Lauren Groff: ‘I often get very lonely because my job is very lonely’
The author of Fates and Furies on being endorsed by Barack Obama, the climate crisis and discovering medieval humour for a new novel about 12th-century poet Marie de France
Malorie Blackman: ‘Hope is the spark’
Malorie Blackman, the former children’s laureate, talks to Sian Cain about finishing her Noughts & Crosses series after 20 years, being namechecked by Stormzy and what inspired her to keep going through years of rejection
Susanna Clarke: ‘I’d really ceased to think of myself as a writer’
The author on how the celebration of solitude in her Women’s prize-winning new novel, Piranesi, grew from her experience of a long illness
Hangovers and hang-ups: Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell steps into 30s Soho
The choreographer’s new show brings together lonely souls from the London novels of Patrick Hamilton. Expect regret, fumbling and a hint of mystery
‘America is not a perfect country’: David Rubenstein on Trump, Biden and a nation’s troubled history
In his new book of interviews with influential figures, the billionaire considers the health of US democracy and how it might withstand further attacks
Damon Galgut: ‘The Booker pulls a nasty little trick on you’
The South African novelist on making a pilgrimage to Cormac McCarthy’s home, his youth in apartheid-era Pretoria and being shortlisted twice for the Booker prize
Richard Osman: ‘No one’s born a crime writer. I write crime because I read it’
The Pointless presenter’s debut crime caper sold millions, with movie rights snapped up by Steven Spielberg. Richard Osman talks to Alex Clark about growing up poor, meeting his estranged father and why he wrote his first book in secret
Angelina Jolie: ‘I just want my family to heal’
The actor opens up about why her divorce from Brad Pitt is a human rights issue, escaping Harvey Weinstein and what young activists have taught her
Henry Normal: ‘Comedy’s like sugar. It makes things better but I wouldn’t eat it on its own’
The producer whose TV hits include The Royle Family and Gavin and Stacey on finding the poignancy in life’s little moments, and heading back to the comedy circuit with his poetry
Lauren Elkin: ‘I felt like I was in De Beauvoir’s body’
The author of Flâneuse on the Les Mis fan fiction she wrote in her youth, her new book written on the bus, and the thrill of translating a Simone de Beauvoir novel
Rafia Zakaria: ‘A lot of white female professors told me to quit’
The activist and author discusses why there is no one-size-fits-all feminism and her aim to create work that comforts women of colour who have been ‘gaslit’
Sally Rooney on the hell of fame: ‘It doesn’t seem to work in any real way for anyone’
At 30, the Normal People author is already the most talked-about novelist of her generation. As she readies her third novel, she’s bracing for more (unwanted) attention
Fran Lebowitz: ‘If people disagree with me, so what?’
With a hit Netflix series and The Fran Lebowitz Reader now published in the UK, the American wit talks about failing to write, her dislike of Andy Warhol and her best friend Toni Morrison
Scotland’s new makar Kathleen Jamie: ‘Poetry is at the heart of our culture’
The writer, ‘not naturally a public eye person’, reveals her ambitions as national poet with convulsive changes to the country and climate looming
Alan Johnson: ‘John Betjeman was wrong about Slough’
The former health secretary and acclaimed memoirist on his rock’n’roll past, how the Litvinenko poisoning inspired his new thriller, and how he’d have handled Covid