Authors at Foyles

Imogen Hermes Gowar talks mermaids, Georgian London and sweet treats in our exclusive interview to mark her debut novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.

How Peach started with a beat, being inspired by the risks taken by Gertrude Stein and James Joyce and why it's important to avoid neat endings: Emma Glass on her startling debut.

Exclusively for Foyles, we talk to Danny Denton about how a fact becomes a story and a story becomes myth, how we are in the grip of a Faustian quest for total knowledge and why his narrative switches between oral testimony and misremembered poetry and myth, fiction and theatre.

The four-times Booker-shortlisted Ali Smith discusses her new novel, Winter, how long range optimism is built into the seasons, how Shakespeare's plays are an endlessly giving source, and why protesters have to be ready to commit, and commit for the long term.

We talk to Sarah about political wives who stand by their men, how as a society we have not yet come close to recognising how entrenched sexual harassment is and 'jobs for the boys'.

We've interviewed Patrick deWitt about his previous two novels and couldn't pass up the chance to quiz him about his latest, French Exit, a witty, dark tragicomedy of manners

Kate Atkinson Author Page

Exclusively for Foyles, we talked to Jane about inhabiting the voice of a slave, how this story of European brutality seemed too important to remain untold and struggling with the backstory.

Collective nostalgia, writing in the first person and the worrying resonance of the 1930s: Melissa Harrison on All Among the Barley.

Exclusively for Foyles we talked to Patrick about giving voice to a community of old theatre ladies, the parallels between post-war fascism and today's political climate and his fascination with the idea of the dybbuk.

As her new book Forest Dark is published, we talk to Nicole about the most urgent question literature is asking itself, her strange affinity for Kafka and why she is a fan of ambivalence.

John Banville on his new novel, Mrs Osmond, his desire to write not in the style but in the spirit of Henry James, how Isabel is forced to open her eyes to many layers of reality, and why, despite his original intentions, he left the ending open.

We spoke to Ingela Arrhenius about her new picture book, her working practice and inspiration.

Gabriel Tallent on why sometimes a good teacher can be the best ally a young person may ever have, how backstories may never completely explain what makes people who they are and why he would have been willing to let a central character in his novel die.

We spoke to author Olivia Laing about her first foray into fiction and Kathy Acker.

As her latest novel, Pages for Her, is published in paperback, we chat to Sylvia about the bewilderment new mothers can often feel, defining ourselves in relation to the people we love and whether female only environments/support networks are still relevant and necessary.

Exclusively for Foyles we talked to Arundhati about bringing together shards of broken hearts, writing as a game of control and unleashing control and redefining the meaning of happiness.

Exclusively for Foyles, we talk to Minette about her first foray into historical fiction, the challenges of portraying 14th-century Dorset and why the idea that there were no rational responses to the Black Death is wrong.

We talk to Kamila Shamsie about her new Man Booker-longlisted novel, Home Fire, and discuss why she finds the story of Antigone so compelling, how being an Outsider is more of an issue than faith itself and the connection between radicalisation and the fetishising of masculinity.

As her memoir about her seventeen brushes with death is published in paperback, exclusively for Foyles, we talk to Maggie about chronology as a brand of tyranny, the permeability of the membrane between life and death and both the strangeness and familiarity of writing non-fiction.