Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brookes says she "didn't grow up as a horse obsessed girl" but rather her interest in horses was a result of a midlife crisis which led her to the history of a famous American thoroughbred that was the inspiration for her latest novel, simply called Horse.Also, John Purcell talks about his second official novel, The Lessons, and reveals his brief career writing erotica and Karen Manton explains the inspiration for her evocative novel, The Curlew's Eye, set in remote Northern Territory.

Meg Mason thought her second novel, Sorrow and Bliss wouldn't be published, it was and is now shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction, which will be announced this week.Also Australian writer Ennis Ćehić on his playful collection, Sadvertising, and American writer Leila Motley's debut novel, Nightcrawling, which she wrote at just 17.

Booker-winning writer Damon Galgut wasn’t always aware of his privilege, growing up as a white man in South Africa. Instead, he describes a ‘slow-shifting of consciousness’, that culminated in The Promise, a book he calls ‘my most South African novel'.Also, The Rosie Project author, Graeme Simsion, gives a tour of his writing space and Hilde Hinton on her second novel, A Solitary Walk on the Moon.

Canadian author, Emily St John Mandel, says the pandemic changed her as a writer. Her latest, Sea of Tranquility, was written during lockdown in New York and while it's a standalone novel, also features links to her previous books, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel.Also, Goan-Anglo-Indian Australian writer Michelle Cahill's novel, Daisy and Woolf, is a literary homage and post-colonial critique of Virginia Woolf’s classic Mrs Dalloway.

Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom. Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.

We meet some of the most remarkable mothers in recent fiction, with authors including Dawn French, Douglas Stuart, Anne Enright, Lisa Taddeo, Larissa Behrendt and Alice Pung. These literary mums can be loving, neglectful and sometimes cruel – and they often reveal something about the author’s own relationship with their mother or children. Other featured authors include George Haddad, Craig Sherborne, Lydia Kiesling and Kate Mildenhall.

Jennifer Down doesn't turn away from uncomfortable truths in her Stella Prize shortlisted novel, Bodies of Light, about the systemic failures of the residential and foster care systems in the 70s and 80s. Also, we revisit our interview with Jonathan Franzen who talks about faith and family, which are two themes in his latest book, Crossroads.

Hannah Kent reflects on her time as an exchange student in Iceland and how it allowed her to pursue writing, and Michelle Johnston tells Claire Nichols about her novel, Dustfall, for the international literary event called Literature Live Around the World which was hosted by the Bergen International Literary Festival in Norway.

Pulitzer-prize winner, Jennifer Egan, is "interested in the ways technology interacts with our psychologies". Her new novel, The Candy House, plays with a deliciously dangerous idea: what if you could externalise your memory?And two books set in small town Australia: Mandy Beaumont's The Furies and Yumna Kassab's provocatively titled Australiana.

The Icelandic sagas have long been a source of fascination for Kári Gíslason and his latest novel, The Sorrow Stone, gives new life to an old Icelandic saga.Also disability advocate and writer Liel Bridgford explores disability representation in fiction with Kay Kerr and Jessica Walton, and Robert Lukins on his second novel Loveland set in Nebraska about two women who've experienced controlling marriages and asks whether trauma is inherited.

For his latest novel, Moon Witch, Spider King, Marlon James says "I was trying to connect with my own mythological history as a black man in an African diaspora, in a former British colony". Also, friendship in fiction with Susan Johnson, Juhea Kim and Paige Clark, and Perth writer David Whish-Wilson's writing space.

'I have a full and beautiful life', says Irish writer Marian Keyes, 'The only thing I can't do is drink'. And the experience of addiction and recovery is something she's given to the main character in her book Again, Rachel, a sequel to Rachel's Holiday. Also, Michael Trant writes a book on his tractor, Jane Caro explores coercive control in The Mother and Rhett Davis's debut novel, Hovering.

Karen Joy Fowler wades into American Civil War history and the story of John Wilkes Booth, the first presidential assassin, in her novel Booth.Also, Kalkadoon author Megan Albany's comic novel about death and Lloyd Jones's latest allegorical novel, The Fish.

Craig Silvey, Tony Birch and Dervla McTiernan share their love of reading from the Perth Festival Writers Weekend. They share their formative childhood reads, favourite first lines and give some writing advice along the way.

Isabel Allende says her latest novel, Violeta, was inspired by her mother but also by Allende's own life. Also, readers who send fan mail and the writers who reply with Markus Zusak, Anita Heiss, John Marsden and Krissy Kneen, and disability in fiction with Joseph Elliott and Kit Kavanagh-Ryan.

Our Country Friends is a funny book set in upstate New York during the pandemic by US writer Gary Shteyngart and Xochitl Gonzalez looks at the city through a Puerto Rican lens in Olga Dies Dreaming.

