Lebanese German writer Pierre Jarawan made a stunning debut with his compelling novel, The Storyteller. Hailed as "a love letter to Lebanon," it became an international bestseller and earned him the title "Literature Star of the Year." His latest novel, Song for the Missing, is also set in Lebanon. Haunting and poetic, moving through different decades, it explores the lasting trauma from the country's 15-year civil war. Pierre Jarawan spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage last month at the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Charles Dickens and Prince were both brilliant, driven and beloved by their fans. And both died before their time, producing and performing to the end. It wasn’t until his early twenties that Nick Hornby read Dickens, around the same time he attended his first Prince concert. He still keeps their photos on his office wall, and in his new memoir, Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, he explores the parallels between these two heroes and how their creativity inspires his own prolific career.

Lorraine Hansberry was one of the most brilliant — and radical —playwrights of the mid-20th century. The author of the wildly popular "A Raisin in the Sun," Hansberry was both the youngest and the first Black winner of the prestigious Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play in 1959. She's the subject of the acclaimed biography Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Princeton scholar Imani Perry. This conversation originally aired on May 12, 2019.

Nick Drnaso is the first – and only – graphic novelist to be nominated for a Booker Prize for his 2018 title, Sabrina, which was hailed as a "masterpiece." Now he's back with an ambitious new work, Acting Class, in which ten characters sign up for an acting class at their local community centre, where nothing is quite what it seems. *Please note this conversation deals with abuse.

One of Britain's leading novelists, Ian McEwan is the author of such acclaimed works as the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam and the hugely popular Atonement, which was made into an Oscar-nominated movie. Now, he's back with Lessons, a story about a fictional alter-ego, Roland, with whom McEwan shares an intimate background -- until a transformative event leads Roland down a very different path. Ian McEwan spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage before a live audience at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Namwali Serpell's 2019 novel The Old Drift was hailed by Salman Rushdie as "a dazzling debut." It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Her time-bending new work, The Furrows, tells the story of one family's struggle with love and loss in the wake of a tragic accident. The novel is dedicated to Serpell's late sister, Chisha, who died from a drug overdose when Serpell was just 18.

French writer Hervé Le Tellier has had a career as a novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, mathematician, food critic and linguist. The phenomenal success of his latest novel The Anomaly — which he describes as a “thought experiment”— has been a surprise even to him. Winner of France’s Prix Goncourt, the novel sold a record-breaking million copies at home and is being translated into 40 languages.

Named one of the best working novelists in Britain and Ireland by the Times Literary Supplement, Gwendoline Riley is a master at depicting the subtle ways in which human beings can be cruel to each other — especially when they’re family. She speaks with Eleanor Wachtel about her new novel My Phantoms and her award-winning previous book First Love.

As an awkward, anxious child, Fredrik Backman fell in love with sports and books. His latest title, The Winners, concludes his powerful Beartown trilogy, which focuses on a small town and its junior hockey club in northern Sweden. Sensitive and timely, The Winners explores the many sides of "hockey culture." Beartown has been adapted into a popular HBO series, and Backman’s previous titles, Anxious People and A Man Called Ove, have also been adapted for the screen. Please note: this conversation includes some discussion of suicide.

Writers & Company revisits Eleanor Wachtel’s 2012 conversation with one of England’s great novelists, Hilary Mantel, who died on Sept. 22, 2022. She was 70. Mantel was one of the few writers to win the Booker Prize twice — first in 2009 for Wolf Hall, and again in 2012 for its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. She talked to Eleanor Wachtel about historical fiction, power and violence, and her fascination with Thomas Cromwell, the man at the centre of her sensational Tudor England saga.