Fran Lebowitz on life without the internet: ‘If I’m cancelled, don’t tell me!’

The writer is easy to spot if you spend long enough in New York, but interviews have to be over her landline, as she is permanently offline. She reveals why Andy Warhol wasn’t so smart, and how she learned to love a good party

‘Hillary and I were both broken women’: Louise Penny on writing a political thriller with Clinton

As her most famous creation hits the screen, the author talks about the inspiration for Inspector Gamache, her fearless, fine-dining Canadian cop – and remembers how she co-wrote a hit with the presidential hopeful

Graham Coxon: ‘Music has always been there for me’

The Blur guitarist, 53, on his addictive personality, making music as you age and being a Britpop brat

‘I believe literature is in peril’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes out fighting for freedom of speech

As the BBC prepares to air her hard-hitting Reith Lecture, the celebrated author of Half of a Yellow Sun talks about truth, trans rights and our ‘misogyny-drenched’ planet. Plus: read an extract

Anne Glenconner: ‘It was as if I was pimping for Princess Margaret!’

The writer and socialite on surviving domestic abuse, how she stays fit at ‘90 and a half’, and why The Crown makes her mad

Will Self: ‘I’m seen as a still-walking dead white man’

The novelist on his new collection of journalism, why he regrets criticising Sally Rooney and how he’s never shaken off the influence of JG Ballard

‘All you have to do is participate’: how the Shotgun Seamstress zine made space for Black punks

As the DIY publication is collected in a new anthology, creator Osa Atoe and the musicians she inspired reflect on its defiant positivity

‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’

The great Washington Post reporter has published 20 interviews he conducted with the then president – who is now running again

Melvin Burgess: ‘The Norse myths are full of sex and violence’

The author of YA classic Junk on the eternal allure of baddies, being a trickster god – and his first book for adults

Heartstopper author Alice Oseman: ‘If you don’t have sex and romance, you feel like you haven’t achieved’

The writer and illustrator on turning her ‘weird hobby’ into a bestselling YA series and Netflix hit, the importance of asexual representation and lessons from her fans on love bites

‘Taking life advice from John Donne would be disastrous’ – the roof-walking, trapeze-flying Baillie Gifford winner

Katherine Rundell has just become the youngest ever winner of the prestigious literary prize – for a biography of ‘poet of desire’ John Donne. Why is she giving the £50,000 away? Because, she says, no man is an island

‘It’s relatable’ … The Crown’s Emma Corrin on playing gender-swapping, time-travelling Orlando

The actor and the director Michael Grandage talk about how relevant their staging of Virginia Woolf’s classic work of gender fluidity feels – and remember their own queer battles

Patti Smith: ‘I am who I am with all my flaws’

At 75, the punk poet, singer, artist and author talks candidly about life, loss, loneliness and her acclaimed new photography project

John Banville: ‘There’s been a creeping retreat into infantilism’

The Booker prize winner on why revisiting his books makes him sick, killing off his crime-writing pseudonym, and the new wave of Irish novelists

Jessie Burton: ‘I don’t think I tried an apple or an orange until I was 15’

The author on childhood fruit fears and the role of food in her novels, The Miniaturist and The House of Fortune