‘The reason I want to write novels rather than philosophy is that I want whatever point the novel makes to have a kind of undertone of disagreement with itself.’
Jamie Cameron speaks to Benjamin Markovits.
Interview | Textures of Ambivalence: Harriet Baker on Woolf, Warner and Lehmann
‘I was taking a revisionary feminist approach to literary archives, in the sense that I wanted to argue for the value of these domestic texts, that they can indeed tell a whole of a life.’
An interview with Harriet Baker, winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.
Interview | ‘Left Hand, Right Hand’: Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity
‘We are both more in favour of speaking rather than shouting, and as visual hunters we are happier when seeking than we are when parading the spoils of the hunt.’
An interview with Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity.
Interview | Tony Tulathimutte: ‘A short story can do almost anything a novel can.’
‘I tend to enjoy writers who are good at writing gasbags; those who are in love with the sound of their own awful voice.’
Lilia Fetini speaks to Tony Tulathimutte.
Interview | The Search for Truth: Michael Amherst in Conversation
‘I’m surprised that we’ve reached this weird cultural moment where we’re constantly trying to work out what is true, what is based on someone’s experience, particularly in relation to work that maybe meets the definition of autofiction.’
An interview with Michael Amherst.
Interview | Jacqueline Feldman: ‘It’s salutary to spend time around people who have arranged their lives in radical ways.’
Julia Steiner interviews Jacqueline Feldman about Precarious Lease: The Paris Document: a book of literary reportage on Parisian squats of the early 2010s.
Interview | Mingling with Caleb Parkin
‘Hope can be quite a toxic construct. It’s often invested in preserving the present, but what version of the present are we hoping to continue?’
Tom Nutting speaks to poet and educator, Caleb Parkin.
Interview | Gustav Parker Hibbett: ‘I grew up with other people being the authority in defining my identity.’
Jamie Cameron speaks to Gustav Parker Hibbett about form, identity and what it felt like to be shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for their collection, High Jump as Icarus Story.
Interview | Jon Day: ‘I hate the idea of going places.’
‘Great things to learn as a writer: how to meet a deadline, how to be edited, how not to be precious about your prose.’
Rose Brookfield interviews Jon Day.
Interview | Rose Electra Harris: Big Canvas, Bright Colours
‘One of the things that I get torn about is that I feel really lucky that I’m an artist, but often wonder if it’s quite a selfish thing to be doing.’
Zadie Loft speaks to Rose Electra Harris.
Interview | Orlando Reade in Conversation by Marina Scholtz
‘I was told very early on by people in publishing that there is no market for literary criticism – none.’
Marina Scholtz speaks to Orlando Reade.
Interview | Eliza Clark: Seven Questions
‘There’s a great deal of horror to be found when desire is misaimed or curdles – our desires are often an expression of the systems of power we exist in.’
Eliza Clark interviewed by Zadie Loft.
Interview | Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh on Manuscripts and Miniatures
‘In this complex world where human kind is divided into tiny sections, I hope we all can find the unity we are meant to have.’
Eric Block interviews artist Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh and curator Esen Kaya.
Interview | Purgatory by the Sea: Jon Fosse in Conversation
‘To me, writing is best described as listening. And at a certain point it is as if the text is already written: it exists out there somewhere, and I just have to write it down before it disappears.’
Zadie Loft interviews Jon Fosse.
Interview | Laughter and Tears: Alejandro Zambra in Conversation
‘Saying that fiction is untrue, that it is something of a lie, is as imprecise as saying that a song is a lie, that a joke is a lie, that a painting is a lie.’
An interview with Alejandro Zambra by Magnus Rena.
Interview | The Garden as Political Metaphor with Olivia Laing and Richard Porter
‘The garden is a space to think differently, to understand time differently and to understand how to cope with abundance, followed by loss, followed by abundance, followed by loss. It’s an anti-capitalist clock.’
Olivia Laing and Richard Porter in conversation with Zadie Loft.
Interview | ‘Freedom in Multitudes’: Explorations of the Self with Sosa Omorogbe
‘The fragmented self is the self. That feeling of not being one thing but multiple threads intertwined into one physical, corporeal form, that is what it feels like to be human. I don’t think traditional portraiture where the figure is posed and sat always captures that.’
Zadie Loft speaks to gallerist and curator, Sosa Omorogbe.
Interview | Selva Almada: Seven Questions
‘I’m certainly curious about the world of men, in how they act and why. Through my fiction and my imagination, I can find the nuance, the gaps and the hollows, the contradictions.’
Selva Almada in conversation with Konrad Muller (tr. James Appleby).
Interview | Offer Waterman and Francis Outred on Auerbach’s London
‘In a world where a lot of contemporary art is consumed at the point of making and many artists are very young, we have an artist who is still with us – at 93 years old – with seven decades behind him, still drawing.’
Offer Waterman and Francis Outred discuss Frank Auerbach’s landscapes of London.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best First Collection: Jasmine Cooray and Kelly Michels
‘The concept of limitation definitely had a profound effect on the writing. There have been so many points in my life where I have had to recognise that there will be no resolution.’
The fourth and final in our Forward Prize for Poetry interview series, Jasmine Cooray and Kelly Michels.
Interview | Between Anger and Prayer: Camille Ralphs in Conversation
‘I think my overwhelming feeling writing that poem and reading it out now is one of ‘trappedness’. Anger at being trapped in the world, in a situation which makes no sense, with faculties that cannot make sense of it. The other question is why?’
Shoshana Kessler speaks to poet and editor, Camille Ralphs.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Single Poem Performed: Leyla Josephine and Michael Pedersen
‘Poetry is always trying to capture the experience of living a human life, which is an impossible task. Poets come close, but of course, always fail. Life is simply too complicated, too individual, too big. But the best poets, in my opinion, are the ones who manage to conjure feeling and keep mystery. And, of course, sprinkle in some humour to not take the whole thing too seriously.’
The third in our Forward Prize for Poetry interview series, Leyla Josephine and Michael Pedersen.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Collection: Fady Joudah and Sarah Wimbush
‘The Palestinian people have been dealing with variable, accelerating modes of their erasure and absenting in English for nearly a century now. I had to write this book.’
The second in our Forward Prizes for Poetry interview series, Fady Joudah and Sarah Wimbush speak to each other about their collections, […] and STRIKE.
Interview | Desire and Displacement in Sulaiman Addonia’s The Seers
‘It made sense to me that the theme of sex centres itself in my books about refugees, because when people flee from wars, they often leave with few belongings and sometimes without their families. So, in exile, surrounded by loneliness and scarcity, their bodies become a focal point.’
Olivia Boyle talks to Sulaiman Addonia.