Ruskin Bond interview

Q:Did you ever feel demoralised as a writer?

A:Yes, about 20-30 years ago, when I felt that my writing wasn’t being appreciated. But in the last few years, my readership has grown.

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1Q84 Cover unveiled

The English translation of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 is yet to hit the market - oh, how long I've been waiting for the book - but the cover of the US edition of the translation is just out.(Via Literary Saloon). And I like it.

IMHO U R GR8: Texting in literature

It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago.

They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.

Writer Kazumi Saeki on Japan earthquake

People have acquired a desire for technology that surpasses human comprehension. Yet the bill that has come due for that desire is all too dear.

Thirtieth anniversary of Alasdair Gray's Lanark

When Alasdair Gray published his novel Lanark thirty years ago, Anthony Burgess had these words: It was about time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it. The first major Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott.

The thirtieth anniversary of the novel is being celebrated now.

Margaret Atwood interview

"I mean, I'm not worried about the world not existing. We're unlikely to kill all life on Earth by blowing up the entire planet. But are we going to do away with ourselves? That's much more possible.

Hanif Kureishi on the art of writing

The piece of writing I usually most enjoy doing is inevitably the thing I'm not supposed to be doing, so it can seem illicit. I like to work on something over a long period, returning to it repeatedly, adding, subtracting and altering, and taking advice from editors and friends, until I can't bear to look at it, which is when I guess it's done. Writing is highly labour intensive. It takes a lot of time – and much patient toleration of boredom, frustration and self-loathing – to achieve anything. Then you try to sell something to the world it doesn't know it needs.

What is your main aim as a writer?

Miguel Syjuco interview

I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas … I write because I’m engaged in this big conversation.