Caroline Collett (Writer)

Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.

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In this episode:

Jessica Schwartz speaks with writer Caroline Collett about the ways lived experience, memory, and writing shape how punk becomes cultural history. Drawing from Caroline's teenage diaries, they revisit the people, places, politics, and everyday details of first-generation punk while considering what firsthand accounts can reveal that later histories sometimes leave behind.

Moving between intimate memories of punk gigs in late-1970s Britain and Caroline's contemporary reflections on the early UK and US scenes, they explore punk's different cultural and political roots, the exchange of ideas across the Atlantic, and the tension between individual experience and collective memory. The conversation ultimately asks not only how we remember punk, but what its DIY, subversive, and liberatory impulses can still offer the present and future.

Caroline Collett grew up in the North of England and studied languages at Oxford University before beginning a career in television, where she wrote music news for MTV Europe and worked as a presenter and producer. She later worked as a publicist and copywriter for artists, designers, and architects and is now focused on her own writing. Her manuscript, What Do I Get?, brings together original teenage diary entries with contemporary reflections on first-generation punk, its politics, style, culture, and continuing significance.

Recorded June 2026.

Links + References:

X - https://x.com/CollettWriter

Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/collettwriter.bsky.social

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/caroline_r_collett/

Website -

https://www.carolinecollettwriter.com/

Caroline Collett on Punk Scholars Podcast:

Part 1

Part 2

Credits:

Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.

Editorial support: Melanie Hui – audio editing, episode notes, and audio-synced transcript.

Transcript:

Audio-synced transcript

Theme Music:

Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.

Related:

Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast.

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