Our Writers

Subscribe free to our weekly podcast, presented by editor of Guardian books Claire Armitstead, for author interviews, readings and discussions - plus a full recording of our monthly book club

Jenny Colgan and Graeme Simsion reveal the summer's most romantic reads - and we listen in to the uncensored Sons and Lovers, to mark the centenary of its publication

James Salter, the veteran American novelist and short story writer, reads a story by Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International prize

As Sotheby's prepares to auction first editions of books annotated by 50 top authors, curator and antiquarian book-dealer Rick Gekoski explains how he got all the greats to join in - and some of the secrets they reveal

Geneticist Steve Jones considers the Bible as a science book, while magician turned historian of psychology Peter Lamont demystifies the paranormal

Guardian books podcast: Novelist Bernadine Evaristo investigates how Maya Angelou's portrayal of her mother has changed in seven books spanning fifty years, Emma Brockes uncovers terrible secrets in her maternal family history, and anthologist Andre Gerard explains why they should all be called 'matremoirs'

Mark Haddon talks to the Guardian Review book club about the crossover bestseller which launched his career, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Michael Rosen goes to Berlin on the trail of Erich Kästner's boy sleuth from the children's classic Emil and the Detectives. Plus, Swiss German writer Rolf Dobelli explains The Art of Thinking Clearly

Claire Armitstead tours this year's London Book Fair to find what's selling and what is on its way, and we look at Granta's list of the Best Young British Novelists

Richard Ford talks to John Mullan and the Guardian Review book club about the novel which made his name, The Sportswriter

A selection of our best journalism across science, culture and sport in audio form

Jackie Kay pays tribute to the late Chinua Achebe, and Mohsin Hamid and Jim Crace join us to talk about their new political novels

Colm Tóibín reads from his reimagining of the life of the mother of Christ, The Testament of Mary, and answers questions from the Guardian Review Book Club

We examine what makes us who we are, with Andrew Solomon, Greg Bellow and Stephen Grosz

Draw up a chair and celebrate St Patrick's Day with readings from WB Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey and Liam O'Flaherty

We expand our horizons with the publisher Christopher MacLehose, the French novelist Philippe Claudel and the launch of a series of short stories from writers around the world inspired by water

A special edition from Writers' week at the Adelaide festival, uncovering lost Australian classics, new Aboriginal literature and the best young poets

Jackie Kay rounds off our series of poets choosing their favourite poems with verses from Edwin Morgan's Love and a Life

David Harsent reads three short poems by the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos, in his own translations

Today John Burnside chooses The Retrieval System by Maxine Kumin, a look at doubling mirrored in its intricate rhyme scheme

Our series of poets reading favourite works continues with Paul Farley reading 'Innocence' by Patrick Kavanagh

Imtiaz Dharker launches our second week of poets choosing their favourite poems with a dazzling trio: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, Meeting Point by Louis MacNeice and Yeshwant Rao by Arun Kolatkar

Alice Oswald rounds off the first week in our series of poets choosing their favourite poem with a reading of a nursery rhyme, There Was a Man of Double Deed

The latest podcast in our series of poets choosing their favourite poem finds Fleur Adcock reading Judith Wright's Request To A Year

Michael Symmons Roberts continues our series of poets choosing their favourite poems with a reading of John Donne's Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going To Bed

Fiona Sampson continues our series of poets choosing their favourite lines with two poems from George Herbert, Love and Heaven

One Yorkshire poet reads another as Simon Armitage continues our series of poets choosing their favourite verses with Ted Hughes's Full Moon and Little Frieda

Our series of poets choosing their favourite poem continues with Robin Robertson reading from David Jones's In Parenthesis

Jo Shapcott kicks off a new series of poets reading from their favourite work by another author. Shapcott picks Emily Dickinson

The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, reads from her collection Love Poems at a special Valentine's Day edition of the Guardian Book Club

Kate Summerscale talks about her prize-winning story of a bloody Victorian murder

We're on the trail of the best American crime writing, with Gillian Flynn, Joseph Wambaugh, Michael Koryta and Peter Messent

