The works of Diana Wynne Jones, in order, one decade at a time, with Emily Tesh and Rebecca Fraimow
Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones is a DWJ readalong podcast, winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Fancast. You can find us on Zencastr, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
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S2 Bonus Episode 3: Listener Q&A
The first time round most of the catching-up you do is retrospective. The second time round you see it happening.
In our final S2 bonus episode, we do a terrible job of not looking ahead to Hexwood as we work our way through a wonderful pile of letters to discuss class, adulthood, lying DWJ fathers, the many (more) layers of Fire and Hemlock, and the real meaning of "The Master."
S2 Bonus Episode 2: DWJ Short Stories of the 70s and 80s
"She has tremendous talent, of course, or she couldn’t do it at all, but I do sometimes feel that she—well—she repeats herself. Put it like this: I think maybe Carol doesn't give herself a chance to be herself any more than she gives us."
Endless questions, out-of-control characters, silly adults and weird bad dads: this week we're discussing the playground of ideas that makes up DWJ's short fiction of the seventies and eighties.
Titles discussed include "Carruthers" (1972), "Auntie Bea's Day Out" (1978), "The Fluffy Pink Toadstool" (1979), "The Sage of Theare" (1982), "Warlock at the Wheel" (1984), "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight" (1984), "No One" (1984), "The Plague of Peacocks" (1984), "Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream" (1986), "Enna Hittims" (1987), "The Fat Wizard" (1987), "The Green Stone," (1988), and "The Master" (1989).
S2 Bonus Episode 1: With Farah Mendlesohn
The thing we must notice is frequently identified by what is not described or told or explained.
In our first Season Two bonus episode, Farah Mendlesohn -- who literally wrote the book on Diana Wynne Jones -- joins us to bring a critic and historian's eye to the first two decades of DWJ's career.
Bonus Episode: Season One Q&A
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master...
Dalemark conspiracy theories, double selves, and conversations with the past: a look back at DWJ in the seventies.