Andrew OHagan_420INTERVIEWS
Alice Stevenson: Look around you
The Ways to Walk in London author reflects on her favourite sights and inspirations in art and the city.

Andrew O’Hagan: Friendly fire
The author of The Illuminations tells Alex Peake-Tomkinson about friendship, family, male bonding, and almost ghosting Julian Assange.

FKUP is the answer – what’s the question?
Our ordinary punter quizzes The Pub Landlord on the Free United Kingdom Party’s campaign to put a proper character in charge in South Thanet in the coming election.

Christopher Bullen: Distraction games
The author of Orient tells Lucy Scholes about claiming a small hamlet on Long Island’s South Fork as the setting for his masterly whodunit.

 

August_Lohr_Gaucho_500CONTEXTS
Experience at full tilt
Mika Provata-Carlone discusses Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft and the richness and extraordinary power of Mexican literature.

Judith Claire Mitchell: Ghosts that don’t say boo
The author of The Reunion of Ghosts defends the absence of conventional, chain-rattling, shroud-wearing spooks in her new novel.

Lao Ma: Dogs both big and small
A concise defence of micro fiction.

Tessa McWatt: Why read a book (let alone write one)?
The internationally acclaimed author reflects on the power of reading as co-creation and the freedom of an exchange between minds.

Paul Edmondson: A legacy like no other
The acclaimed Shakespeare buff considers the immortality of the bard, and wishes him many more happy returns.

 

Laura_Lippman_featureTIPS FOR WRITERS
Laura Lippman: Think smarter
The author of the Tess Monaghan crime series shares her tips on maintaining suspense by keeping readers sympathetic and on the alert.

 

SHORT STORIES
Mai Al-Nakib: Amerika’s box
A girl grows up between the wars in Kuwait with a longing to understand the country her thankful parents named her for.

 

FAVOURITE STORIES
May-Lan Tan: ‘Legendary’
The London Short Story Festival’s Laura Kenwright celebrates a glorious, stark sucker punch of a story about stalking and obsession.

 

FICTION 500
Mandi Goodier: One day he will stay
Lovesick or sick of love? A young woman laments the recurring absences of her sometime sex partner.

Lao Ma: A view of the hills
A mayor acts with alacrity when a young resident writes to complain about the diminishing vista from his family’s apartment block.

 

Pablo_290PICTURE STORIES
Pablo by Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie
Sample pages from the award-winning graphic novel biography of Picasso’s defining years in Paris.

 

EXTRACTS
Saud Alsanousi: Origins
A Kuwaiti-Filipino narrator reflects on homeland, identity and displacement. From The Bamboo Stalk.

Carmen Boullosa: A busybody’s brief note
From the prologue to Texas: The Great Theft, translated by Samantha Schnee, setting the scene for the so-called Mexican-American War.

Judith Claire Mitchell: Sins of the fathers
Three sisters from the fourth generation of a family stricken by suicides make a pact. From A Reunion of Ghosts.

Ahn Do-hyun: A narrow escape
An extract from the enchanting and inspiring modern fable The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher, translated by Deborah Smith.

Reif Larsen: Enter Radar
New Jersey is awash with gossip as a white couple give birth to a black baby in this enticing passage from the novel I Am Radar.