Ahead of his event at Stanfords Bristol this week, author Dan Richards discusses his new book Outpost – an exploration of far-flung shelters in mountains, tundra, forests, deserts and oceans – and answers few of our questions.
What books, authors or novels inspired you in writing Outpost? And what are you reading at the moment?
At the moment I’m reading Brian Dillon’s Essayism and Muriel Spark’s The Finishing School. I tend to read several books at once. Also The Pine Barrens by John McPhee; that’s on my bedside table — but Jan Morris, Joan Didion, Rebecca Solnit, and J.A. Baker have taken me on eye-popping journeys into strange lands. Richard Brautigan, Bob Dylan, George Simenon, Lavinia Greenlaw, Mark Doty, David Bowie, Cate Le Bon, T.S Eliot, Denis Johnson, Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald are a never-ending source of indelible images. I try to furnish my books with as much poetry, art, music and literature as possible and all those fed into Outpost.
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