Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

It’s the cosy season of sitting down with a good book. Here, authors heading for Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival this month share their writing styles

Life has a bad habit of mirroring art. Sometimes, this can be in a deeply sad way. A while after I wrote about the assumption of guilt in a traumatised young woman with poor social skills, I watched a

We tend to imagine our literary icons in ivory towers – poised, thoughtful, wrapped in something muted and cashmere, tapping away at sleek laptops. Perhaps it’s how you picture yourself when attemptin

The American author on how Friends inspired The One With A Dragon

What childhood book sparked your love of reading? One that really stands out for me is Winnie-the-Pooh. I was given a hardback copy on my seventh birthday, and I still treasure it. The maps in the fro