‘Libraries are the heart of community’: children’s laureate Joseph Coelho on inspiring the next generation of writers

Since his first anthology in 2014, Coelho has become a prolific author for children and YA readers – and it all started, he says, in a vital community space

Charlotte Wood: ‘It was like I had acid poured on my whole life … but in a good way’

As Charlotte Wood was writing her latest book, she got cancer. As did her two sisters. But the acclaimed novelist is determined that her work is not despairing

‘A secret no one talked about’: Michael Morpurgo on discovering his real father – and hating Spielberg’s War Horse

As he turns 80, the prolific children’s author takes us on a tour of his Devon village, to talk about family bombshells, the burning of Joan of Arc – and finally getting a film adaptation he likes

‘I learned to lower the threshold’: Karl Ove Knausgaard on his process, passions and life after My Struggle

As the second in a new series of books is published in English, the writer talks candidly about laying himself and his family bare on the page, and his interest in black metal and transhumanism

Michael Mansfield KC: ‘The two-party system is a straitjacket’

The barrister famous for his work on landmark cases such as Grenfell, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six has written a book about fighting injustice

Jhumpa Lahiri: ‘Translation is an act of radical change’

The Indian-American author and translator on her special affinity with Rome, why she doesn’t give her characters names, and her passion for Ovid

‘I’m not worried about fame or glory’: Lydia Davis, the author who has refused to sell her book on Amazon

The award-winning short story writer talks about her boycott of the world’s biggest marketplace, her love of languages and living with Paul Auster in Paris

How women drove evolution: Cat Bohannon on her radical new history of humanity

The American academic and author is revolutionising our understanding of the human body with her female-centric history of the species. She discusses the myth-busting book that took 10 years to write

Billy Connolly’s most intimate interview yet (by his wife): ‘Comedians never used to worry about what was correct to say. You said it, and soon found out’

Only one person can get to the heart of who the Big Yin is – his partner and carer, psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson Connolly. He talks about how Parkinson’s has changed him, what he misses from being on tour, and living in a hotbed of Trump supporters in Florida

‘Motherhood is a cult, to a degree’: Anne Heltzel on her horror novel about parenthood

The author explains how Just Like Mother, her gothic horror tale of a cult fixated on childbearing, is uncomfortably close to reality

‘I try to photograph the unseen’: Michael Kenna on 50 years of shooting breathtaking landscapes

A new book celebrates half a century of work by the landmark English photographer, who has captured everything from factories to shrines in stunning black-and-white images

‘Lachlan Murdoch is a Hamlet figure’: Michael Wolff unpicks the real-life succession drama

The author has returned to the Murdoch empire for his latest book, after a bestselling trilogy on Trump. He discusses power, politics, the media and why a person can be a moron and a genius

Mary Beard: ‘The last thing I’d want is a world in which we all agreed’

The classicist on autocrats ancient and modern, free speech in universities and whether Twitter has been a force for good

Joan Collins on love, loss and lust at 90: ‘You have to eat life or life will eat you!’

She has been famous for more than seven decades – and has as much zest and ambition today as she did at 18. She discusses fame, politics, the casting couch, motherhood and marrying five times

‘Ghosts love my house’: Jeanette Winterson on hauntings, high spirits and post-humanism

Over a long lunch, the writer talks about ghostly encounters, embracing AI, rebelling against convention and why our future human life holds no fears for her