Tobias Jones speaks with James McConnachie about his lifelong fascination with communal living, the secrets of making it work, and his own experience in establishing and nurturing a residential community.

Rob Chapman shares the importance of wholly invented bands and songs in his creative life, and considers other examples of imaginary culture and the fictitious within our fictions.

Kona Macphee speaks with James McConnachie about being an outsider, the challenges of generalism, her relish for constraints, and the transcendence to be found in the experience of creative flow.

Julia Copus shares her diary in ‘My Writing Week’, encompassing a glitzy awards night in the city, the challenge of everyday administrative distractions back at home, and the role of dogs – the ‘heartbeat at my feet’ – in the lives of writers.

Tobias Jones speaks with James McConnachie about the 'dark heart' of Italy during the Berlusconi era, and his experiences as a Briton living in and documenting the real Italy beyond the journalistic bubble of Rome.

Diana Evans speaks with Frances Byrnes about how story and 'real life story' aren’t the same thing, what you really need to be writer, writing versus dancing and the need for more black writers.

Sarah Ardizzone and Euan Cameron speak with fellow translator Nick Caistor about the pleasures and challenges of rendering another writer's work into a new language — and what liberties a translator should and shouldn't take.

Lorna Thorpe speaks with Geoff Hattersley about wild youth and being a 'late starter in everything', becoming a poet by accident, being dead for six minutes, and her American and musical influences.

Charles Boyle speaks with Julia Copus about literary gender-swapping, the role that small presses have to play in today’s publishing world, and how serendipity has helped shape his life and career.

Cherise Saywell describes how an unexpected writing career descended into paralysis, and how a short and anonymously-published piece helped her to reconnect with what she loves about writing.

Cynthia Rogerson explains how escaping to a weekly writing group turned her from a frustrated mother-of-many to a fledgling novelist, who discovered that as far as family went, ‘it was extraordinary how happy we all were just suiting ourselves’.