Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.



This week on Writer’s Voice, Bruce Holsinger tells us about his new novel Culpability, a story about a family shattered by a self-driving car accident — and about the ethical and emotional consequences of artificial intelligence.



Holsinger, whose earlier novel The Displacements explored climate catastrophe, turns his sharp eye to the ways technology mirrors human flaws, illuminating our collective complicity in shaping the systems that govern us.




“For all that we talk about the ethics of AI, the systems themselves are completely indifferent to our fates.” — Bruce Holsinger




Then Elizabeth George, the beloved creator of the Inspector Lynley series, talks about her new book A Slowly Dying Cause. It’s a masterful mystery that explores grief, obsession and moral reckoning. Set in Cornwall, it interlaces complex storylines around a suspicious death, a fractured family and the consequences of unresolved grief.




“The whole book is about grief — and letting go of grief.” — Elizabeth George




Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast 



Key Words: Bruce Holsinger, Elizabeth George, Culpability, A Slowly Dying Cause, AI ethics, mystery fiction, artificial intelligence novel, Inspector Lynley series 



You Might Also Like: Bruce Holsinger, THE DISPLACEMENTS, Elizabeth George, SOMETHING TO HIDE



Read The Transcript










Segment One: Bruce Holsinger



The alarms being raised about the potentially catastrophic consequences of AI are getting louder — from massive job losses to the extinction of civilization, if not the human race itself. Yet President Trump is considering an executive order that would severely restrict or ban regulation of AI by the states, after a similar attempt by Congressional Republicans was defeated earlier in the year.



Holsinger’s novel Culpability begins with a devastating car crash involving a self-driving vehicle. From that ordinary tragedy emerges a meditation on moral agency, responsibility, and family. Holsinger’s narrator, Noah Shaw, centers story around that of his wife Lorelai, a MacArthur-winning philosopher and AI ethicist whose research into “ethical artificial minds” collides with her own family’s p...