Are creative writing courses cultural powerhouses or an elaborate con? We drop in on a Birkbeck seminar, investigate the effects of teaching the craft of fiction and hear from Hugh Howey, who took a very different route to success

This week, women writers down the ages: from Jane Austen's most famous novel at 200, Sylvia Plath's at 50, and 2013's crop of prize winners

Claire Armitstead, Sarah Crown and The Bookseller's Benedicte Page bring us the books to look out for in 2013, and mathematician Daniel Tammet discusses the links between numbers and literature

Jorge Luis Borges's combination of the anecdotal, philosophical and the literary showed Will Self how to achieve the 'truly veridical'. He gets his coordinates from 'On Exactitude in Science'

Nathan Englander finds Jewish history, corruption and man's inhumanity to man and pigeons in Isaac Babel's 'The Story Of My Dovecote'

Forty years after he first read it, Sebastian Barry returns to James Joyce's short story Eveline

Rabindranath Tagore returned again and again to the voiceless women of Bengal, as in his short story The Postmaster, says Anita Desai

Lucy Wood builds a story from glimpses and suggestions in 'Notes from the House Spirits', says Jon McGregor

Yiyun Li reads William Trevor's 'Three People', a short story which moved her to write a story in reply, 'Gold Boy, Emerald Girl'

Penelope Fitzgerald looks at the world anew in her short story 'At Hiruharama', says AS Byatt

Franz Kafka's story of a man who starves himself for entertainment, The Hunger Artist, is 'absurb, moving and timely', says Hanif Kureishi

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie admires the 'old-fashioned social realism' of Ama Ata Aidoo's 'No Sweetness Here'

José Saramago tackles the conflict between mind and body in 'The Centaur', says Nadine Gordimer

Charles Dickens celebrated Christmas throughout his writing life. His autobiographical story 'A Christmas Tree' is 'almost Proustian', says Simon Callow

Ruth Rendell doesn't believe in ghosts, of course, but MR James's stories, like 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook', frighten her nonetheless

Despite their restraint, Raymond Carver's 'early-period' stories, such as The Student's Wife, are full to the brim, says Richard Ford

Zadie Smith launches our winter series of short stories with an almost 'anti-Italian' story from Giuseppe Pontiggia, 'Umberto Buti'

Hilary Mantel talks to John Mullan about her Man Booker prizewinning novels on the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. She also answers questions from the audience at a special Book Club in the Drapers Hall in the City of London, on the site of Cromwell's former home

Colm Tóibín reads a short story inspired by Heart of Darkness, written while he was living in A Room For London, a model of Joseph Conrad's boat positioned on the roof of London's South Bank Centre

Ice from Adam Gopnik, fire from Bee Wilson and a hymn of praise to the pleasures of handwriting in our Books podcast seasonal special

Philip Pullman reads from his new book of Grimm Tales and talks to John Mullan at the Guardian book club

During his week in A Room For London - a model boat on the roof of London's Queen Elizabeth Hall - Syrian poet Adonis talks to Nicholas Wroe about poetry, politics and London's literary greats

Kevin Powers, an American ex-soldier and poet, has won the Guardian first book award with The Yellow Birds. It's a novel about fighting, and surviving, the war in Iraq

Kurt Vonnegut's daughter Nanette rediscovers her father's funny side, and the creator of Bleak Expectations turns the radio hit into a novel

The artists Robert and Aline Crumb talk about Drawn Together, a book of 40 years-worth of strips they've been producing about themselves; plus, this year's Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story winner

Novelist Kamila Shamsie takes her turn in A Room for London - a model boat on the top of the South Bank - and ruminates on Conrad, Virginia Woolf and the women adventurers of her own family

Rose Tremain tells how she began writing Restoration to restore the reputation of historical fiction

Thomas Keneally tells how he found a novel in a stash of nurses' journals, Sarah Wise on the ghosts of Victorian mental health and Brooke Magnanti on the Wellcome prize for medicine in literature

There's a huge appetite for reading biographies, and thousands are written each year. But is it still a relevant kind of writing? Three authors tell us their Life stories

We chart how maps have transformed the way we look at the world with Simon Garfield and Jerry Brotton

Hilary Mantel has taken the Man Booker prize for an historic second time with Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to her 2009 winner on the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall

