William Atkins & Luke Neima

William Atkins in conversation about his new book, The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

'What is your most unappealing habit? Maybe all the brain-like chewing gums I leave behind everywhere I work.'

Dominique Fortier & Rhonda Mullins

Translator and writer Rhonda Mullins in conversation with novelist and translator Dominique Fortier.

Kamila Shamsie & Eleanor Chandler

‘There’s a certain adrenaline rush that comes from not knowing.’ Kamila Shamsie on writing the unsaid, the challenges of adapting Antigone and the role of the novel in politics.

Jesse Ball & Josie Mitchell

‘Confusion is the only natural response to the world, the alternative would be to just fall in with everyone else’s plans.’

Nicole Krauss

‘The ancient stories we tell, as beautiful as they may be, also serve to shape our conventions about who we think we are or should be’

Sarah Hall & Tessa Hadley

‘Literature is that odd paradox: an artifice that somehow truthfully engages the reader, the mind, the emotions, the self, in essential communion.’

James Thornton & Martin Goodman

A discussion of the environmental pratfalls of Brexit and the Trump presidency, and how judicial action is best used in the fight against climate change.

Andrea Stuart & Josie Mitchell

Josie Mitchell talks to Andrea Stuart about her essay ‘Travels in Pornland’. They discuss the value of feminist porn, the importance of counter narratives and the challenges faced by feminist pornographers.

George Saunders

A discussion of the mind of Abraham Lincoln, the art of creating historical voices, verbal improv and writing the afterlife.

Maureen N. McLane & Rachael Allen

Granta’s poetry editor Rachael Allen talks to Maureen N. McLane about ecology, lyric authority, and balancing poetry with criticism.

Madeleine Thien & Ka Bradley

‘Do you speak or do you not speak? Is every word that you speak then compromised?’

Patrick deWitt & Neel Mukherjee

Neel Mukherjee and Patrick deWitt discuss their books Undermajordomo Minor and The Lives of Others, subconscious influence, the power of the exclamation mark and love.

George Saunders & Ben Marcus

‘One purpose of art is to get us to wake up, recalibrate our emotional life, get ourselves into proper relation to reality.’

Tishani Doshi & Karthika Naïr

‘I have never felt it as a poet, and that is why I’m doubly grateful to dance, for having experienced the loneliness and the terror of the empty stage, but also, to have had that live connection.’

Leslee Udwin & Sonia Faleiro

‘It’s the barrel that rots the apples.’ Leslee Udwin talks to Sonia Faleiro about her film India's Daughter.

Lindsey Hilsum & Anjan Sundaram

‘Sometimes we don’t quite know what we’re seeing.’

Matthew Dickman & Barbara Ras

‘They happen organically. If a can of Pepsi shows up it’s because I was thinking about a can of Pepsi.’

S.J. Naudé & Ivan Vladislavić

‘In rapidly transforming societies, writers may lose the space they’ve built their imaginative lives around.’

Nawzat Shamdin & Larry Siems

‘I remain what I have always been, a human being first, and then an Iraqi. And then I am a writer.’

Diane Cook & Sam Lipsyte

‘The bewilderment was productive, and relit a good fire under my instinct, which I didn’t have to conflate with certainty.’

Etgar Keret & Sophie Lewis

‘Usually my wife makes fun of me.’

Adrian Tomine & Francisco Vilhena

Motoyuki Shibata & Fran Bigman

‘I always think the borderline between reality and non-reality, or fantasy, is much thinner in Japanese fiction than in American or British fiction.’

Kyoko Nakajima & David Peace

‘When we talk about history, the dangers of embellishment, fabrication and wilful distortion are ever-present’

Aleksi Pöyry & Francisco Vilhena

‘What is often particular to Finnish Weird is that it portrays a realistic, palpable setting which gradually starts to acquire elements of fantasy.’

Brigitte Grignet & Daniela Silva

‘Places sitting at the edges of the world are often destroyed in the name of so-called development.’

Lauren Holmes & Louise Scothern

‘Even if you move to the other side of the world, and even if you don’t speak for years or decades, your family is always going to be a part of you.’

Katherine Faw Morris & Yuka Igarashi

‘I wanted her to be a pit bull.’

Colin McAdam & Norman Rush

‘Who should write memoirs? I have the not-entirely-serious and absurdly restrictive idea that only morally extraordinary people could write them honestly without much shame’

Fiona Benson & Rachael Allen

‘I’ve always wanted to write from the gut, to write instinctively rather than cerebrally.’

Catherine Lacey & Louise Scothern

‘It's uncomfortable, at times, to be alive, so I see no reason why a voice in fiction shouldn't be also.’

Justin Jin & Francisco Vilhena

‘This disaster has been going on for decades. I want to protest against this as loudly as I can through photography.’

Laurence Hamburger & Rachael Allen

Romesh Gunesekera & Ka Bradley

‘The past has never been as present as it is now in the world. But at the same time, all over the world, the determination to manipulate what we know has also never been stronger.’