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.’

Rattawut Lapcharoensap & Yuka Igarashi

‘Sometimes all a story needs is an interesting, clearly defined confusion.’

Helen Mort & Rachael Allen

‘I think there’s something seductive and liberating about the way you can create shadowy characters in a poem.’

Ellen Bryant Voigt & Rachael Allen

‘I don’t think of music and narrative as being mutually exclusive – some of my poems ARE narrative, and are as ‘sound-driven’ as the lyrics.’

Tao Lin & Yuka Igarashi

Yuka Igarashi talks to Tao Lin about sense of place within the novel Taipei, his online presence and abstraction and metaphor in his writing.

Charles Simic & Rachael Allen

Charles Simic is one of today's most prolific poets. He speaks with poetry editor Rachael Allen about poetic movements, simple dishes and tragicomedy.

A. Igoni Barrett & Ted Hodgkinson

‘Fixing the rhythm of one sentence in the novel I’m working on is more vital for me than any considerations of where I’m coming from or where my work is headed.’

Johanna Haegerström & Saskia Vogel

‘If there are any tensions between Swedish writers it has more to do with style: writers who incline towards a more classical, epic storytelling versus writers who engage in more experimental uses of language.’