Interviews - Five Dials

‘Shorter is expected to be less substantial. It feels arbitrary— why would length be correlated with impact?’

A conversation with Natasha Brown

Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a concise, fragmentary novel that runs to 100 pages. Within these tight constraints she finds room to examine the lingering colonial... Read more

A kind of letting go

In conversation with Kayo Chingonyi

I’m very taken with the subjunctive in all things historical. What are the other possibilities and tributaries that branch off from what happened?

‘It’s best to understand the rules before you break them’

Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, on solitude, Coast Salish style, and reconciliation

When people think of Indigenous art from the Pacific Northwest, it’s usually going to be something called formline, a technique that uses ovoid shapes, high contrast, and positive and negative space.

‘Modern medicine is brilliant. But we’re not good at keeping people from falling off the cliff in the first place.’

Dr Jeffrey Rediger on spontaneous healing, our current crisis, and why forgiveness is good for the body

Why is it that we, as a society, don’t pay more attention to stories of recovery? Why do we ignore examples of healing that don’t fit our paradigm of one cause,... Read more

‘One of the challenges of the book was how is it possible to write about whiteness? To make it apparent, to show it, make it show itself’

Sarah Elaine Smith on race, rural America, and Marilou is Everywhere

In Sarah Elaine Smith’s new novel, Marilou is Everywhere, a young woman from Deep Valley, Pennsylvania, goes missing. Jude Vanderjohn is smart, beautiful and se... Read more

‘We have an expectation that loss comes all at once.’

Avni Doshi discusses her novel, Burnt Sugar

Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar is a love story: a tale of obsession and betrayal. But not between lovers: between mother and daughter. Their unsettled relationship sp... Read more

‘Another thing that fascinates me: one sentence can reveal so much about a person.’

A conversation with Lydia Davis

This month I read Lydia Davis’s latest, Essays, before our arranged phone conversation. Davis’s writing voice is always articulate and persuasive, especially wh... Read more

‘Climate change is us.The sixth extinction is us. We are at the heart of all of these issues.’

Julian Hoffman on the state of the world

Julian Hoffman’s latest book, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, is a cry to see, to examine what we still have, to appreciate what is quickly di... Read more

Speaking to Emilie Pine

The author of Notes to Self on blood, the body and Beckett

As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of academic discourse. The voice comes from afar, or a... Read more

‘Older black women, who writes about that?’

Bernardine Evaristo reveals why she nearly populated her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, with one hundred characters

Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction. Her other writing includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, li... Read more

‘Gayness, queerness, gender plurality, plural pronouns – Africa got there two millennia ago.’

Marlon James on the vast world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

'War is complicated. Revenge is complicated. These things carry costs. It was very important for me, even though I was writing a fantasy novel, to make it a very grown up book.'

‘How could this possibly be mysterious? Where could this take us?’

A conversation with Tana French

'I’ve looked at criminal investigations through a detective’s eyes six times. But there are a lot of other people involved. There are witnesses, there are victims, there are suspects, there are perpetrators...'