Daniel Mallory Ortberg: ‘Writing fiction is not a good alternative to dealing with your feelings’
The host of Dear Prudence and founder of The Toast helps others deal with their personal issues. Here he talks about some of his own
Tina Arena: ‘I hated the fact I hit 40 and radio wouldn’t play me’
Having been in the spotlight since she was nine, her decades-long career is an exemplar of how Australia treats its female artists
The Painted Bird review – savage, searing three-hour tour of hell
Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel and Udo Kier star in this phantasmagorical horror about eastern Europe that saw half the Venice audience walk out. I couldn’t look away
Richard Booth obituary
Self-styled King of Hay who put the market town on the map by establishing it as a centre for the secondhand book trade
Red Dust Road review – Jackie Kay adaptation loses its way
Sasha Frost sparkles as a curious and vulnerable Kay searching for her birth parents, but this unfocused production fails to capture the intimacy of the soul-searching memoir
Rylance, Depp and Pattinson bring Coetzee to big screen
Waiting for the Barbarians, a complex story of immigration and integration, to premiere at Venice film festival
Kate Tempest review – this isn’t a gig, it’s a reckoning
The performance poet absorbs all of the uncertainty and anger of our times, and pours it into ferocious, apocalyptic music that both wounds and heals
Jackie Kay on putting her adoption on stage – and getting a pay rise for her successor
When Scotland’s national poet travelled to Nigeria to ask her birth father if he ever thought of her, he said no. Does it hurt to put this on stage? And should the next ‘makar’ be on £30,000?
Thor! Blade! Picard! The 10 biggest surprises from Comic-Con 2019
San Diego’s annual pop culture gathering saw a big reveal of trailers, stars and release dates, including some major Marvel news
Crisis crescendos: how the Proms is sounding the alarm for a planet in peril
Pounding oceans, enchanted woods, threatened birds and the powerful words of Greta Thunberg … we meet the composers spearheading this year’s nature theme at the Proms
The Fountainhead review – Ivo van Hove hypnotises with Ayn Rand’s nonsense
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam present a constantly inventive, four-hour staging of the overheated 1943 polemic
Irvine Welsh on Glastonbury: ‘You build a city in a field and make your own rules’
There’s no other music festival like it, says the author, who describes past misadventures and the party tune playlist for his guest DJ slot
The Guardian view on summer festivals: we need our visiting artists
Editorial: Britain needs to look outwards to other cultures, not damage its reputation with a hostile visa system
The Last Word review – young artists speak truth to poetry
This festival gives voice to up-and-coming performers, from poetry slam winner Rakaya Esime Fetuga to the painfully funny Jack Rooke
Edinburgh arts festivals lobby for urgent visa reforms
Umbrella body meets minister to discuss concerns over limits on artists entering UK