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
‘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
‘It felt horrific to be in Britain as a Muslim after 9/11’: Pankaj Mishra and Kamila Shamsie in conversation
The writers discuss problems of representation, class, the culture wars and how fiction is a great way to ask difficult questions
Margaret Atwood on feminism, culture wars and speaking her mind: ‘I’m very willing to listen, but not to be scammed’
At 82, the Canadian author has seen it all - and her novels predicted most of it. Just don’t presume you know what she thinks
Sarah Vaughan: ‘Other writers ask if I’ve got a crystal ball. Actually, I just read the news’
As she publishes a thriller about a trolled MP, and Netflix adapts her bestseller Anatomy of a Scandal, the former journalist talks about power, privilege and her unnervingly prescient novels
Michael Crick: ‘I don’t think Farage is a racist… though he does pander to racists’
He’s quit TV after decades of dogged political reporting, written a rollicking biography of Nigel Farage – and, surprisingly, joined Mail+
Francis Spufford: ‘I felt that to call myself a writer would be a boast’
The author of Light Perpetual on a childhood spent hiding in books, dropping a V2 on a fictional London borough and giving up church politics