Seascraper, Music, And The Sea: An Interview With Benjamin Wood

Photo from King's staff page

Benjamin Wood is an acclaimed author, scholar, lecturer and academic who grew up in Merseyside. His passion for creative writing not only influenced his novels but also his professional career as he is now a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at King’s College London. In his earlier years, he co-founded and directed the undergraduate Creative Writing programme at Birkbeck University and later founded the PhD in Creative Writing programme at KCL. His drive to help others with a dream to succeed is commendable and shines within his fiction.  

His most recent novel, Seascraper, was published in July of this year and has already been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. For those unfamiliar with it, it is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the English-speaking world. For an author to even be considered is an achievement worth celebrating. It was through this traction that I became aware of Seascraper, and after reading it, I knew I had to reach out and discuss this fantastic piece of fiction. This is only one of his many achievements. He has been nominated and won many awards in his career, starting with his first novel, The Bellwether Revivals (2012). This was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Booker prize and won le Prix du Roman Fnac and le Prix Baudelaire. His three other novels, The Ecliptic (2015), A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (2018) and lastly, The Young Accomplice (2022) have all been shortlisted for various awards such as: the European Union Prize for Literature, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and CWA Gold Dagger Award. 

These accomplishments follow his most recent success with Seascraper (2025), which tells the story of Thomas, who dreams of a life bigger than his own, yet feels bound by duty and an understated lack of confidence to stay in the murky seaside town of Longferry. We are taken along his journey, much like he drives his horse and buggy along the sand, slowly but surely. Wood truly immerses you into this seaside world, creating a setting and building a story surrounded by the hopes and dreams of a lost young man.

In this interview, Benjamin sat down with us to discuss his new novel, the sea, writing, Thomas, and music.

What do you think drew you to write about the sea? 

Photo by Viking

I grew up in Southport on the northwest coast, where the sea is famously withdrawn. It has the second-longest pier in Britain but on most days, you could walk to the end of it without seeing any water at all. I was compelled by the thought that I might build the story of a character whose livelihood depends on the patterns of that sort of tide - who has to walk for miles every day just to reach the shallows.

Do you see parts of yourself in Thomas? And if so, what are they?

Absolutely. His sense of duty to his upbringing, his musical aspirations as a young person, his quiet yearning to be elsewhere—they’re all projected from my own life experience, I’d say. Thomas, however, is a lot more resilient than I am.

What was the most exciting part to write in Seascraper?

There’s a scene on the beach with Thomas and Edgar where I wanted the tension to escalate—that was a fun scene to compose because I wanted to let the sequence of action flow in any direction my instinct guided it towards. I knew I was going to disrupt the settled state of the novel in that scene, and so it felt edged with an element of risk I don’t accommodate too often when I’m writing.

What would you say was the most challenging part of writing Seascraper?

The first five thousand words were tough, but that’s been the case for all the books I’ve written. Until I find the right tone of voice for the narration (i.e. work out who’s telling the story and how), the writing process is slow and agonising. But the most challenging part of Seascraper was probably the next five thousand words—committing to the promise of what I’d already written and doggedly pursuing it, page by page, day by day, until it gained its own momentum.

In previous interviews you say that “immersion in the setting and situation of the story” is something you hoped to find in other stories. Would you say that this inspired your writing style? 

Definitely. Unless I have a strong grasp of the story’s setting, in particular, its atmosphere—my writing won’t feel alive enough and I’ll lose interest in developing the story any further. The atmosphere of a fictional world is as much about time as it is about place: the period of the book is reflected best by the mannerisms of the prose, I think, rather than by historical points of detail/research. I always need to know the dramatic situation my character is in at the outset of the book (what’s at stake and what s/he wants),because if I don’t know it, the reader won’t care enough to find out either. I try to get this message across to my creative writing students at King’s in fiction workshops; I’m sure they’re all tired of hearing the sermon by now, so I’m repeating it here again for good measure.

In previous interviews, you discuss how writing songs helps you when you’re stuck writing. What inspires these songs? Do they correlate to the themes of your novels? 

I’ve been writing songs since I was fourteen years old. It’s a very hard habit to give up but so much healthier than smoking. In my younger days, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter and I was  quite close to earning a record deal when I was 19, which I’ve come to view as much less of a failure than it seemed at the time. These days, I write songs because I can examine very specific things in them—memories and experiences that I’d consider too personal or private to explore in fiction. Songwriting is a much more direct and emotional way of writing, and it allows for a kind of obliqueness my fiction tends to avoid. It’s often the only way I can really work out what I feel about something or someone.

As music is a central theme in Seascraper, would you say that your musical inclination influenced the story? 

Yes, my intention was always for Thomas to aspire to becoming a folk singer. I have so many good memories of playing in folk clubs as a teenager, which were the only places anyone would be quiet enough to listen to the words of the song you were performing at the time. I felt I could use those experiences to shape Thomas’s character in the novel with a touch more authenticity. This prompted me, very early on in its development, to write a folk song from his perspective—this really helped me understand his viewpoint as the book progressed.

What advice would you give to Thomas, as a fellow creative and song-writer? 

 A song is not a hiding place: be truthful with your feelings and if you ever have the chance to play a showcase for a bunch of record companies in Liverpool, don’t play more than three songs or you’ll regret it forever.

If you could meet one character from any of your novels, which would it be and why? 

Great question! I feel as though I’ve spent more time with them than my actual friends over the years, so I’m in no hurry to meet up with them for a while. Frank Lloyd Wright has a cameo in The Young Accomplice. I’d choose him, and he could show me around Fallingwater, the incredible house he built in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, which I’ve always longed to visit.

Edgar was a character I particularly enjoyed reading about. What/who was the inspiration (if any at all)?

I’m pleased you liked Edgar; I do, too! He’s one of those fictional characters who’s an agglomeration of several inspiring real-life people I’ve read about down the years. I probably had Michael Cimino in mind, and Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, and also the novelist Alexander Barron, for some reason.

How did you feel after finding out Seascraper had been long-listed for the Booker Prize 2025? 

I should probably play it cool here and say something like: ‘It was rather gratifying to have my work recognised by the prize.’ But the honest answer is I was absolutely elated by the news and went a bit shaky for a few hours after I heard it.

Who is your biggest support and how do they support you?

My wife, who tolerates my foul moods when writing isn’t going well and doesn’t hold them against me. She understands why I need to spend long hours in dimly lit rooms with my own thoughts, and why I have to watch and play a lot of football to switch my brain off. Her belief in me is quite amazing really, and I don’t thank her enough for it.

Do your ideas for a new novel appear like an epiphany? 

Epiphanies tend to arrive more when I’m trying to fix a problem with a novel-in-progress; they’re always elusive at the conception stage. My second novel came to me as the flash of an idea when I was doing a residency in Istanbul: that was a welcome moment, because I was really struggling creatively at that point. My books tend to start from a fascination I hold for something at the time: e.g. the possible healing qualities of music, the Borstal system, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, inherited trauma, 90s children’s television, the shrimping rigs I used to see parked up on the beach in Southport as a kid, etc. I follow these fascinations until I’m able to fashion an authentic character and plot from the raw material they provide.

And last of all, what advice would you give to your younger self?  

Everton FC will be just fine—don’t let them ruin all your weekends. Never stop listening to OK Computer. Stay off social media. Learn mathematics to a level that your children won’t surpass by the age of seven.

Please find Wood’s new novel available for purchase on the Penguin website.

---

Edited by Daria Slikker, Deputy Editor-in-Chief