the playlist Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking website and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. They include conversations about Wilfred Owen, Writing about Place, EM Forster, and writerly pairings including Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam, Nadifa Mohamed and Irenosen Okojie, Marlon James and Neil Gaiman. /programmes/p047v6vh