His new book The Man in the Red Coat may be set in 19th-century Paris, but the Booker prize winner sees clear parallels with our lurid times. He talks nationalism, grief and writing ‘filth’ By Lisa Allardice England, England, Julian Barnes’s 1998 satire on heritage and nationhood, ends with Britain being thrown out of the… Read More »Julian Barnes: ‘Do you expect Europe to cut us a good deal? It’s so childish’
By Colum McCann at the New York Public Library in conjunction with the PEN World Voices festival 2008 COLUM McCANN: Can I ask you a weird, strange, sort of off-the-wall question? Do you have fun? MICHAEL ONDAATJE: Do I have fun writing or just fun in life? McCANN: Those are two very distinct things, aren’t they? First, do… Read More »“Adventures in the Skin Trade”: A conversation with Michael Ondaatje
Interviewed by Jonathan Rosen & Tarun Tejpal Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad, where his ancestors had emigrated from India—his maternal grandfather, at the turn of the century, had traveled from that country as an indentured servant. Naipaul, in his essay “Prologue to an Autobiography” from Finding the Center, has written: “Half… Read More »In conversation with V. S. Naipaul: Issues and ideas are always highly subtle and complex
Interview by Rebecca Sutton Talking to Toni Morrison about failure is a bit like talking to Einstein about stupidity: it’s incongruous, to say the least. At 83, Morrison is one of the world’s best-known and most successful novelists, her awards list crammed with the heavyweights of literary prizes: among them, the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and… Read More »Write, Erase, Do It Over. An Interview with Toni Morrison
By Bahgat Elnadi, Adel Rifaat and Miguel Labarca Is it possible to protect culture? Gabriel García Márquez: The major question that governments and people interested in culture should ask is what kind of protection the state can offer to culture without interfering in it and manipulating it or, most important of all, without making it… Read More »Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez talks about creativity and his conception of the writer’s craft
Born in the Colombian village of Aracataca in 1927, Gabriel García Márquez made his mark as a master of the modern novel with the publication of Cien años de soledad in 1967 (published in English as One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970). His reputation was cemented with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.… Read More »Interview with Gabriel García Márquez, author of the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
By Jessica Wolf For the last several years, UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernández has been reaching into Los Angeles history, back before the city was even city or California was even a state, to unearth evidence of how local and national governments, police and jail systems operated as a formalized machine of conquest and… Read More »How Los Angeles became the capital of incarceration: Q&A with UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernández on her new book “City of Inmates”
Queen’s alum discusses her bumpy journey to success as a TV writer and author By Josh Granovsky By all measures of success, Monica Heisey is killing the writing game. She currently holds a spot in the writer’s room of the critically acclaimed Eugene Levy and Catharine O’Hara sitcom, Schitt’s Creek. Her first memoir, released in… Read More »Monica Heisey’s journey to success
It’s just been announced that Eleanor Catton’s new book, Birnam Wood, will be out on March 7, 2023. We revisit our exclusive chat with her where the author talks about her surprisingly relatable writing process, her advice for writers and how she feels about the sudden fame she experienced when she first won the Man Booker… Read More »Eleanor Catton On Fame, Her New Project & Why The Creative Process Always Involves A Crisis Of Confidence
Kevin Jared Hosein’s masterful Hungry Ghosts is set in 1940s rural Trinidad and tells of two households. By Alice O’Keeffe Kevin Jared Hosein’s masterful Hungry Ghosts is set in 1940s rural Trinidad and tells of two households. In the grand house of the estate farm, at the top of the hill overlooking the village, live the Changoors:… Read More »Kevin Jared Hosein in conversation about the inspiration behind his novel Hungry Ghosts
The best-selling author of The Family Fang and Nothing to See Here reflects on a few of his favorite things. By Leah Greenblatt There are literary novelists you slog through, trying mightily to improve your mind or at least impress your social network, and then there is Kevin Wilson. In books like The Family Fang (later made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman and… Read More »Pop Culture of My Life: Kevin Wilson on True Grit, Origami Yoda, and the one VHS tape he couldn’t quit
By ROBERT LEE BREWER Debut novelist Tammye Huf discusses how her own familial love story inspired her historical fiction novel, A More Perfect Union. Tammye Huf grew up in California, before moving first to Germany and then to the U.K. with her husband and their three children. In more normal times, she still returns to… Read More »Tammye Huf: On Real Love That Sparked Inspiration
By Writers & Artists We sat down with Daisy Buchanan at the London Book Fair to discuss her book and why non-fiction was the obvious choice for her… Why did you choose to write a non-fiction book? I should admit that one of the reasons I wanted to do non-fiction was because I could do… Read More »An Interview with Daisy Buchanan
By SAM BRIGER Before she became a novelist, Ramona Emerson spent 16 years documenting crime scenes. As a police department photographer in Albuquerque, N.M., she covered everything from car accidents to refinery explosions. Once she had to ride a mule up a mountain for two hours with all her gear just to document a scene where… Read More »‘Shutter’ author was inspired by her own work as a crime scene photographer
How Filipino journalist Maria Ressa took on Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook and won the Nobel Peace Prize. By James Risen FOR MUCH OF her life, journalist Maria Ressa struggled to determine who she was and where she really came from. Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States, she didn’t feel entirely at home… Read More »“If This Can Happen to Maria, Then This Can Happen to You”
The Blur guitarist, 53, on his addictive personality, making music as you age and being a Britpop brat By James McMahon I was a brat during Britpop. There was so much to rail against. But I should have been more grateful for my good fortune and looked after myself better and tried to enjoy it innocently. My… Read More »Graham Coxon: ‘Music has always been there for me’
This interview, by HOPE REESE, was curated from The Hazlitt. In the fall of 2006, Doree Shafrir started writing for the now-defunct Gawker, a media site that came to life at the dawn of online journalism—shifting standards for how stories were produced and ushering in a new age of media consumption. Shafrir, now a senior culture writer… Read More »‘This Brave New World Has Some of the Worst Aspects of the Old Way of Doing Things’: An Interview with Doree Shafrir
By SUSAN BRINK Two young orphans inspired Dr. Benjamin Black to write a book about his experiences during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. The British obstetrician/gynecologist knew the two boys, aged 8 and 9, for less than a day. When he met them, one was barely able to sip some fluid; the other… Read More »A doctor’s Ebola memoir is all too timely with a new outbreak in Uganda
Interview by Spencer Quong May 21, 2019. Curated from The Paris Review. Franny Choi isn’t done thinking about cyborgs. When we met two weeks before the release of her latest collection Soft Science, she told me she was still discovering AI ideas she wished she could have addressed in her poems. Reckoning with the mythology of a “finished… Read More »Queerness, Cyborgs, and Cephalopods: An Interview with Franny Choi
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is set in 1989 – a significant year in Sri Lanka’s recent history. For those who aren’t very familiar with Sri Lanka’s civil war, could you give our readers a sense of what was happening at that time and why you chose that specific year as the backdrop for Maali’s… Read More »A Conversation with the 2022 Booker Prize Winner, Shehan Karunatilaka