Welcome to Literary Fiction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright. Hello, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. We have a very exciting show for you today. We're discussing something that definitely isn't discussed enough race in Britain. It's a very big

topic. This is just an introduction, but we feel it's an important topic. And we're very lucky to

have Reni Edo Lodge as our author guest, whose first book, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White

People About Race, was published last month and is taking Britain by storm.

Octavia, do you want to introduce Rennie?

Sure thing. Rennie Adelaide Lodge is a London-based award-winning journalist.

She's written for publications including The New York Times, The Voice, the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian.

She is the winner of an MHP 30 to Watch Award and was chosen as one of the top 30 young people

in digital media by The Guardian in 2014. She contributed to the good immigrants, which we've discussed on the show before with Selena Godden, who is another contributor. And Marlon James called her debut book, Why I'm No Long Talking to White People About Race, Essential. So yeah, we're super excited to have her on. Yeah, and it's a fab book. I think we both really, really liked it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. As you can probably tell from our interview as well. We have another very special guest today, Kishani Wajoranta, who is here in the studio with us right now. Hi, Kishani. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me. Kishani, just to give you some background, has worked in publishing for five years.

We sometimes email each other about publishing stuff, which is very exciting. She's currently working at the literary imprint Piccdore Books, which is part of McMillan, having previously worked at Faber and Fabor and Fabor and Penguin Random House. She is also a long-standing contributing editor at the White Review, a quarterly literary magazine available in print and online, which I think both

Octavia and I are readers of and admire herself, who had a party last night. Which was incredible.

Kylie's Bennett was amazing. Cool. We can talk about that. Actually, we can't talk about that. We don't have time. But anyway, great. Kish is going to be joining us when we interview Rennie and also for our wider discussion about race in Britain in the context of literature. So from Zadie Smith to Marlon James to Bell Hooks. And we will also, as usual, be giving you some book recommendations at the end.

So stay tuned.

Rennietto Lodge, thanks so much for coming on literary friction.

So we have asked you to start with a reading.

Do you mind setting it up for us?

Okay.

So the book title and general gist is based on a post that I wrote on my website about two,

two and a half, maybe three and a half years ago now, and it was called Why I'm No Longer

Talking to White People About Race.

I'm no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race.

Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the legitimacy of structural racism and its symptoms.

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