Iain M Banks explains how his science fiction novel grew out of a quite different kind of story – and a misunderstanding of structuralism

We harvest the best of this year's crop of celebrity memoirs, including rock'n'roll legends Pete Townshend and Neil Young, and hear from Forward-winning poet Jorie Graham

Ahdaf Soueif, the latest writer to take up residence in A Room for London, muses on rivers, bridges and terminals as motifs in the history of oppression and resistance

We investigate a waspish essay on crime writing from Agatha Christie, Attica Locke considers race and history in the American south and Tanya Byrne tells us about young readers who are turning to crime

David Cameron and Tilda Swinton are among the readers of a new online version of Moby Dick; poet and novelist Robert Graves' last years on Mallorca are recalled by his great nephew Simon Gough

Teju Cole, the latest writer to take up residence in A Room for London, remembers a dinner with the great grouchy outsider VS Naipaul

As JB Priestley's classic, English Journey, is republished, the comedian Roy Hudd and Priestley's son Tom celebrate his legacy, while the Spanish novelist Javier Marías tells us what it's like to become a classic

Claire Armitstead reviews the Man Booker shortlist with reporter Alison Flood and arts correspondent Mark Brown

Zadie Smith tells us how her latest novel, NW, made the return journey to north London, while James Meek investigates the science of Tolstoy

We discuss the longlist for the 2012 Guardian first book award, which mixes fiction and nonfiction with a poetry collection chosen by our readers

This month's teen book club authors Margo Lanagan and Melvin Burgess read from and discuss their books Tender Morsels and Doing It, recorded at the Edinburgh books festivalFind out more about the teen book club with Melvin Burgess and Margo Lanagan

In the last of our Edinburgh podcasts, we look at the myths behind sharia law and the invasion of Afghanistan, while Carlos Gamerro examines the hold the Falkland Islands still exert on the Argentinian psyche

Dominican American writer Junot Diaz explores matters of the heart in masculine culture, Irish novelist Claire Kilroy explains why she set her new new novel against the mounting international debt crisis, and Paul Durcan hymns the crusty glories of the Irish loaf

Frank Westerman charts the bloodline of the Lipizzaner horse – beloved of Hitler, Stalin and Tito – while the godfather of all stuntmen, Vic Armstrong, reveals whether Tom Cruise really does his own stunts ...

Fifty years after the explosive International Writers Conference was held in Edinburgh, contemporary writes have gathered to revisit the themes their predecessors considered in 1962

Kirsty Gunn tells Charlotte Higgins how her new book The Big Music is structured like a piece of traditional bagpipe music. Kevin Barry tells Claire Armitstead that his short stories, while written in remote County Sligo, are based on his wide travels

Pat Barker, author of the first world war novel Regeneration, which became a trilogy of the same name, comes to a special session of the Guardian Book Club at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She talks to Professor John Mullan.

Five poets shortlisted for the annual Edwin Morgan Poetry prize read their entries at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, then we tell you the winner

Translator David Bellos and author James Geary debate the challenge of metaphor, while novelists Anjali Joseph and Nikita Lalwani discuss writing about foreign countries

Jim Haynes remembers founding the original World Writers' Conference at Edinburgh 50 years ago. Plus Clive Stafford Smith and Raja Shehadeh

Should historical fiction be romantic, or politically accurate? Gillian Slovo and Hilary Mantel discuss their latest books, on Thomas Cromwell and Gordon of Khartoum. Elsewhere, Richard Holloway considers the problem of certainty in religion

In our podcast from day four of the festival, Booker longlisted author Ned Beauman muses on The Teleportation Accident and Alasdair Gray considers the independence vote for Scotland

In our podcast from day three of the festival, Nell Freudenberger talks about her novel The Newlyweds, and Jess Richards and Sjon discuss islands in literature, and Michael Sandel considers Paul Ryan's place on the US presidential campaign

Simon Mawer and Michèle Roberts discuss their books set in occupied France, Louise Welsh moves from Glasgow to Berlin and Maajid Nawaz tells of how he moved from Muslim militancy to starting a movement for democratic Islam

Frank Cottrell-Boyce on his new Chitty Chitty Bang Bang story, Andrew Motion on his follow-up to Treasure Island - Silver - and Paul Mason on what he now thinks about the revolutionary movements across the world: on the first day of Edinburgh Book Festival.

