In this final episode of the season, recorded in February 2023, I'm joined by the beloved poet and author Michael Rosen. Known equally for humorous children's verse and his poetry and prose for adults, Michael's books for kids include We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake, Michael Rosen's Sad Book and Jelly Boots, Smelly Boots. He's also written a number of more grown-up books, including Many Different Kinds of Love and the memoir Getting Better, about healing and recovery. In recent...

This week's guest is the beloved novelist Barbara Trapido, who I met at her home in Oxford in March 2023. Barbara's first novel was 1982's Brother of the More Famous Jack, which was published when she was 41; she followed it with Noah's Ark (1984), Temples of Delight (1990), Juggling (1994), The Travelling Hornplayer (1998), Frankie & Stankie (2003) and Sex & Stravinsky (2010). She's now in her early eighties, and talked to me about finding the energy to write in later life; her...

A little detour into death this week – or life, depending on how you look at it. Nigel Williamson, obituary writer for The Times newspaper, joins me to talk about the art of summing up a person one final time, over 1600 words or so, for the permanent record. I met Nigel in March at the News Building in London to talk about researching a biography, interviewing the bereaved, and trying to get the essence of a whole human life into a couple of pages. You can buy the latest Times anthology of...

This week's guest is my friend Tor Freeman, who writes and illustrates comics and children's picture books. Tor is a hugely imaginative person, a smart observer of human nature, and a very funny writer. Her comics include Sister Clawdetta: Murder at the Monastery and Welcome to Oddleigh, while her children's books include The Toucan Brothers and Olive and the Bad Mood. In November 2017 she was the winner of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize (you can read her entry here). We...

Geoff 'genre-defying' Dyer, whose career moves between fiction, non-fiction and a grey area in between, joins me this week from California. Geoff published his first book in 1986 and is highly prolific. Some of his best-known works include Out of Sheer Rage; Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; and Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. Last year he published his most recent book, The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings – a meditation on getting older and how a career can be...

This week, the Guardian journalist Zoe Williams joins me on In Writing. I recorded with Zoe at her home in London just before Christmas. She's well-known in the UK as a prolific writer of features, confessional columns and political opinion, and she was as outspoken and entertaining in person as she is in print. She talked me through her ability to write 1000 words in 20 minutes, but then take six months to file one feature; the pros and cons of writing about her personal life; and the most...

Hallå! My guest this week is Swedish screenwriter and director Ruben Östlund, who I met in London in December. Ruben's feature films include 2014's Force Majeure, 2017's The Square, and 2022's Triangle of Sadness, which is nominated for three Oscars including Best Original Screenplay. He has a unique way of writing, doing a lot of talking before he even gets close to typing out the script; he tells me about that, plus how making ski movies influenced his sense of dramatic excitement, and why...

This week's guest is Sophie Mackintosh, author of books including the Booker Prize-longlisted The Water Cure, and new novel Cursed Bread. Sophie talks to me about the optimum balance of social life and writing life; how playlists help her get into the worlds of her novels; and how she powers her work with 'little treats'. Browse Sophie's books in the In Writing bookshop to support this podcast and independent booksellers: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing This season of In Writing is...

The fifth season of In Writing continues with Vogue columnist Raven Smith, who's known for his witty takes on pop culture, modern life and masculinity. Raven is the author of two collections of personal essays: Raven Smith's Trivial Pursuits and Raven Smith's Men, which has just come out in paperback (buy it here https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing). He talks to me about how gaining confidence as a writer helped him gravitate towards more honesty; life as a columnist and Instagram wit;...

I'm back! And very happy about it. This week, Nigerian novelist Ayobami Adebayo speaks to me from her home in Lagos. Ayobami is the author of 2017's Stay With Me, and A Spell of Good Things, which was published in the UK last week. Stay With Me was a hugely successful debut; it won the 9mobile Prize for Literature, and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize. It’s now been translated into 20 languages, and the French translation won the Prix Les...

Introducing the In Writing newsletter, a life raft for writers at sea. Sign up at https://inwriting.substack.com

For the last episode of the fourth series of In Writing, Rumaan Alam joins me remotely from his house in Brooklyn, New York. Rumaan is the author of Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and most recently Leave the World Behind – a literary thriller about a family holiday that takes a sinister twist. (Leave the World Behind is set to become a Netflix movie, with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali reportedly in lead roles.) Rumaan talks to me about the lengthy preparation that allows him to...

