Irvine Welsh: ‘Everything has become so shouty’
The Trainspotting author on his new novel’s transgender storyline, using humour to give his readers a break and the debt he owes to Evelyn Waugh
‘I thought drink and drugs enabled my creativity’: Julia Cameron on the drama behind The Artist’s Way
When even Hunter S Thompson tells you to take it easy, you must be overdoing it. The bestselling author talks about marrying Martin Scorsese, sobering up, and writing a bestseller
From child gossip columnist to acclaimed author: K-Ming Chang’s search for the truth
The 24-year-old’s debut novel Bestiary gained plaudits in 2020. Now her love of fairy tales and queer literature has led to a collection of short stories
‘You had to be quick!’: Henry Horenstein on his breathtaking Speedway pics
From stock car racing to country music stars, the US photographer is one of the great documenters of Americana. He talks about his life in the fast lane
‘Listening to the people’: Beth Macy on the opioids crisis and her Dopesick sequel, Raising Lazarus
What’s next, the author asks, now the US has ‘a generation of users that started with heroin and fentanyl’
Namwali Serpell: ‘I find uncertainty compelling in literature’
The award-winning Zambia-born writer on her reading habits, being emboldened by Toni Morrison, and her belief that books aren’t about self-improvement, but engagement
Cosey Fanni Tutti: ‘I was lucky I got thrown out of home. I see it as a gift’
The Throbbing Gristle co-founder and performance artist is seen as an elder stateswoman of the avant garde. She talks about legacy, and the liberation of revisiting her darkest experiences for a new memoir
Poet Nikita Gill: ‘I worry about people getting tattoos of my work. What if I made a typo?’
Her touching verses about heartbreak, fat-shaming and body hair have made her Britain’s most-followed poet on social media – and now she’s heading for TV
Florence Given: ‘People don’t want you to break the mould… I needed to’
The feminist writer and podcaster on rejecting shame and embracing messiness, and why her generation is more progressive – Love Island notwithstanding
Werner Herzog: ‘I was never, contrary to rumours, a hazard-seeking, crazy stuntman’
The German director, famed for making films about people at the fringes of society, has written a novel about another one: a Japanese soldier who carried on fighting the second world war for 29 years after it ended
David Hare: ‘There is an awful lot of pious theatre at the moment’
The playwright on branching out into poetry, contemporaries he admires and his need to challenge audiences’ beliefs
Nick Drnaso: ‘Something about comics attracts people who have anxiety’
The literary cartoonist talks about taking graphic novels mainstream, his feelings of imposter syndrome, and processing his darkest childhood memories in his latest book
Robert Drewe on finding Australia’s child phenomenon: ‘I thought, “Why hasn’t anyone heard of him?”’
While writing his new novel, the acclaimed author suffered unimaginable grief. But he found ‘strange comfort’ in imagining the life of a long-lost boy wonder
Alan Cumming: ‘You’d be shocked by the messages Miriam Margolyes and I leave each other!’
As he brings his one-man show about ‘rockstar’ poet Robert Burns to the Edinburgh festival, the star talks about desire, debauchery and dancing in his 50s
‘A job for an angry loner’: Frankie Boyle and Denise Mina on writing crime fiction
Veteran author Denise Mina and newbie Frankie Boyle discuss what makes a great crime novel, celebrity authors and their affection for comics