Tag: authors

The writer describes her process of reporting and shaping her recent essay, “The State of Waiting,” which explores love in the shadow of war and immigration policy.

“We were interested in dead girls, but so interested in them that we were trying to do the opposite of what had been done before.” 

“But writing itself, living a life defined by work and intellect rather than love or marriage, became her primary feminist commitment.”

Sara Fredman talks to author Lindy West on women and likability, the evolution of pop culture, and navigating conversations in a complex, messy world. 

Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.

Beat poet and City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 100 on March 24. Here’s a reading list to celebrate the centenarian.

Carmen Maria Machado discusses the nuances of “benevolent sexism,” who gets to define the #MeToo movement, and how it should progress.

Renowned for the size of his books as the magnitude of his subjects, the author is ready to take on waste and climate change.

Kate Gavino shares five stories about forgotten women authors, from Anita Brookner to Nancy Mitford.

Anna Furman interviews Sarah Manguso about the process of writing her new book 300 Arguments, her writing influences, failure and thwarted ambition, and how Sarah’s sleeping post-inauguration.

In a candid interview at the Guardian, author Paul Auster — who turns 70 next month — discusses his breadth of work over the decades, American life and politics in the age of Trump, and his new novel, 4321, which he refers to as the biggest book of his life.

“A new book is like a new brand of detergent,” Jacqueline Susann famously said. “You have to let the public know about it. What’s wrong with that?”

“I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.”

Jenny Diski remembers Doris Lessing’s unemotional approach to motherhood and life.

INTERVIEWER Isn’t there an enormous temptation as a fiction writer to take scenes out of history, since you do rely on that so much, and fiddle with them just a little bit? DOCTOROW Well, it’s nothing new, you know. I myself like the way Shakespeare fiddles with history; and Tolstoy. In this country we tend […]

Station Eleven author Emily St. John Mandel recently tweeted that she’d quit her day job—something she’d been unable to do for years before the success of her highly acclaimed fourth novel, which was nominated for a National Book Award, among other prizes. In interviews over the years, Mandel has talked about her necessity for at […]

“It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret.” –Author Louise Erdrich, in the Paris Review. Read the interview

Maybe it wasn’t just Nelle’s insecurity that held her back from becoming “the Jane Austen of South Alabama,” but also the dismaying decline of the “small-town middle-class” idyll she’d staked her career on documenting. She had, after all, written a historical novel. To Kill a Mockingbird was filmed not in Monroeville but on an L.A. lot. There […]

John Green is the author of the wildly popular young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars, which remained No. 1 on Amazon in the U.S. and Britain two years after its release. Guardian writer Emma Brockes profiled Green for Intelligent Life this month, and here Green discusses what is problematic about another wildly popular series: […]

The best interviews with authors make you want to read—not just their work, but read in general, and read all the time, and read with a new fervor. * * * 1. “The Art of Not Belonging: Dwyer Murphy Interviews Edwidge Danticat.” (Guernica, September 2013) Danticat gives a beautiful interview, discussing her book Claire of […]