All Episodes

Will Boast: 'You almost have to make your characters feel interestingly doomed'

Takiguchi Yūshō: 'When I’m writing fiction, I have very little sense I’m the one inventing the story'

Holly Edwards: 'There's obviously something political about presenting trans characters'

Joel Cox: 'It's fine to have jerks in stories, but you have to have something that makes the reader keep reading'

Bruna Martini: 'I have spent too many months without drawing'

Diana Evans: 'Writing is an act of hope'

Cynthia Banham: 'Writing is a dangerous act'

Samuel Rigg: 'Often I find I'm writing about people who are not me'

Tim Conley: 'Short fiction is a lot more liberating'

Rodrigo Urquiola Flores: 'Everything in this short story is true'

Cynthia Zarin: 'You write out of the world that you're living in'

Ephameron: 'My work is always at the crossroads between literature, graphic arts, painting, comics'

Kasimma: 'Because I’m writing fiction, I can get away with anything'

Caroline Clark: 'This story completely surprised me'

Helon Habila: 'What fiction does is make you live the life of the other'

Sheyla Smanioto: 'It's a haunted story, where you know something is going to happen'

Dafydd McKimm: 'I write this kind of story in a bit of a fever'

Ali McClary: 'This story started as a conversation between two young women'

Pete Segall: 'I don’t feel like it’s my job as a writer to answer questions'

AL Kennedy: 'It's all political, if you're writing fiction'

Susanna Clarke: 'You’ve got to play with things being very fantastical and also slightly humdrum'

Jeremy Wikeley: 'I would always defend the notion of being able to write about a place called England'

PR Woods: 'I would never write anything against Wolf Hall'

Bronia Flett: 'This is obviously all fiction'

Fríða Ísberg: 'We are always just looking for simple stories'

Joanna Kavenna: 'We all make fictions about the future'

Rachida Lamrabet: 'Fiction gives me the opportunity to introduce another perspective'

Julian George: 'Any word out of place, the whole thing is worthless'

Ben Sorgiovanni: 'What fiction does really well is capture the nuance of human experience'

Helga Schubert: 'There's got to be distance between the writer and their story'

Esther Karin Mngodo: 'I am more myself when I write in Swahili'

Hannah Webb: 'I always seem to end up writing at the extremes'

Scott Jacobs: 'I made a few things up along the way'

Judith Vanistendael: 'This first love has defined my storytelling'

Daisy Johnson: 'Most of the things I write do have a twist'

Susan Muaddi Darraj: 'My writing has changed forever by what's happening in Gaza'

Jack Klausner: 'I write more on the darker end of the spectrum'

Carolina Bruck: 'Fiction can transform the way we understand the world'

Patrick Cash: 'The coming out story has been told so many times'

Samantha Harvey: 'This is what fiction can do'

Jakub Żulczyk: 'We're all two inches tall'

Rose Rahtz: 'What if you did have magical powers in a toddler?'

Lauren Caroline Smith: 'There is something countercultural in Christianity'

Grahame Williams: 'Random acts of violence could happen at any time'

Jenny Erpenbeck: 'What you write down can be made to hide something'

Liam Hogan: 'I want to be entertained'

Robert Neuwirth: 'I wanted it to be plausible as a machine thinking'

Ariel Marken Jack: 'The way I fight back is through my writing'

Richard Smyth: 'We all need an Otherland'

Linda Mannheim: 'What is a happy ending?'

Catriona Bolt: 'Everyone in the story associates mushrooms with death'

Shauna Mackay: 'It's listening to the characters and letting them take the lead'

Seán Padraic Birnie: 'I was quite depressed and pissed off with work'

Irena Karpa: 'Literature must entertain, especially in dark times'

M John Harrison: 'How do you know who’s alive and who’s the ghost?'

Sabba Khan: 'The terraced house is a big character in this story'

Donal McLaughlin: 'I've got that Derry voice in my head'

José Falero: 'If people started robbing cars en masse, that would be a political event'

Fiona Mozley: 'Fiction really is a conversation'

Joyce Carol Oates: 'With prose fiction you can go beneath the surface'

Etgar Keret: 'When I write a story I also live it'

Diana Evans: 'You can actually go quite far with very little'

Evie Wyld: 'I feel much more able to do wilder things in the present tense'

Sarah Hall: 'At what point would you take grand steps?'