Yuka Igarashi & Taiye Selasi

‘I was rather surprised to discover that I’d painted such a devastating portrait.’

Issue 17

Teresa Toranska

‘You referred to a comrade as ‘Mister’. That's offensive.’

Fiona Benson & Rachael Allen

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

David McConnell & Patrick Ryan

‘These were deranged acts but they were ultimately based on something that’s historically been treated as a social good, the sense of personal honour.’

Katherine Faw Morris & Yuka Igarashi

‘I wanted her to be a pit bull.’

Evelyn Ch’ien

‘The world tends to give us pieces, and then in our imagination, because of our desire and because of our need, we make them whole.’

Adam Thirlwell & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I suppose it’s that word hyper that I was after: I was trying to find a form for a kind of hyper energy or anxiety.’

Justin Torres & Jennifer de Leon

‘I wanted to write a book about a family so complicated, so in love, and so flawed, that folks would resist easy categories.’

Kyoko Nakajima & David Peace

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

Anita Sethi

‘At four o’clock in the morning, when Louis de Bernières has lines of poetry repeating in his head which won’t stop gnawing away, he writes them down.‘

Julie Klam & Marian Brown

‘I’m successful? I can’t wait to call my mother!’

Anthony Doerr & Patrick Ryan

‘The natural world is full of records and erasures.’

Adolf Hoffmeister & James Joyce

For Bloomsday, James Joyce and Adolf Hoffmeister argue about a Czech translation of Finnegans Wake in a rare and intimate interview from 1930.

Adrian Tomine & Francisco Vilhena