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

Mavis Gallant & Jhumpa Lahiri

‘Useless chaos is what fiction is about.’

Peter Hobbs & Roy Robins

‘Illness is solitary, because suffering is something you always do alone.’

Ruchir Joshi

Writer and filmmaker Ruchir Joshi on his essay ‘Tracing Puppa’, Calcutta and his dreams of writing for Granta.

Tim Lott & Helen Gordon

‘Somehow by putting things into words you’re taking a situation that feels very out of control and creating a kind of illusion of control over it.’

Karl Ove Knausgård & Sophia Efthimiatou

‘You are in the middle of your life and you think, how did I get here?’

Zadie Smith & Ted Hodgkinson

Zadie Smith on writing tighter sentences, the ‘essential hubris’ of criticism and why novelists prefer writing in their pyjamas.

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.’