Halle Butler: ‘I didn’t understand how to be excited about getting a job’

A sharp-eyed satirist of the banalities of office life in her novels The New Me and Jillian, the US author talks about the frustrations of work and finding success through writing about failure

Liz Hyder: ‘It’s extraordinary exploitation – kids are still working in mines’

Visiting a mining museum in Wales introduced the debut author to a shocking history. She explains how these horrors inspired her acclaimed novel

Guillermo del Toro: ‘I could tweet 20 times a day – I’m very careful not to’

The director has a new novel out, an animation series on Netflix and two films in the pipeline – and still had time to watch three films a day in lockdown

Ernó Rubik: ‘The Cube gives me hope people can solve their problems and survive’

The inventor of the beloved puzzle on what life and his Cube have taught him – and how fast he can solve it

Ann Goldstein: ‘I try to make it really clear that I am not Elena Ferrante’

The Italian author’s translator on how they work together, New York’s terrifying lockdown, and her favourite novelists

Susanna Clarke: ‘I was cut off from the world, bound in one place by illness’

Her debut, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, sold 4m copies. Now 16 years on, Clarke is back with a second novel that is even more peculiar

Shakespearean sisterhood: Maggie O’Farrell on Hamnet

The Women’s prize for fiction winner discusses plague and avenging Anne Hathaway

Martin Amis: ‘I was horrified that Trump got in. Now it’s looking scary’

As his latest novel Inside Story is published, Martin Amis talks about cultural appropriation, surviving lockdown, and how he’s still chatting to Christopher Hitchens

Michael Sandel: ‘The populist backlash has been a revolt against the tyranny of merit’

The philosopher believes the liberal left’s pursuit of meritocracy has betrayed the working classes. His new book argues for a politics centred on dignity

Michel Faber: ‘I don’t read fiction any more’

The acclaimed author on his new fantasy for young adults, and why he’s not interested in writing realist fiction - or reading it

Sophie Mackintosh: ‘Suddenly I really wanted a baby – I resented that it felt outside my control’

The acclaimed young author of The Water Cure talks about her latest dystopian novel, Blue Ticket, and how listening to music and speaking Welsh helps her writing

‘The man who shot my mum is still living his life’: Cherry Groce’s son on life after police brutality

Lee Lawrence was 11 when armed officers broke into his bedroom and shot his mother, paralysing her from the chest down. Has he finally found something close to justice?

Claudia Rankine: ‘By white privilege I mean the ability to stay alive’

The poet and playwright talks to Afua Hirsch about power, race and class, and her experience of being a first-generation immigrant living in the US today

‘Trump has a different leadership style’: David Rubenstein plays it by the book

The billionaire philanthropist is publishing How to Lead, a selection of interviews with famous figures. Does he think the US needs a change of leader?

Katharina Volckmer: ‘Germans say they’ve dealt with their past. But I don’t think you can’

The Appointment’s darkly funny untangling of national and sexual identity has not been published in the author’s home country – yet. But she wants to break the awkward silence over German history