LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgent

Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson died, the director of the 36th president’s library discusses his politics and progressive ideals

Charlie Higson: ‘I hope to be so unwound I can just lie on the sofa’

The comedian and author on gorging on granola, long lie-ins, Zen housework and feeling totally relaxed

Aleksandar Hemon: ‘A book isn’t a car – not everything has to work’

The Sarajevo-born author on his new historical novel’s multilingual sensibility, screenwriting for The Matrix sequel and pretending to be Kevin Keegan

Nigerian author Ayòbámi Adébáyò: ‘I don’t want to be read for some kind of anthropology’

Six years after her acclaimed debut Stay With Me, the writer is back with a novel that shines a light on the social inequalities of her homeland. She talks about motherhood, politics and marriage

‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House book

Fight of His Life author on Kamala Harris’s struggles and growth, Afghanistan, a strong second year … and if Biden will run again

TS Eliot prize winner Anthony Joseph: how poetry helped me love my absent father

The writer on switching from rock to poetry and how Sonnets for Albert explores his relationship with a missing parent who became an almost ‘mythological figure’

Rock’s best kept secret: Tony King on life with John Lennon, Elton John and Freddie Mercury

He held Mercury’s hand in hospital, retrieved Lennon from a cocaine escapade with David Bowie, and was upbraided by Keith Richards for smoking a joint. Now the Zelig of the music world is looking back

Paul Auster: ‘The right to own a gun in the US is seen as a kind of holy grail’

In their new book, the novelist and his photographer son-in-law document the sites of mass shootings in the US and argue for urgent change in the relationship between Americans and guns

Graphic novelist Deena Mohamed: ‘People seem to love how Egyptian my work is’

The author of the hit Cairo-set novel – set to be a future classic – on going viral with her first web comic and growing up reading Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie

Bret Easton Ellis: ‘James and the Giant Peach changed my life’

The provocative novelist on looking back at his teenage self, the sales generated by a hostile Q&A and his obsession with Marilyn Monroe

‘My father ruled through pain’: Colin Grant on the stories behind I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be

As a child he knew both love and violence; as an adult, both recognition and rejection. The writer talks about his marijuana-dealer father, his clashes at the BBC and the police stop-and-searches that drove him out of London

Don Paterson: ‘Poetry often involves obsessive personalities’

The award-winning poet on his painful and funny new memoir about growing up in Dundee, how he’s a ‘vile separatist’ and why music is his first love

Nell Zink: ‘Guys who like Kafka are insufferable’

The American novelist on being from the wrong side of the tracks, quitting Twitter and the dangers of studying philosophy

‘I was hot-glue-gunning hair to my head’: Emma D’Arcy on their House of the Dragon audition

From viral cocktails to being scared to Google themself, the actor’s role as Rhaenyra Targaryen in the Game of Thrones prequel has made them huge. They talk violence, childbirth – and why those incest scenes are OK oh

‘I want my monkey!’ Ruth Wilson on villainy, intimacy and returning to His Dark Materials

The actor made her mark in Jane Eyre after leaving college and hasn’t stopped working since. She talks about her role in Philip Pullman’s dark fantasy, her love for the stage – and her fear of commitment