Read Smart: Troublemakers and Freedom of Expression with David France and Yasemin Congar

We’re excited to announce the new Read Smart Podcast. The show is hosted by Razia Iqbal, produced by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The new series builds on last year’s successful podcasts released to celebrate the prize’s 21st anniversary.

Each month, Razia explores the increasingly popular world of non-fiction books. Expect to hear from prize winning authors, judges and publishing insiders. It also goes behind the scenes of the 2020 prize, which is awarded this autumn.

We kick off Episode 1 looking at troublemakers and freedom of expression. This episode features the investigative journalist, writer and filmmaker David France, whose account of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s, How to Survive A Plague, won The Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. Razia is joined by Yasemin Congar, who translated I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan, which was longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize in 2019, and was written and published from prison, and by Hannah Trevarthen from English PEN.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.