Welcome to Literary Friction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host, Artivia Bright.

Hi, Octavia.

Hi, Carrie.

How are you doing today?

I'm good, babe. How about you? I'm really, I'm not aware. It's totally great. Yeah. You're doing brilliantly. Octavia's being really nice to me. she bought me in coffee but yeah i've just been at the book fair for three days and it's been yeah

for a lot to me she bought me a coffee but yeah i've just been at the book fair for three days and it's been yeah full on it's been really full on so but here i am you're ready ready to record i love you hungover sober i don't care whatever the situation you could still be wasted and i'd be thrilled well i am not wasted i can assure you that i don't i. Who knows at this point? Oh my God, this is going to be so good. I can't wait. Well, we do have a really good show today. We are talking about memoirs, the tales from authors that give us insight into lived experience from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to the death of a spouse to what it's like to be in a world

famous band and all the richness and thorny issues that this form promises.

We've got an amazing memoirist as a guest today for our first segment.

Octavia, do you want to introduce her?

With the greatest pleasure, because I have been a massive fan of this woman ever since I was

a young punk myself.

Our guest today is Viv Albertine and she is the biz.

She's best known for being the guitarist of the massively influential all-female punk band,

The Slits and a key player in the British punk scene in general.

Her first memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys was published in 2015

and I

remember recommending it on the show because I loved it. And she came in to talk to us about

its follow-up to throw away unopened, which is just published this month. It's about many things,

but mostly framed around her complicates a relationship with her really quite extraordinary

mother and growing up as a working class kid in London. I have to say, Carrie, you rocking up a little bit hungover is

highly appropriate. It is highly appropriate, although as you can probably guess, I was not

very punk in my youth. But yeah, Viv's a dream. And luckily, we recorded the interview before

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