Meet the Writers

Ben Faccini on family, memory and fiction

Oliver Bullough on financial secrecy, corruption and global power

Anuradha Roy and life in the Himalayas

Leo Varadkar on power, identity and leaving politics

The winners of the 2026 Women’s Prize

Tim Wu and the future beyond big tech

Tayari Jones at the 2026 Hay Festival

Judy Blume on taboos, breaking barriers and leaving writing

Julia Franck on fiction, memoir and personal history

Oana Aristide on satire, space dreams and fiction

Megan Mulry and the Santa Fe International Literary Festival

Ece Temelkuran on exile, language and finding a new voice

Nicholas Thompson on leading change and running habits

Rachel Eliza Griffiths and the weight of memory

Catherine Carr and the complexities of sibling dynamics

Maria Semple on stoicism, rebellion and personal growth

Poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney on writing with joy

Margaret Busby on publishing, power and representation

Fatima Bhutto at the Daunt Books Festival 2026

Francis Spufford on faith, fantasy and the craft of fiction

Luka Ivan Jukic on the enduring significance of Central Europe

Karen Dobres and pitch politics

Tom Freston on media, reinvention and change

Maria Alyokhina on activism, Russia’s regime and hope for the motherland

Bora Chung on the rise of Korean literature

Andrey Kurkov on chronicling a nation at war

Damian Barr on Scottish art, memory and belonging

Alexander B Smalls on opera, food and African heritage

Steve Crawshaw and confronting global impunity

Mary L Trump and how power destroys a nation

EA Hanks and retracing family ties

Manni Coe on roots, ruins and reinvention

India Knight on finding Home

John Lloyd and ‘The Meaning of Liff’

Sir Michael Palin on his travels, decades-long career and finding laughter

Mitchell Kaplan, the founder of Miami Book Fair

Harlan Greene at the 2025 Charleston Literary Festival

The winner of the 2025 Booker Prize: David Szalay

Kiran Desai on loneliness, legacy and the curse of rewriting

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 winner: Helen Garner

Richard Armitage and the power of storytelling

Richard Lloyd Parry and the journeys within stories

Olivier Norek on courage, conflict and history

Sam Sussman on the possibility of family ties

Juhea Kim on stories woven from silence

Priyanka Mattoo on the search for home

Michael Wolff on chaos, power and America’s reckoning

R James Breiding on what small nations teach the world

Michelle de Kretser on literature and belonging

Iain Sinclair on London, literature and hidden journeys