From young love and forbidden romance to break-ups and long-term relationships: hear authors wax lyrical about love. Writers include David Nicholls, Amy Bloom, Tayari Jones, Howard Jacobson, Monica Ali, Curtis Sittenfeld, Anita Heiss, Vivian Pham, C.S Pacat and Daniel de Lorne.

Jason Mott's Hell of a Book lives up to its name: it has a snappy title, an eccentric narrator and a Nicolas Cage cameo.Also, two authors who explore older Australian's experiences with Liz Byrski's At the End of the Day and Shankari Chandran's Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

Almost 20 years after Brick Lane, Monica Ali is still unpicking the ins and outs of relationships in her novel, Love Marriage.Also, Skimming Stones by Maria Papas was directly inspired by her daughter's own illness and Jack Ellis challenges a myth about childhood in Home and Other Hiding Places.

In her new book To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara asks what would America be if its foundations were different. Also Katherine Collette's ode to Toastmasters in The Competition and Craig Sherborne's difficult mother in A Grass Hotel.

Two masters of the form, George Saunders and Tsisti Dangarembga, share lessons from their extensive writing careers.

The Booker-winning author Pat Barker's preoccupation with who's allowed to speak and who isn't continues in The Women of Troy, a sequel to The Silence of the Girls, her exploration of women in the Ancient Greek classics.Also, New Animal author, Ella Baxter, on how her writing relates to her artistic practice, and the final in Michael Mohammed Ahmad's trilogy featuring his alter-ego, Bani Adam, with The Other Half of You.

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro introduces us to his latest creation in Klara and the Sun, and we also take a look at how authors name their heroes and villains with six writers including Tony Birch, Tabitha Bird and Mirandi Riwoe.

"It's such a contradiction in life how much we learn from suffering," says actor and writer Ethan Hawke who tells The Book Show about his fourth novel A Bright Ray of Darkness. Darkness and light is a recurring theme in our other author interviews with American Patricia Lockwood and Australian Jessie Tu.

International travel has been off the cards for many in the last two years, this literary world tour might be the next best thing.

Kate Grenville, Craig Silvey, Susanna Clarke, Nardi Simpson, Damon Galgut, Christos Tsiolkas and more on their prize-winning books. Plus, former winners Colson Whitehead, Bernardine Evaristo and Anthony Doerr on the impact of winning a major prize.

Unlike many authors, Jodi Picoult decided to take on COVID-19 in Wish You Were Here, because Picoult says, "we need to remember everything we got wrong while we were learning what this disease is".Also, the salvation of poetry in Brendan Cowell's Plum and The Kindness of Birds by Filipino Australian writer Merlinda Bobis.

Scottish crime writer Val McDermid's new book, 1979, is the beginning of a new series inspired by her own experience as a newspaper journalist in the 1970s and 80s.Also, to celebrate International Day of People With Disability we have some recommendations for speculative fiction novels that centre disabled characters, and

"I never sunk into complacency in any aspect of my life." Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo on her latest book, Manifesto, about her unconventional path to success.Also, Stella Prize winner Charlotte Wood on cultivating a rich inner life in The Luminous Solution, and the 2021 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, on how he became a writer.

"I can't separate the erotic and the sensual from the beautiful." Melbourne Prize for Literature winner, Christos Tsiolkas on his latest novel 7½ which explores what it means to be a writer and the role of beauty in fiction.Also, Rebecca Starford and Steven Carroll on the real life characters that inspired their World War II novels, The Imitator and O.

Author of Burial Rites and The Good People, Hannah Kent says she wanted to look at human connection in her latest novel Devotion. It's another historical novel but is a love story about two girls whose love transcends rules, religion, and even crosses an ocean. Also, the British author, Susanna Clarke, was the winner of this year's Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel Piranesi. She talks about writing the book while living with a chronic illness.

Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut on his award winning novel The Promise.

"Everyday could be a day of unthinkable richness if we just keep still, attend and be present to what the place that we live in wants to do." Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers talks about the power of wilderness to centre his characters in Bewilderment, his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel.Also, two time winner of the Miles Franklin, Michelle de Kretser, on her new book, Scary Monsters which is a book in two parts, with two front covers, and is an exploration of the migrant experience.

"The journey is the oldest story known to humanity", says bestselling American author Amor Towles, whose third book is based on this archetypal narrative and takes a group of lost boys on an unpredictable road trip in The Lincoln Highway.Also, Booker Prize shortlisted author Anuk Arudpragasam with A Passage North and Vietnamese American Monique Truong's exploration of Lafcadio Hearn, the 19th century Creole cookbook author and Japanese folktale collector, in The Sweetest Fruits.

Liane Moriarty's latest novel is Apples Never Fall and as another TV adaptation of her work wraps us, she is adamant she will never write books with a view to adaptation. Also, British-Turkish Elif Shafak's inventive The Island of Missing Trees set in a divided Cyprus and Booker shortlisted author Damon Galgut's equally inventive, The Promise.

