‘I don’t want to cancel him’: Rose Boyt on confronting the gaze of her father, Lucian Freud

The artist’s daughter talks about her chaotic childhood, writing truthfully about her dad, and the books she read to him on his deathbed

Deborah Levy: ‘Writing and swimming help each other’

The novelist and memoirist on stamina and solitude, the influence of surrealist art on her work, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s revelatory travel writing

The Ministry of Time author Kaliane Bradley: ‘It was just so much fun’

A nerdy literary parlour game that started in lockdown has turned into one of the most-hyped debuts of the year - soon to be a series on BBC1. Its author talks about how her obsession with a long-dead polar explorer helped her find a way to write about family trauma

‘I have my iPhone, X and a brain in my head’: Ukrainian journalist and social media star Illia Ponomarenko

Ahead of the publication of his raw account of the Russian invasion, the reporter talks about capturing the conflict in real time – and when the war will come to an end

‘This is much more intimate’: Colm Tóibín on writing a sequel to Brooklyn, 15 years on

The Irish author on the follow-up to his bestselling novel, being blanked at the Oscars and the joys of giving up drinking

‘I did not know the life I have now was a possibility’: Gemma Rolls-Bentley on her history of queer art

After two decades creating pioneering exhibitions, the curator decided to publish a ‘sexy coffee table book’ bringing together work made for clubs and protests as much as galleries

If you live to 100, you might as well be happy: what poverty, jail and war have taught author Rhee Kun Hoo

Joy is all around us, according to the bestselling South Korean author. Here’s what he has learned from a long and often hard life

Anne Lamott on love, sobriety and reaching 70: ‘All I’ve learned, I’ve learned because the abyss swallowed me’

The American author’s 20th book reads as a series of parables on grace. In an interview, she reflects on a life she thought she wouldn’t get to live

Read me a story: why reading out loud is a joy for adults as well as kids

Sarah Manavis and her partner have a guilty secret. What they love to do most of all in private is… read out loud to each other. And, as she’s discovered, it has many surprising benefits

‘My role was to be a truthful witness’: photographer Jack Lueders-Booth’s Polaroids of American female prisoners

In the 1970s, the photographer began teaching in a progressive US women’s prison and made moving portraits of many of the inmates. Looking back, he sees how many of them actually felt safer in prison

Rebecca F Kuang: ‘I like to write to my friends in the style of Joan Didion’

The author of bestseller Yellowface on her agent’s fears about publishing the novel, the joys of a social media purge and being a workaholic who gets bored easily

Pivot podcast host Scott Galloway: ‘Tech bros conflate luck with talent’

The US academic on why the Mr Burns caricature of rich people is wrong, the double-edged sword of godlike technologies, and why young people shouldn’t follow their passion

‘I can say things other people are afraid to’: Margaret Atwood on censorship, literary feuds and Trump

At 84, The Handmaid’s Tale author is as outspoken as ever. She talks about aging, culture wars - and why “the orange guy” can’t be allowed back into the White House

Billy Bragg: ‘There’s nothing like going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed’

The activist singer-songwriter on fighting for trans rights, his 40 years in the music business and his forthcoming tour with his son

Moses McKenzie: ‘I was thinking about the predicament of the black British diaspora’

The award-winning Bristol-raised novelist on his new book about a teenage Rastafarian living in the city in volatile times, how he was influenced by The Catcher in the Rye - and being celebrated by a Tory politician