The Edinburgh International Book festival will welcome authors from 55 different countries, and include the first world writers conference in 50 years. Director Nick Barley previews some big names and we hear some participants from our own archive

The Congolese-born novelist is the latest writer to take up residency in A Room for London atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. Listen to the thoughts inspired by his stay

We round up this summer's hottest books to pack in your suitcase – or download on to your e-reader – with the Booker-longlisted Deborah Levy and Twitter hit Keith Ridgway

Gore Vidal, who died yesterday, made his last visit to the UK in 2008, during the run-up to the US election. He appeared at the Hay Festival, and spoke to Claire Armitstead about his views on Obama's prospects for victory, and what it would take to make him proud to be an American

Every writer is first a reader – a solitary experience which Siri Hustvedt addresses head on in her latest collection of essays. Ben Lerner tells us about the books which inspired his debut novel, and we hear from The Bookshop Band

Sebastian Faulks comes to the Guardian Review Book Club to talk about his first world war novel, Birdsong, with Professor John Mullan

Get set for the London Olympics with a stack of books to put your literary life into training including fiction from Alexander MacLeod and Ben Fountain

In the last in our series, Alice Oswald takes Madeleine Bunting for a walk along the river Dart and explains why, for her, water represents the complexity of putting an ever-changing landscape in to words

Artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein takes Madeleine Bunting to Whitechapel in east London to revisit her own past and consider a place that has changed dramatically since her grandparents arrived there in the 1930s

Robert Macfarlane kicks off our three-part series about literature and landscape. He takes Madeleine Bunting to the mysterious landscape of Orford Ness, a decommissioned nuclear testing site now owned by the National Trust

Is positive thinking the route to happiness? Oliver Burkeman and Jules Evans make the case for looking on the dark side, while the narrator of Joanna Kavenna's latest novel takes off in search of a new way of living

The Booker-winning novelist is the sixth writer to take up residency in A Room for London on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. Listen to the thoughts inspired by his stay

What riches are to be found in the lesser-known languages of Europe? We talk to Clive Boutle and Paul Gubbins about the pleasures of publishing on the edge, and welcome the poet Gillan Clarke, who is headlining a festival of poetry and music in both Welsh and English

Headlines from latimes.com

Edward McClelland's book reminds us of what has transpired in the heartland of America over the past 30 years.

To drive these days through Great Lakes cities — Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, among others — is to drive through the nation's industrial past. The iconic images have become Rust Belt cliché: weed-choked parking lots, windowless houses, cold factories stripped of their metals and open to the elements.

Veronica Gonzalez Peña follows the lives of a middle-class Mexican family that has been shaped by absence, loss, sickness and dead dreams.

Spectral girls and shadow fathers haunt the center and fringes of Veronica Gonzalez Peña's second novel, "The Sad Passions," but this isn't magical realism. These aren't spirits who visit in the middle of the night. These phantom girls and men are living, flesh-and-blood characters shaped by absence and loss, sickness and dead dreams. "The Sad Passions" knows that half-erased people are more devastating than any ghost.

The long unfinished poem edited by J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, provides fascinating insight into the author's work.

The books go ever on and on. Forty years after his death at 81, works by J.R.R. Tolkien continue to appear. The latest, "The Fall of Arthur," lists nine works published during his lifetime ("The Lord of the Rings" trilogy appears as a single title) and 24 posthumously, including the 12-volume "History of Middle-Earth," edited by Tolkien's son and literary executor Christopher.

A father's decision to give his 3-year-old daughter to a wealthy family in Kabul begins an almost 60-year Afghan history lesson as recounted by the characters in Khaled Hosseini's newest novel.

Although Khaled Hosseini has lived in the United States since he was 15, he remains engaged in the struggles of his native Afghanistan, which he has made palpable for Western readers in two bestselling novels, "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns." His beautifully written, masterfully crafted new book, "And the Mountains Echoed," spans nearly 60 years of Afghan history as it investigates the consequences of a desperate act that scars two young lives and resonates through many others.