South African writer Damon Galgut has now been shortlisted for the Booker three times, and the latest is for his ninth book, The Promise. It is a family saga that begins in 1986 apartheid South Africa and follows one Afrikaner family through to the present. At its heart, is a broken promise that serves as an allegory for modern South Africa. But as Damon tells Sarah L'Estrange, it's also about a dysfunctional family.

A Passage North is the second novel by Sri Lankan, Anuk Arudpragasam. It's about a young Tamil man, Krishan, as he travels from Colombo to north Sri Lanka for the funeral of his grandmother's carer. It is an introspective story that follows Krishan's meandering ruminations about the Sri Lankan civil war, trauma, desire and Sanskrit poetry. Anuk Arudpragasam is speaking to Sarah L'Estrange.

American travel writer Maggie Shipstead's third novel Great Circle, is about a fictional aviatrix, Marian Graves, who goes missing in her quest to circumnavigate the globe in 1950. It's also about a troubled Hollywood actor who attempts to resurrect her reputation by taking the lead role in a Marian Graves biopic. The novel explores questions of death and disappearance, as well as the unknowability of the past. Maggie Shipstead speaks to Sarah L'Estrange.

American author Patricia Lockwood's debut novel is a work of two distinct parts. In the first half, we meet a woman addicted to the “portal”, or internet, where she has crafted a unique online presence. In the second half, the protagonist is dragged back in to the real world, after her sister gives birth to a very sick baby. The book is inspired by Patricia’s own life, and her experiences as an aunt to her niece, Lena. It’s a book as funny as it is heartbreaking, and in this interview Patricia talks about her extreme physical reaction to the book, and her quest for a perfect dress to wear to the Women’s Prize for Fiction ceremony. Patricia Lockwood speaks to Claire Nichols. Listen here for a longer interview about the book.

Richard Powers is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Overstory. His latest novel, Bewilderment, is about a recently widowed father trying to raise and protect his troubled son, as the planet’s ecology implodes. This novel does not give itself to easy one liners, as its scope is mythical and crosses into the terrain of science fiction while still exploring parental love. Richard Powers is speaking to Claire Nichols.

In 1952, Somali seaman Mahmood Mattan, convicted of the murder of a local shopkeeper, became the last man to be hanged in Cardiff. Forty-five years later, his conviction was quashed. In The Fortune Men, the British-Somali writer Nadifa Mohamed takes this true story and gives it a novel treatment. Amongst the bustling, multiracial town of Tiger Bay, we meet Mattan, a man of quiet dignity and anger, and the corrupt and racist police who frame him for murder. Mohamed also paints a sympathetic portrait of the murder victim, here renamed Violet Volacki. Nadifa Mohamed is speaking to Claire Nichols.

In 2019, John Boyne faced huge online backlash for a book he wrote about a trans teenager and he's channelled that experience in to his new comic novel, The Echo Chamber.Also, Booker Prize shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed on The Fortune Men and Emily Bitto’s Wild Abandon, about men, booze, tigers and America.

“I admit to regular fits of feeling simply I am not a good person,” says Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, “and it’s a question that fiction is uniquely poised to engage with”. And it’s a question that is at the heart of his new novel Crossroads.Also, Maggie Shipstead on her Booker Prize shortlisted novel Great Circle, and Robert Gott’s historical crime novel, The Orchard Murders, based on the Messiah of Nunawading.

In his latest book Cloud Cuckoo Land, Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr explores the human desire to create utopian worlds in places far from home.CS Pacat on their latest fantasy adventure Dark Rise, and Patricia Lockwood on being shortlisted for this years' Booker Prize for No One Is Talking About This.

British rapper, poet and writer, Akala, equates reading and writing to a form of magic. He brings this passion to the page in his debut YA novel, The Dark Lady, about pickpocket Henry, set in the time of Shakespeare's London. Also, The Overthinkers, a debut by a Sydney writing duo and Nick Earls on his heart surgery recovery as well as Empires, his most ambitious novel yet.

"My favourite memories as a kid, are watching Saturday afternoon movies," says two time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, "so I gave myself permission to do a heist book and started planning." Harlem Shuffle was the result. Also, Marion Frith's timely debut Here In the After about an Australian soldier who served in Afghanistan and Charlotte McConaghy on Once There Were Wolves, about rewilding the Scottish highlands.

Actor Bryan Brown has published a debut collection of crime fuelled fiction in his 70s, it's called Sweet Jimmy. Also, Anita Heiss takes the 1852 Gundagai flood as the starting point for her novel Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Paige Clark's metaphorical ghosts in She Is Haunted.

Booker winning, Pat Barker's preoccupation with who's allowed to speak and who isn't continues with The Women of Troy, the sequel to The Silence of the Girls, her exploration of women in the Ancient Greek classics.Also, journalist Barry Divola on his music inspired road novel and Malla Nunn's Sugar Town Queens, set in post-Mandela South Africa.