Isolationcast #6: creativity in lockdown with Stacey Halls

The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis

My guest this week is the phenomenal Stacey Halls whose sweeping historical novel The Familiars was the bestselling debut of 2019. She has followed it up with The Foundling, set in 18th Century London and telling the story of a young mother named Bess who attempts to reclaim her daughter from London’s Foundling Hospital only to find that someone pretending to be her has already done so.
I loved talking to Stacey - despite being a bookworm as a child, she says she never imagined she could have made a career as a writer and so after school became a legal secretary. She was so refreshing and honest about the overwhelming nature of publishing - when her manuscript prompted a bidding war, she knew she should be happy but instead was consumed with anxiety. I also loved hearing about her approach of “tricking” herself into finishing her first drafts by writing 2000 words a day and, of course, finding out what she has been up to in lockdown.

Twitter: @aliceazania / @stacey_halls
Instagram: @aliceazania / @staceyhallsauthor
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundling-Stacey-Halls/dp/1838770062

Edited by Chelsey Moore