Hinterland Quick-fire Interview: Electra Rhodes
Q&A with the contributors from our latest issue.
Electra Rhodes is an archaeologist and landscape historian. Her prose and poetry is widely published and anthologised, and her story The Woodwose Wedding was commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 4. She was one of the London Library’s Emerging Writers for 2022/23 and, amongst other things, she is working on an intersectional biography of the British landscape.
What’s the last thing (except for this!) that you wrote?
A list of upgrades I need to make to my base in the multi-player online game I play.
What’s a recent discovery that you can’t keep quiet about?
I saw 'Three Acres and a Cow' at the end of last year - land rights, folksong, protest. They're on tour again and at a time when access is becoming increasingly contested, this show asks all the right questions in a lively fashion, I can't recommend it enough.
Words to live by?
'Not everything cheap is a bargain.' I worked for Oxfam in the 1990s and I remember one of my colleagues saying this when we were sourcing materials going to an emergency zone. He wasn't just talking about the financial side, either.
Tell us something about yourself that surprises people...
I grew up in a mixed Hindu-Catholic family and spent a lot of Saturdays at either the local temple or a Hare Krishna centre in Hertfordshire (which was closer) as a kid and teenager.
What’s your piece in this issue about?
‘Doing Bird’ is about the death penalty and state sanctioned execution. But, not just about the physical death of the convicted, but about all the other deaths that surround it — emotional, psychological, social and so on. I know the death penalty is an emotive issue, but I believe all these different kinds of death come into play along with every execution, and that should give us all pause. I spent several years writing this piece — wanting to do justice to the man who became my friend, wanting to consider what different kinds of justice looks like today, and wanting to ask if the death penalty is the answer, what are the questions we are asking of ourselves and our communities.
Thanks El! You can read ‘Doing Bird’ in Hinterland Issue 15.
Issue 15 is available to order over at our webstore now, as well as in all good book and magazine shops.