‘Writing is a good way to process what’s going on in your own life’
Norwegian crime writer Thomas Enger on the wit of Harlan Coben and the wisdom of Stephen King
Kate Hamer Q&A: ‘Write the story that is burning inside you’
‘Writing makes you tune into the world in a way that I might not have experienced if I didn’t write’
‘I trained as a bounty hunter as research for my debut novel’
Deep Down Dead author Steph Broadribb on what makes her tick as a reader and a writer
‘Reading is like learning a language; you soak up good writing without being fully aware’
A Q&A with Su Bristow, a medical herbalist whose third book is her debut novel, Sealskin
Michael J Malone Q&A: ‘I wish the books with The Girl … titles would do one’
‘It took me so long to see my words in print that I had to learn perseverance’
Agnes Ravatn: ‘Research is synonymous with procrastination, so I try to avoid it’
‘Just the thought of writing a historical novel is unbearable. To me, writing is about what could have happened, not what actually happened’
Graeme Macrae Burnet Q&A: ‘Like most writers I’m a dreadful procrastinator’
‘I think the success of His Bloody Project shows that readers are willing to engage with something a little bit out of the ordinary,’ says Man Booker Prize shortlisted author
Michael Stanley Q&A: ‘Every life is a story we can understand if we try’
Michael Stanley, the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip behind the Botswana-based Detective Kubu series, on their literary lives and loves
Michael Grothaus Q&A: ‘Don’t worry about the first draft. It’s always going to be shit’
The author of Epiphany Jones, a novel about Hollywood sex trafficking, on his life as a reader and writer and the many books that inspired him
‘I write anywhere and everywhere except where and when I’m supposed to’
RB Kelly on her literary life and loves: Mark Anthony, Anne of Green Gables, Terry Pratchett, Ben Elton, observing everything, and the right kind of feedback
Akhil Sharma on his debt to Hemingway and Robinson Crusoe
A Q&A with 2016 International Dublin Literary Award winner: Reading taught me you will regret being cruel, not being kind
A Q&A with Henrietta McKervey
‘I’m proudest of the very last chapter of The Heart of Everything. I didn’t know it was going to be that way until it was’
Amanda Jennings: ‘A first draft is your lump of clay. It’s not going to be pretty’
I often find exchanges I observe in real life inspire an additional scene. When you’re writing, the subconscious often seeks out things that enhance the themes you focus on
Gavin McCrea: ‘when I finished John McGahern’s Memoir, I wept for an entire day’
On learning how to deal with good reviews: ‘Because I spend a lot of my (writing) time enacting self-doubt and reproach, it can be difficult to trust praise when it comes’
Kevin Curran: ‘writers should be writing against power’
‘Not one big name in Irish literature has even attempted to gauge the feelings on the street and engage with contemporary social realism without sentimentalising it’
Danielle McLaughlin: ‘I think we need different books at different times’
Our Book Club author on Eimear McBride, Maud Gonne McBride, Elena Ferrante, Wide Sargasso Sea and why dead people, naturally, are her dream dinner party guests
Frankie Gaffney’s advice to writers: ‘give up the booze and break some rules’
‘My aim in Dublin Seven was to present a character whose very life and death is seen by society at large as not worth caring about: the young, working-class male’
Caitriona Lally on Madame Bovary, Beryl the Peril and other heroines
‘I work as a cleaner in Trinity College and when I get to dust the bookshelves in the Old Library, it smells like musty heaven. I can’t imagine ever sniffing an ebook’
Louise Beech: I always write physically at my desk; in my head I write everywhere
My novel was inspired by sharing an incredible true story with my then 10-year-old daughter when she refused her life-saving injections. She taught me about voice
Tore Renberg: ‘We will prevail. We will write. People will read. Literature is essential’
The Norwegian bestselling author on being inspired by Dostoyevsky and Adrian Mole, and his very strong desire for fiction after five quite autobiographical novels
Kati Hiekkapelto: ‘I have visited so many cultures, minds and emotions through reading’
‘I don’t particularly like doing background research. I would love just to imagine everything. However, since I write about police work, I have to get the facts straight’
Christine Dwyer Hickey Q&A: my influences, from Mrs Dalloway to Janice Galloway
‘There is no better way to appreciate another culture or to begin to understand the lives of others than through a well-written novel’
‘AC/DC’s music is the best antidepressant there is’
AC/DC biographer Jesse Fink on the difficulties of telling the story of Angus, Malcolm and George Young
Jonathan Bardon Q&A: ‘good history is not enough: the historian also has a duty to tell it well’
‘Read your first drafts out loud to yourself, as if you were giving a sermon – a great way to show up areas in need of improvement’
Ragnar Jónasson Q&A: ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd had a great impact on me’
‘The truth isn’t to be found in books, not even good books, but in people who have a kind heart’
Maria Duffy Q&A: ‘I can get a week’s work done between 1am and 7am’
‘No matter what other books I write, that first one will always be very special to me’
Mark Billingham Q&A: ‘Cops solving crimes with supernatural powers strikes me as cheating’
‘I read Jaws and The Godfather back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be. Also, they both had dirty bits’
Paul McVeigh Q&A: ‘It’s ironic the two books I did the most research for I ended up not writing’
‘When I read Anaïs Nin’s exposing personal enquiries into emotion and excavations of the truth, it transformed my concept of the territory of the written word’
Glenn Patterson Q&A: ‘I will not live long enough to read the half of what I want to’
'What was the first book to make an impression on me? The Bible. I had nightmares for weeks'
Eoin McNamee Q&A: ‘I can’t think of a good piece of funny writing which didn’t turn around and kick you in the teeth’
‘When I was young I had a knack for reading things I didn’t really understand and being caught up in their slipstream. I read Brighton Rock when I was 12 or 13’
Melissa Hill Q&A: ‘The Secret Garden inspired my love of the mystery genre to this day’
‘The majority of female mega-selling authors are all severly under-rated and dismissed as unimportant, purely because they write women’s fiction. It’s nuts’
Jenny Erpenbeck: ‘The greatest discoveries can be made just around the corner’
Brought to Book Q&A: Author of The End of Days on the books and authors that have inspired her
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel Q&A: ‘I wrote one of my first novels sitting up a tree’
Author from Equatorial Guinea on what he reads and how he writes
Q&A: Tom Bouman on his debt to Tana French and the importance of empathy
‘It is hard to ignore the purported abandonment of narrative artifice in favour of something resembling unflinching, quotidian honesty’
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Common Ground
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