Welcome to Literary Friction.

I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always. Well, not as always because she wasn't here last time, but I'm here back.

With my co-host, Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. How are you?

Hi, Carrie. I'm good. I'm still in the tunnel, so this is just like a miniature appearance for half of the show.

The tunnel is dark and long,

but I can see the light at the end of it now, which is very good. I just had a very productive morning with Chapter 4, just wrestling it into shape. So I'm feeling quite good. How about you?

Yeah, well, glad to be back here with you for half of the show. I've just come back from France.

Girl, you are always traveling these days. I admire it. You got to take the window when you have

it, I think. Yeah, definitely. So I've been to France again. That's my news. It was great. Did you

eat a cuisand for me? I ate so many cuisans for you. Oh, God, because there's no quassons in the tunnel.

I'm so sorry. Maybe I should send you some tunnel quassons. Are you allowed quosons? Yeah. I mean, yes, it's just that I don't leave the house currently, so I can't get them and I can't make them. Interesting. Okay, hold that thought. But on to the show, today we're delighted to welcome the writer Sheena Patel to literary friction. Sheena's mesmeric first novel, I'm a fan, is narrated

in what seems like one gasp by an unnamed speaker who tells us a story of what appears to be

an unequal, unfaithful and unfulfilling relationship. So, as you can probably

guess from that description, it's a novel about power and relationships, but it's also about

internet culture, social media, and what it means to be a fan. So we thought that a fitting theme for

our show today would be fandom in literature. We'll be thinking

about things like when fandom tips over into unhealthy obsession and fiction, celebrity memoirs,

our own relationship with fandom, and whether we are living in the age of the stand. And I should

say Octavia is here for some chat, but I'm going to be doing the interview with Sheena today, so I hope you can bear

with me. Octavia, can you tell our listeners a little more about Sheena? I sure can. Sheena Patel is a

writer and assistant director for film and TV who was born and raised in Northwest London.

She's part of the four Brown Girls Who Write Collective

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