Dr Charlie Lee-Potter

Dr Charlie Lee-Potter is a writer, lecturer, artist and journalist. As the former presenter of BBC Radio 4 programmes such as PM, The World at One, Open Book and The World This Weekend, Charlie has a particular interest in the combination of found sound and the written word. She is an artist, filmmaker and sound artist herself, and her new podcast Inside A Mountain uses complex soundscape and music to evoke the atmosphere of walks with guests such as international cellist Natalie Clein, poet Ian McMillan, and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. In 2022 the podcast was shortlisted for the International Women’s Podcast Awards. Charlie has also just been awarded the International Créateurs Design Prize for Creative Journalism for her work on the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Charlie’s recent publication, Writing the 9/11 Decade: Reportage and the Evolution of the Novel (New York: Bloomsbury Academic), was shortlisted for the University English Book Prize. Beginning with an examination of the sometimes mawkish writing that emerged in the days after 9/11, the book traces the evolution of work by writers such as Ian McEwan, Don DeLillo and Mohsin Hamid. Her chapters for the book These Islands: A Portrait of the British Isles focused on the idea of walking the city in specific shapes: the chapter about Bath took the form of a spiral walk around the city’s hills, in London she walked in a giant circle around the city’s Royal parks, and in Edinburgh she took an angular walk using the lines on her childhood tartan scarf as a map. She is currently writing an interdisciplinary book about geometric form and landscape, accompanied by etchings, paintings and sculpture.