Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Ellen Wiles about her second novel, The Unexpected, published in November 2024 by HarperCollins. It follows two best friends, Robin and Kessie, who find themselves platonically coparenting a baby. It's a book about different species of love, including friendship and kinship, about motherhood and fertility, and about unconventional and queer families.
Ellen Wiles is a British novelist, sound artist, literary anthropologist, and Creative Writing professor at the University of Exeter, UK. She has previously worked as a barrister and as a musician. She is the author of two novels, The Unexpected (2024) and The Invisible Crowd (2017), and two non-fiction books, Live Literature(2021) and Saffron Shadows (2015). She also makes literary audio work engaging with nature and landscape, and is currently artist-in-residence at an environmental science center.
Author website: https://www.ellenwiles.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenwiles/#
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/ellenwiles.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-wiles-a8478951/?originalSubdomain=uk
