Percival Everett: ‘I’d love to write a novel everyone hated’
The American novelist on his stereotyping of white characters, the breadth of the black experience in modern literature, and why he always returns to The Way of All Flesh
Lincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new war
The CNN analyst says the 16th president’s example can guide America through dark times – at home as well as abroad
The zoologist sticking her neck out in the battle of the sexes
Our ideas about males and females are wildly out of date, says zoologist Lucy Cooke. Here, she reveals some radical truths about the birds, the bees… and the bonobos
Delia Smith: ‘The world is in chaos… but together we have such power’
At 80, Britain’s queen of cookery has written a surprising new book about spirituality that was turned down by six publishers. She talks about meditation, MasterChef and her beloved Norwich FC
Mary-Frances O’Connor: ‘People struggle to understand grief, but it is a byproduct of love’
The US psychology professor talks about her new book on the experience of losing a loved one and the lessons we can learn
Karen Joy Fowler: ‘I’m a bossy writer; I’m not going to not tell you’
The 2014 Booker nominee on her new novel about the family of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, the ‘horrible secret’ of her sci-fi writing and her long period of despair
‘I had a lot of self-loathing’: Omar Sakr on being queer, Arab, Muslim and Australian
Revisiting ‘terrifying and traumatising’ moments from his own life, the poet’s debut novel Son of Sin explores a young man’s sexual awakening in a conservative migrant community
Patrick Radden Keefe on exposing the Sackler family’s links to the opioid crisis
The journalist tracked the billionaire arts philanthropists’ role in the OxyContin scandal in his gripping bestseller. He talks about why the bad guys are still getting away with it
Peter Hennessy: ‘A diary is an aid to humility, which every historian needs’
The historian on how covid reunited us with the state, Attlee versus Johnson and the potholes on our path to a republic
Catriona Ward: ‘When done right, horror is a transformative experience’
The award-winning novelist on the Mojave desert, her itinerant childhood and her longstanding hypnagogic hallucinations
Marlon James: ‘Violence is violent and sex is sexy. You are supposed to be appalled’
The Booker prize-winning novelist on growing up gay in 80s Jamaica, his African fantasy trilogy – and how his mother’s job as a detective has influenced his writing
Lemn Sissay and Valerie Bloom look back: ‘I was a wild child when she met me’
The poets recreate an old photograph from when they first bonded – and reflect on more than 30 years of friendship
Dwight Chapin on his former boss: ‘Richard Nixon was not a crook’
The former secretary to the disgraced president talks about his new memoir and what it was like to go to prison for Nixon
Esi Edugyan: ‘At school in Canada, slavery was never mentioned’
The award-winning writer on feeling compelled to write about race, the benefits of staying put and swapping first drafts with her husband, poet Steven Price
Amy Liptrot: ‘I wanted to put the sex into nature writing’
Her bestselling debut, The Outrun, told of finding solace on Orkney after a hedonistic decade in London. Now, having briefly been drawn back to city life, she is exploring our animal instincts