Sophie Cunningham on the ‘crazy challenge’ of bringing Leonard and Virginia Woolf to life

The Melbourne author spent 16 years researching and writing her deeply original novel. In the process, This Devastating Fever became about the process too

Javier Zamora: ‘Now the chances of me crossing the border and surviving would be slim’

The Salvadorian poet on his journey to the US as a nine-year-old, the exciting literature coming from his homeland – and why he is indebted to Dave Eggers

Loaded founder James Brown on lads’ mags, lairiness and living to tell the tale: ‘We flew so close to the sun our trainers melted’

The magazine he created became synonymous with bad behaviour in the 90s. Is the enfant terrible of British media now a reformed character?

Author Orhan Pamuk: ‘I used to have three bodyguards, now I have one’

Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk on Salman Rushdie’s attack, responding to extremism in Turkey – and his new, oddly prophetic, pandemic novel

‘There is nothing wrong with offending people’: Roddy Doyle on getting the band back together

His comic novel The Commitments gave working-class Dublin its voice – and became a hit film. As the stage version returns to theatres, does Doyle still recognise the foul-mouthed young author who wrote it?

‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American history

The discovery of a plaque showing a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the US military academy made headlines. One member of the commission which recommended its removal is a historian of the US army and the lost cause myth

Orlando Figes: ‘Gorbachev was a very sharp and likable person’

The award-winning historian on Putin’s cult of personality, why he loves Turgenev, and giving up on books after 20 pages

Ian McEwan on ageing, legacy and the attack on his friend Salman Rushdie: ‘It’s beyond the edge of human cruelty’

The author’s new novel explores how global events shape individual lives – but nothing prepared him for this ‘dark moment’

‘At first she didn’t like my drawings’: Axel Scheffler and Julia Donaldson on three decades of collaboration

In a rare joint interview, the creators of The Gruffalo talk about baddies, Brexit – and the bumpy beginning to their partnership

‘Every time I write, it’s like the first time’: Joyce Carol Oates on her 61 novels, Twitter storms and widowhood

At 84, Oates still knows how to strike a nerve. She talks about Babysitter – her new book inspired by a Detroit serial killer – loneliness and her controversial tweet about white male writers

The real Jane Tennison reveals ugly truth behind TV police drama Prime Suspect

Retired detective Jackie Malton helped writer Lynda La Plante nail her characters. She talks about the misogyny and homophobia she endured in her early years

AM Homes: ‘We want to believe that opportunity exists for women now; it does and it doesn’t’

The US author on trying to add a note of optimism to her work, getting advice from Jeanette Winterson, and her prescient new novel about a coup in Washington

Lemn Sissay: ‘I’m not angry any more, but it’s a daily battle not to be’

The poet and broadcaster, 55, on the power of forgiveness, growing up in care, loving poetry from the age of 12 and getting his OBE

Cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton: ‘Our universe is one tiny grain of dust in a beautiful cosmos’

As her new book on the origins of the universe is published, the Albanian-American scientist explains how her work on multiverse theory influenced Stephen Hawking

Sunday with Irvine Welsh: ‘If you sit around waiting for Monday morning, you’re going to feel blue’

The writer tells Rich Pelley how he gets out and about on Sundays in Miami, Edinburgh, the Chilterns and London