How I wrote
Lauren Groff on Fates and Furies: ‘I thought it would be interesting to write a book questioning marriage’
The author on the years of scribbling ideas on her walls that eventually became this novel
Lauren Groff
18, Sep, 2021 @10:00 AM
Sebastian Faulks on Human Traces: ‘I had no idea I would turn out to be 3% Neanderthal’
The author on his exhilarating research into the human mind, teaching creative writing at Broadmoor – and his new, follow-up novel
Sebastian Faulks
13, Sep, 2021 @9:00 AM
‘An image came into my head of two little boys sitting on either side of a fence’ - John Boyne on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
The novelist on how it took him two days, writing through the nights, to complete a first draft of his famous Holocaust novel for younger readers, and how he remains ‘immensely proud’ of it
John Boyne
06, Sep, 2021 @9:00 AM
Madeline Miller on The Song of Achilles: ‘It helped people come out to their parents’
The American novelist describes how she overcame her fears of a classical backlash to write a gay love story about Achilles and Patroclus
Madeline Miller
27, Aug, 2021 @11:00 AM
Pat Barker on The Silence of the Girls: ‘The Iliad is myth – the rules for writing historical fiction don’t apply’
The Booker-winning novelist knew when she read the Iliad that she would write about Briseis one day
Pat Barker
07, Aug, 2021 @11:00 AM
Jonathan Coe on The Rotters’ Club: ‘My diary provided endless material, but I didn’t like the person I was’
The author on mixing semi-fact with fiction – and the school rule about swimming naked that inspired the novel’s big comedy set piece
Jonathan Coe
24, Jul, 2021 @11:30 AM
Curtis Sittenfeld on American Wife: ‘I thought Democrats wouldn’t read it because it was about a Republican’
The US author on writing a fictionalised version of the former first lady Laura Bush’s life – and why she expected so few people to read it
Curtis Sittenfeld
10, Jul, 2021 @11:30 AM
Caitlin Moran on How to Be a Woman: ‘It was a thrill to rifle through the box marked TABOOS’
Handbags, lap dancing, Botox, comfort food … the columnist recalls how she only had five months to write the feminist bestseller about everything
Caitlin Moran
03, Jul, 2021 @11:30 AM
Anne Enright on The Green Road: ‘I set out to write another King Lear’
The author on writing her novel a cottage in County Clare, and letting her scattered characters take on lives of their own
Anne Enright
26, Jun, 2021 @11:00 AM
Julian Barnes on The Sense of an Ending: ‘I learned to do more by saying less’
The author on maturing as a writer, the power of concision – and the reviews that claimed he was inspired by Frank Kermode
Julian Barnes
14, Jun, 2021 @7:00 AM
Esther Freud on Hideous Kinky: ‘Memories came back to me, humorous and chilling’
The writer was a struggling actor when she began to write about her early childhood on the hippy trail in Morocco
Esther Freud
05, Jun, 2021 @11:00 AM
Jane Rogers on writing Mr Wroe’s Virgins: ‘I was wildly ambitious, and had a chip on my shoulder’
Looking to take on the very male literary world of the 1980s, Rogers turned to areas in which women could find meaning outside motherhood: work, religion, love
Jane Rogers
22, May, 2021 @12:00 PM
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