Sufiyaan Salam: "Someone's Got to Take Shakespeare Out"

Screenwriter and novelist Sufiyaan Salam won the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize for his debut Wimmy Road Boyz. He joins Freya to talk about his novel that follows three young British-Pakistani men across one chaotic night on Manchester's Curry Mile. Sufiyaan, who’s also a BAFTA-nominated screenwriter and animator, tells Freya where the book came from: a real night out where he wanted to tell his friends what he was going through but couldn’t, and wondered if they were holding something back too. They chat about why the novel is built to feel like a rap album rather than a novel, how screenwriting taught him to chase specificity and what it was like to take his dad to the BAFTAs. They also get into whether film audiences really are ruder than book audiences and why saying the dumb idea out loud is worth it if one in ten turns out to be brilliant.

A funny, honest conversation between two writers about masculinity, specificity and throwing everything at the wall to tell a story.

🎥 WATCH the full episode

📘 Buy Sufiyaan's novel Wimmy Road Boyz and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work

💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions

📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts

🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.