Zadie Smith & Ted Hodgkinson

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

Henry Marsh

Dina Nayeri

‘I could shape a story before my mouth could shape the words.’

Florence Boyd & Ted Hodgkinson

‘There is a dichotomy of darkness and beauty within things that we can’t confront head on.’

Anthony Shadid & Ted Hodgkinson

‘It’s very difficult to say what kind of Iraq is going to emerge from this trauma. I think we have to wait a generation.’

Karl Ove Knausgård & Sophia Efthimiatou

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

Nathan Englander & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I don’t want to write any story that I think can be written.’

Ben Lerner & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I have no memory of intending to write a novel.’

Marcelo Ferroni

‘This is an exciting moment for Brazilian literature. We may see a batch of new, vibrant novels, really soon.’

Léonie Hampton & Yuka Igarashi

‘I see a dichotomy at play where I am trying to be truthful, but it’s hard to be direct.’

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.’

Rachel Seiffert & Yuka Igarashi

Rachel Seiffert reads her work and talks to Granta about writing silences, the inescapability of history, the Troubles and learning to love her characters.

Paula Bohince & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I like the friction of fixed physical atmospheres with different lives passing through.’

Rowan Ricardo Phillips & Ted Hodgkinson

‘Poetry’s strongest response, on the other hand, is determined, open-ended world-making, which is the work of empathy.’