Show Notes
In this week’s episode of Booksmart, host Soaliha Iqbal sits down with award-winning author, artist, and screenwriter Dylin Hardcastle - the creative force behind Below Deck, Breathing Underwater, Running Like China, and the critically acclaimed A Language of Limbs, winner of the 2023 Kathleen Mitchell Award and longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize (casually). Together, they dive deep into the making of A Language of Limbs - a sweeping, dual-perspective novel set across three decades, following two unnamed protagonists whose lives almost touch, collide, and diverge. Dylin shares how the novel’s distinctive structure emerged, why they played with form (from fragmented vignettes to poetic passages and the absence of quotation marks), and the ways their own queer and trans embodiment shaped the book’s language, texture, and emotional core. Soaliha and Dylin also unpack the novel’s central focus: chosen family; the intimacy of sex as character development; the dance between pleasure and pain; and the intergenerational grief, rage, resilience, and joy of queer communities from the 1970s through the AIDS crisis to now. Dylin reflects on the responsibility of writing towards history with tenderness and accuracy, the surprising generational differences in how readers respond to depictions of violence and trauma, and why joy had to sit alongside devastation. They also explore the fascinating evolution of the book’s cover (including the story behind the now-iconic photograph), how A Language of Limbs was optioned for television before publication (!!!), and how the adaptation expands the book's universe. ALSO - be sure to listen to the whole ep as Dylin offers an early glimpse into their next novel!
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Welcome back to book club friends! Things are heating up down under, hence our desire to choose Jenny Jackson's New England set contemporary novel 'The Shampoo Effect' as our September book club pick. The hype surrounding this book has been hard to ignore, with VOGUE calling it one of the "best books of 2026". Many readers have likened the reading experience to overhearing juicy gossip about a friend group you know only tangentially. But does the story, focused on one accidental pregnancy and a tight-knit group of dysfunctional friends in their 30s, live up to the buzz? Fortunately, the answer lies in this loving diss (about a book that would have been a far better television show). Warning: this episode contains spoilers for the book's central plot twist. You can purchase The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson online from QBD Books using the following link:
The BookTok girlies have been blessed with yet another book-to-screen adaptation with Ali Hazelwood's 'The Love Hypothesis' dropping on Prime Video. But the real question is, does this adaptation and its stars Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman have chemistry?
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