‘This is a wake-up call’: Booker winner Paul Lynch on his novel about a fascist Ireland

The writer was on the operating table for cancer, then exactly a year later he found out his nightmarish vision had made the shortlist. He reveals why the words for Prophet Song came out with such urgency, there was no time for paragraph breaks

‘She took control of the ship with a pistol’: the high seas heroine who inspired a savage pirate tale

Katherine Howe’s bloody, brutal new novel is about a Boston barmaid who dresses up as a cabin boy and joins a notorious crew of pirates. The writer and keen sailor explains how it was inspired by her great-aunt, who once quelled a mutiny at sea

Alice Winn: ‘We live in the fossilised wreckage of world war one’

The author of In Memoriam, a contender for Waterstones book of the year, on borrowing first-hand accounts of combat, running sex scenes past her gay friends and the eternal impact of the great war

Ken Follett: ‘You don’t have to wear a hairshirt to be in the Labour party’

The writer, 74, on Bollinger Bolsheviks, champagne socialism, the power of public libraries and how he came to write the first of his 36 novels

‘They give us better options for preserving nature’: Ed Yong on revealing the hidden lives of animals

The Pulitzer-winning author, who has just won the Royal Society science book prize for An Immense World, reveals how radical empathy uncovers the forces that have driven evolution and teaches us new ways to engage

‘I lived in a state of terror’: Patricia Cornwell on childhood trauma, her new novel and the search for Bigfoot

As pathologist Kay Scarpetta makes her 28th appearance in print, her creator recalls what it’s really like to conduct a postmortem – and a very odd encounter in the Virginia woods

Carmen Maria Machado: ‘The cultural baggage around gaming has shifted’

The award-winning writer and editor of a new collection of essays on gaming tells how her Nintendo got her through the pandemic and what impact video games have on creative life

Ishion Hutchinson: ‘I can hear a poem before it arrives’

The Jamaican poet on his new collection about West Indian soldiers in the first world war, diving into the messiness of language, and the book he rereads every autumn

Digital curator Giulia Carla Rossi: ‘There is a misconception that if something is on the internet it will last for ever’

The British Library’s head of digital publications on the urgency of preserving digital stories, from smartphone apps to interactive web narratives

‘This might be the last thing I ever write’: Paul Auster on cancer, connection and the fallacy of closure

As he was finishing his latest novel, the writer became seriously ill. He talks about making sense of his life through fiction, the secret of sustaining love and how his new book took him by surprise

‘A recipe for blandness’: critic Peter Biskind on why quality television is in chronic decline

The author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls has turned his gaze from Hollywood to prestige television, arguing that a golden age of TV that began with The Sopranos has been ruined by corporate greed

Mike McCormack: ‘If I’ve one gift as a writer, it’s patience’

The award-winning Irish author on losing his father at 18, the drawbacks of English editors and the theme of imprisonment in his work

‘In the last four weeks language has deserted me’: Adania Shibli on being shut down

Speaking out for the first time since the postponement of her award ceremony at the Frankfurt book fair, the Palestinian author sheds light on her work and the power of linguistics and erasure

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li: ‘I’m more concerned about the risks that are here and now’

The Stanford professor and ‘godmother’ of artificial intelligence on why existential worries are not her priority, and her work to ensure the technology improves the human condition

‘On the brink of extinction’: a food historian’s hunt for ingredients vanishing from US plates

In her new book, Endangered Eating, Sarah Lohman chronicles disappearing foods – and why they need protecting