Georgia Pritchett is my very funny guest this week. She's been writing for TV since the early Nineties and has worked on Smack the Pony, The Thick of It, Veep, Succession and, importantly, Spice World. She's also the creator of the new Apple TV series The Shrink Next Door, starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn – and she has recently published a wonderful memoir about anxiety, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life. Georgia spoke to me in early November about the grain of honesty in every...

The 40th episode of In Writing focuses on the art of letter-writing. Shaun Usher, who spoke to me last week from his home in Manchester, is the founder of Letters of Note, a blog that led to several very successful books and a star-studded live event (Letters Live). He has dedicated his career to finding the most brilliant, funny, insightful or poignant letters from all over the world and bringing them to a wider audience – whether that's a young Tom Hanks trying to charm the director George...

Australian writer Liane Moriarty joins me this week from her family home in Sydney. Liane has written nine novels, including her latest mystery Apples Never Fall, and has sold over 20 million books worldwide. She is perhaps best known as the author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, which were adapted into glossy TV series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Melissa McCarthy.  Liane talks to me about the dark turn that took her fiction from successful to...

Today's interview is with the writer and editor Craig Taylor, who dials in from an island shack off the coast of western Canada. Once a Guardian contributor, with his column One Million Tiny Plays About Britain (which became a book and a play), Craig has since become known for oral histories including 2006's Return to Akenfield and 2011's Londoners. For his latest book New Yorkers, he collected and edited over a million words of interviews with residents of the Big Apple; this week it won a...

It's wonderful to have novelist Meg Mason on the podcast this week. On holiday in June, I got more hooked on her novel Sorrow and Bliss than I have been on perhaps any other book of this year.  Speaking to me from Sydney in August, Meg talked about her complicated feelings about the memoir she published in 2012 and the unpublished novel she completed just before Sorrow and Bliss. She gave some useful advice on characterisation, and shared the daily exercise she used to boost her confidence...

Not a normal In Writing episode today, but a wholehearted recommendation for something new. This is a guest episode of the excellent podcast The Offcuts Drawer with Laura Shavin, on which successful writers share the contents of their bottom drawer – the bits of writing they never finished, had rejected or just like to hold on to for nostalgic reasons. Actors perform these pieces and the writer chats to host Laura Shavin about the stories behind them. In this episode, Laura meets Chris Lang,...

This week's guest is The Guardian's John Crace, writer of satirical parliamentary sketches, as well as a personal diary column. For a long time John also wrote the paper's Digested Read, in which each week, he summed up a new book in a few funny paragraphs. He's published several books himself, on topics as varied as football, cricket and Shakespeare, as well as collections of his columns, including the new A Farewell to Calm, which is out on 4 November. I visit John at his home in south...

This week I sit down with Christine Rose at her home in London, to find out all about a job that most people aren't aware exists. Christine works behind the scenes in comedy and entertainment, writing jokes for shows including Have I Got News for You and 8 out of 10 Cats; chat-show monologues for the likes of Graham Norton and Alan Carr; and funny host scripts for awards ceremonies like the BAFTAs and the Brits.  Christine won Best TV Comedy Writer at the Funny Women Awards last year, and in...

This week, armed with tea and Jaffa cakes, I speak to the writer Amer Anwar at his home in west London. Amer is the author of Brothers in Blood and Stone Cold Trouble – crime thrillers set in Southall, populated by British Asian gangsters, and peppered with punch-ups, Punjabi swear words, and cunning plans.  Before Amer had even finished a draft of his first book, it won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award – but nevertheless, he struggled to find a publisher. In the meantime,...

I'm thrilled to be back for a fourth series, and to be kicking it off with such an interesting guest. Elif Shafak is a British-Turkish novelist who has published 19 books including 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, The Forty Rules of Love and Three Daughters of Eve. Her most recent book is The Island of Missing Trees, which is a twisty tale of love and war, told in part from the perspective of a fig tree.

This is a bonus episode with a writer who, in a way, has carved out a bonus career: Graham Norton.

In the final episode of the third series (thank you for listening!), Maggie O'Farrell joins me from her home in Edinburgh.