Writing grief and the body: Lisabelle Tay & Heather Parry in conversation with Yan Ge

In this Halloween-flavoured episode of The Writing Life Podcast, we’re resharing an illuminating discussion between writers Lisabelle Tay and Heather Parry on writing grief and the monstrous body.

Heather Parry is a Glasgow-based writer and editor, originally from South Yorkshire. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and her first nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, was released in 2024 as part of 404 Ink’s Inklings series.

Lisabelle Tay is the author of Pilgrim (The Emma Press, 2021). She writes poetry, fiction, and screenplays. Her work appears in Bad Lilies, Sine Theta Magazine, and elsewhere, and she was part of the 2023 Black List Feature Lab.

They sit down with Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China, to explore how the body and the bodily serve as powerful lenses for examining trauma, grief, and the experience of inhabiting perspectives and bodies beyond our own.

This event, supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore, was recorded in May 2025 for The Global Page, a unique series of online global conversations featuring internationally acclaimed and emerging writers and translators. You can find more conversations like this here.

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Edited by Omni Mix

Horror

Dare to frighten your readers! From timeless traditions to the unconventional and downright strange, our new Horror pack is filled with insights and inspiration from Irenosen Okojie, Zoë Apostolides, Julia Armfield, Adam Z. Robinson, and more.

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