A Private Man with Stephanie Sy Quia

Stephanie Sy Quia talks to host Elena Lappin about her debut novel, A Private Man, and the personal history that shaped it. The conversation moves between family memory, Catholicism, generational trauma, dementia, and the challenge of writing fiction that feels emotionally precise without becoming extractive.We discuss how she turned a real family lineage into art, why she wrote from the public edges of family history rather than interrogating relatives directly, and how teaching Shakespeare fed back into her novel writing. She also reflects on care work, the aging of the baby boomer generation, and why she writes about the hard-to-categorize parts of life.

Key topics

• A Private Man as a novel shaped by family history, Catholicism, and forbidden love
• Writing about relatives without being extractive or forcing personal testimony
• The emotional and ethical tension of claiming a family story as your own
• The Notre Dame fire as an influence on a key scene in the novel
• How generational trauma and family memory can belong to more than one person
• The contrast between poetry and prose, and how she keeps every sentence purposeful
• Margaret and David as characters shaped by community, institution, and sexual restraint
• Vatican II, Catholic reform, and the disappointment of unrealized hope
• Writing historically specific male sexuality through institutional life, boarding school, and war
• Dementia, care, and the intimacy of witnessing the end of a life
• How teaching Antony and Cleopatra informed her sense of romantic and emotional dynamics
• Why she is drawn to slippery, hard-to-label identities and experiences

Timestamps

(00:00) Family history, generational trauma, and why not to be extractive

(01:15) Introduction to Stephanie Sy Quia and A Private Man

(02:24) Notre Dame fire inspiration and a scene between grandson and grandmother

(06:39) Cathedral restoration, sacred materials, and the idea of stone “singing”

(08:05) Reading from the novel ends and the interview begins

(09:07) Her family background: priest grandfather, theologian grandmother, and exile

(11:27) Writing from public family history instead of interrogating relatives

(13:52) Poetry versus prose and making every word earn its place

(15:21) Margaret and David: community, desire, and different relationships to Catholicism

(18:05) Hope, cynicism, and the failure of Vatican II to deliver change

(20:16) Writing a male character through institutional British masculinity

(22:42) Sex, war, and the high stakes of intimacy in an earlier era

(23:39) Writing her grandmother through memory, truth, and preemptive grief

(25:41) Teaching Antony and Cleopatra and bringing its energy into the novel

(27:05) Food, passion, and why the novel makes the reader feel hungry

(28:25) Aging, caregiving, and the demographic burden on younger generations

(30:54) Why she writes: slippery identities, care, and frankness about decline

Notable quotes

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“I was very keen not to be too extractive about how I gathered family information.”

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“Family history both does and does not belong to you.”

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“I wanted to write about the process of caring for someone at the end of their life.”

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Quote: “The only thing he knows what to do with a bad feeling is to turn it into anger.”

• Djamel White reads from All Them Dogs, introducing Tony Ward and the gritty, immediate voice that drives the novel.
• White reacts to the Booker Prize longlisting, describing the experience as exciting, overwhelming, and stomach turning.
• He talks about growing up without books in the house, and how school first introduced him to reading and stories.
• The novel’s structure comes from Tony’s voice, with White explaining how the extended monologue creates an “all gas, no brakes” momentum.
• White describes writing while managing a tattoo shop and finishing college, balancing a full degree with work after COVID.
• Tony Ward returns to Dublin after five years away, trying to re-enter a criminal world that has moved on without him.
• The discussion explores the collapse of moral codes in modern Dublin crime, and how capitalism, money, and survival have replaced older gangland loyalties.
• White reflects on the housing crisis and young adult frustration in Ireland, noting how Tony’s instability mirrors a wider generational experience.
• Motherhood and fatherhood are central themes, especially the different maternal figures in the book and the damaging absence of fathers.
• White explains Tony’s anger, vulnerability, and arrested development, showing how fear, shame, and desire for belonging drive him forward.
• Image, taste, and identity matter throughout the novel, from clothes and watches to music and aesthetic self-awareness.
• White discusses literary influences, including Enda O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, and Carson McCullers.

Timestamps

00:00 - Is “Pray I’ll Be a Failure” a real song?

02:27 - Reading from All Them Dogs and the voice of Tony Ward

05:55 - Booker Prize longlisting and the emotional fallout

06:25 - Discovering books as the first reader in his family

08:18 - Writing a novel that feels like watching a movie

09:46 - Working in a tattoo shop while writing

11:00 - Tony Ward returns to a gangland that has moved on

14:28 - Dublin crime, old moral codes, and their collapse

16:24 - The housing crisis and a generation with little to show

16:51 - Tony’s narrow choices and emotional vulnerability

18:34 - Why Tony is in arrested development

19:30 - Anger as Tony’s engine and survival tool

21:05 - The mothers in the novel and what they reveal

22:43 - Fathers, absence, and family damage

24:27 - Grooming, mentorship, and boys drawn into crime

25:56 - Clothes, watches, and Tony’s aesthetic instincts

27:54 - Tony’s taste, identity, and the image-obsessed world

29:16 - Chekhov’s gun and why the book uses a policeman instead

31:16 - Books on the shelf: Enda O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, Carson McCullers

32:41 - Why Carson McCullers matters to White

SHOP TALK WITH WRITERS is a unique conversation with each author, about the stories behind their books.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to find out more about each episode, and to engage with our conversations with authors

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Host Elena Lappin speaks with writer and director Eli Zuzovsky about his novel Mazeltov, a queer coming of age story set in Israel against the backdrop of war and collective trauma. The conversation focuses on how conflict, family, religion, and language shape identity, and why Zuzovsky chose to tell a a personal story through an ensemble of voices.In this episode, Zuzovsky shares how the novel grew from his dislike of the lone-voice coming of age tradition into a more expansive, multi-perspective story. He also reads a passage from the book and discusses brokenness, diaspora, and queerness in a culture of masculinity.

MAZELTOV is published by Footnote Press, an imprint of Bonnier Books.

https://elizuzovsky.com

https://footnotepress.com/books/mazeltov/

Key topics

• Eli Zuzovsky introduces Mazeltov as a debut novel set at a bar mitzvah party in Tel Aviv, against the onset of war
• The book’s structure is built around multiple perspectives, including the grandmother Mémé, the protagonist Adam, and the Palestinian poet Khalil.
• Zuzovsky reads from the chapter “The Shiksa,” narrated by Mémé, which captures the book’s mix of humour, fear of war, and emotional vulnerability.
• The novel as an ensemble portrait rather than a single-boy narrative, with each character helping form Adam’s story.
• Why the coming of age genre felt too narrow to Zuzovsky, and how he wanted a more communal, expansive model of selfhood.
• War as background and texture, not just plot, with Zuzovsky describing it as unavoidable in Israeli and Palestinian life.
• Adam’s relationship to diaspora and exile, including the tension between romanticising leaving and the ethical cost of staying.
• Queerness and masculinity in Israel, and how Adam’s discomfort with national expectations mirrors Zuzovsky’s own experience.
• Language as identity and escape, especially the differences between Hebrew, English, Arabic, and French.
• Religion and Kabbalah as inherited cultural material, even for a secular writer, especially through ideas like brokenness and tzimtzum.

Quotes:

“Selfhood is not a one person show. It’s always an ensemble show.”

“What I can do as an artist is to try to interrogate what they do to the human psyche.”

“Brokenness is all around us, so we might as well start seeing the light and the beauty in it.”

SHOP TALK WITH WRITERS is a unique conversation with each author, about the stories behind their books.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to find out more about each episode, and to engage with our conversations with authors

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.