Giving a new voice to moving storytellers

THERE are countless, brutal sentences in American writer Roxane Gay’s essay, What Fullness Is, though if you had to distil the 4,600-word search for meaning into a single line, this one would serve well: “I hate the way I hunger but never find satisfaction”. The piece was published on essay platform Medium in April, and recounts, with discomfiting candidness, Gay’s tortured decision to have weight-loss surgery, and her subsequent realisation that her demons transcend her weight.

To read it is moving; to hear her read it, potent. Which you can, if you listen to the inaugural episode of Medium Playback, the essay platform’s first podcast. For each episode, presenter Kara Brown invites a writer on to read their Medium essay and afterwards the pair discuss “the story behind the story”, explains the ebullient, intelligent Brown. A new one will drop every second week.

Gay’s is a knockout first episode, one to savour, rather than as a backing track for a busy commute . The conversation afterwards is also moving. Clearly, Gay is in a vulnerable limbo state, still reeling from the operation.

Undeniably, the concept relies on the essay’s quality — though Medium will only cherrypick its best — and the power of the author’s voice to match the standard set by Gay. But this podcast has the potential to tell transformative stories and give a voice to writing that has already leapt from the page.