You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

In 2013, I found myself in a shared taxi from York train station on my way to a Writers' Festival.

My companion and I chatted easily for the duration of the journey.

It was only when I asked her name that I realised I'd been sitting next to Sarah Hall, who had just made Granta's list of 20

most promising novelists under 40. Her unassuming manner was perhaps typical of an author

once described by The Guardian as a well-kept secret.

But she is a secret no longer.

She's written five critically acclaimed novels, won multiple awards and been nominated for the Booker twice.

Hall is also the author of three short-story collections and has won the BBC National Short Story Award on two separate occasions, the only writer ever to do so.

Burntcote is her sixth novel. Its narrator is Edith, a sculptor who is dying of a virus.

She contracted from her lover 20 years previously during a global pandemic.

As Edith faces an uncertain future, she reflects on her past and on what it means to be alive.

Those who tell stories survive.

My mother said this to me when I was a child, after she'd gone missing for several hours.

I was convinced she was dead, and that I'd been left alone in the cottage on the moors.

...