Those clinging hopefully to the old Borders books gift cards stashed in their drawers or wallets are out of luck, a Manhattan federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Those clinging hopefully to the old Borders books gift cards stashed in their drawers or wallets are out of luck, a Manhattan federal judge ruled Wednesday. According to Reuters, there are about $210.5 million worth of such cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain went out of business in September 2011. All of which are now "equitably moot."

A groundbreaking paperless public library system will open in Texas this year, the BBC reports.

A groundbreaking paperless public library system will open in Texas this year, the BBC reports. Bexar County's $1.5-million BiblioTech project will open its first library branch without a single print book.

Australia's Qantas Airlines is promoting the announcement of its extended flight routes by commissioning a series of books that last exactly as long as each flight.

Australia's Qantas Airlines is promoting the announcement of its extended flight routes by commissioning a series of books that last exactly as long as each flight. 

In a move to bump up physical book sales, Stephen King will not release an e-book version of his new novel, "Joyland," the Wall Street Journal reports.

In a move to bump up physical book sales, Stephen King will not release an e-book version of his new novel, "Joyland," the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Writer's Life: The smart, accessible 'Who Owns the Future?' peers critically at the online state of affairs and finds it out of balance.

Jaron Lanier has a research job with Microsoft. He won't go into specfics, but it has something to do with imagining the future and asking questions.

Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and Sgt. Flea Marley investigate strange occurrences at a psychiatric hospital and the disappearance of a footballer's wife.

Since introducing Detective Inspector Jack Caffery 14 years ago in "Birdman," Mo Hayder has written some of the grisliest crime fiction in recent memory. Caffery's cases in London and, later, in Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Team, have included the murder and bizarre postmortem autopsies of women by a surgically trained serial killer, abducted children and sadistic African rituals. That's enough evil to keep readers awake long after the cases are solved.

Books

Elliott Holt discusses her novel “You Are One of Them”; Rick Atkinson discusses his “The Guns at Last Light”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news.

The publisher of the magazine’s book imprint, Philip Gwyn Jones, is leaving, the latest in a string of departures.

Crime sellers in the spotlight and Dan Brown’s “Inferno” makes its debut on the hardcover fiction list at No. 1.

The author of “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” calls Franzen her “big daddy” — “My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that’s grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.”

A new film recalls how, 50 years ago, Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” set off furious debates and coined the phrase “the banality of evil.”

Janet Frame was saved from undergoing a lobotomy when a book of her stories won a local literary prize.

In the eyes of Patrick White’s two refugee children, most Australians are horrible and very few are kind.

The National Institute of Mental Health has distanced itself from the “D.S.M.,” the so-called bible of psychiatry, the fifth edition of which is published this week.

The poet Christian Wiman ruminates on his incurable illness and his return to Christian belief.

Amid entanglements between Russia and young Americans, a first novel explores the sense of betrayal in the loss of family and friends.

Gail Godwin’s novel is populated almost exclusively by orphans of various stripes.

Paperback books of particular interest.

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Some Russians say literature had more political power when it was forbidden.

Walter Mosley is never better than when he’s got a juicy cut of history to chew on — this time the late ’60s.

William Dalrymple seeks contemporary lessons in Britain’s disastrous 19th-century invasion of Afghanistan.

Amanda Knox tells her story of being charged with murder in Italy.

The online exhibit “What Jane Saw” allows viewers to peruse a London gallery as Jane Austen saw it in 1813.

Henry Holt and Company announced on Thursday that Mr. Atkinson, a former Washington Post editor and reporter, will be writing a trilogy covering the years 1775-1781.

Janet Malcolm’s penetrating profiles are case studies in defeated amour-propre.

The final volume of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy shows that the road to Berlin was far from smooth.

The movie industry ignored the growing German menace.

“Women or Nothing,” by Ethan Coen, is scheduled to begin previews Aug. 28.

An exploration of how, or if, interfaith marriages work in a nation of many religions.

Ms. Michele, who plays the overachieving Rachel Berry on “Glee,” will write a book called “Brunette Ambition,” which is described as being “part memoir, part how-to and part style guide.”