Ray French speaks with Frances Byrnes about his roots in Wales and the Irish diaspora, and how other writers’ voices can help new writers find their own.

Jackie Wills speaks with Geoff Hattersley about her long collaboration with visual artist Jane Fordham, her self-directed apprenticeship in poetry, and the challenges of surviving the freelance life.

Jonathan Tulloch shares the second of his gustatory delights, the heterogeneous cakes of summer, from the societal nuances of home-baked vs. shop-bought to the unfairness of selective corpulence and his granddad’s final Victoria Sandwich.

Judy Brown, Steve Voake and Ann Coburn explain 'Why I Write'.

Ian McMillan entertains Geoff Hattersley with mushy peas, jazz, Telephone Voices and the vexed question of being ‘Yorkshire enough’.

Rob Chapman’s working week touches on TV vs. film writing, poet John Clare’s rock-and-roll trajectory and resurrecting a ‘weird’ abandoned novel.

Mavis Cheek continues her conversation with James McConnachie, discussing how her writing life has charted enormous changes in women’s lives and regretting the dearth of humour in ‘serious’ contemporary fiction.

Kathleen Jones tells Frances Byrnes about the mythic relationships between people and their landscapes in her writing — be it a disturbing poem set in her now-abandoned childhood Cumbrian fell home, or fierce non-fiction about the Haida Gwaii islands.

Ian McMillan entertains Geoff Hattersley with a look at the world through Barnsley glasses, featuring rubber jam tarts, a novelty Coronation Street alarm clock and a very strange game of chess.

Cynthia Rogerson contemplates the literary spurs of exile and outsiderhood, wonders whether she would have written any novels if she’d simply stayed at home in the USA, and explains why being a writer is easier in Scotland than in California.

Brian McAvera considers what we’ve lost in favouring naturalistic, TV-esque theatre over the wider and deeper possibilities offered by non-naturalism.

Mavis Cheek speaks with James McConnachie about her challenging family background, and how discovering that she ‘had a brain’ took her from ‘Sixties dolly bird’ to acclaimed author of witty contemporary novels.