Colum McCann: ‘I like having my back against the wall’

The New York-based Irish author on being compelled to write about the big issues, his fear for friends in the Middle East and why Frankenstein is a metaphor for our times

‘It feels like a vindication’: Andrea Dworkin’s widower on the radical feminist’s rediscovery

John Stoltenberg, Dworkin’s partner for three decades, is thrilled by the reissue of three of her books as Penguin Modern Classics, and how a new generation is finding inspiration from her work

Writer Percival Everett: ‘Deciding to write a book is like knowingly entering a bad marriage’

The American novelist on James, his Booker-shortlisted retelling of Huckleberry Finn, working with Steven Spielberg and the silliness of the Oscars

Writer David Szalay: ‘We live in an era of short attention spans – we have to work with it the best we can’

The Hungarian-English author on addressing what it’s like to be a male body in the world, learning the tricks of literature from Frederick Forsyth, and the feeling of nearly winning the Booker

‘I forgive the girl and boy for what they’ve done. If I didn’t, the hate would eat away at me’: Esther Ghey on life after the murder of her daughter Brianna

Transgender teenager Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds. The killers had been radicalised on the dark web, while the victim was trapped in an online world of her own. Now her mother has become friends with the parent of one of the murderers

Ash Sarkar: ‘I never learned much of value from TV’

The leftwing political commentator on gen Z’s disillusionment with democracy, why she’s a ‘Mantel stan’ and the moral panic behind her first book

Judith Butler: ‘Swimming is the closest thing I have to a religion’

The philosopher, 68, tells Michael Segalov about kayaks capsizing, imitating trees, left-wing schisms and how instead of being stony-faced and serious, they like to clown around

‘It seemed wrong to write about normal life after that horrendous election’: US novelist Anne Tyler

At 83, The Accidental Tourist author discusses the secret to a good marriage, publishing her 25th book and why she can no longer keep politics out of her novels

Geraldine Brooks: ‘I felt like I was faking my life’

The Australian Pulitizer-prize winning author on love, grief and pretending to be normal while feeling anything but

‘We’re not doing the thing we’re built to do’: Agnes Callard, the philosopher living life according to Socrates

Why did the professor get divorced, remarry, but allow her former husband to remain in the house? In her brilliant new book, Open Socrates, she makes the case for an intellectually honest life

Andrew O’Hagan: ‘A kind of Dickens and Zola energy was pulsing’

The author and journalist on ‘modern London corruption’ and his Orwell prize-shortlisted novel Caledonian Road, how he helped Jonathan Franzen and the last book he gave as a gift

Colin Barrett: ‘My wife is astonished that I’m able to write’

The award-winning author on his move from short stories to novels, writing marginal characters in small-town Mayo and the Irish fiction he rates most

Tash Aw: ‘There’s something hyper-masculine about writing an epic’

As he embarks on a quartet of novels following one family, the Malaysian author talks about storytelling, family silences – and the legacy of colonialism

‘I want to be hopeful’: Nobel prize-winning novelist Han Kang on the crisis in South Korea

With protests on the streets of Seoul, the celebrated writer talks about the painful process of uncovering her country’s brutal past - and how it felt to win the Nobel prize

Big knickers, bad decisions and old bats: Renée Zellweger on the return of Bridget Jones

Nearly 25 years after the first film, the actor, her co-stars and the writer Helen Fielding discuss the ultimate singleton, love and loss – and the final resting place for Bridget’s massive knickers