Writers are being bombarded daily with invitations from fake book groups and offers to publicise their work. For the scamming industry, aspiring authors can be a soft touch • This piece first appeared in the Dial ‘Hello Professor Snigdha Poonam,” the email began. I read that again. Nobody has everContinue Reading

The author believes we are at a turning point as a species – and even in the shadow of big tech it’s up to us how we want to proceed ‘I am a storyteller by trade,” writes Jeanette Winterson on the first page of her 2021 book 12 Bytes, anContinue Reading

Their hopes of having a second child were dashed. Two decades on, the actor remembers the grief and pain of that time “I’m afraid this cycle has not been successful.” Emma and I cannot catch each other’s eye. We sit mute in our grief in the silence of the IVFContinue Reading

Shortlisted for the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes respectively, the novelist and biographer talk about working and living together – and giving a voice to Black queer history The literary power couple is a historically seductive concept. Two writers sharing a life, their private and creative worlds entwined, each becomingContinue Reading

New film Fatherland took Sandra Hüller back to a divided Germany. She talks about damaged dreams, Hollywood feelgood and – just maybe – appearing in the new Marvel movie Sandra Hüller is crying, and it feels very strange. A wildly gifted actor, she can convey every human emotion there is.Continue Reading

The director has turned Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel about an ailing adolescent and her glitchy robot friend into a thought-provoking film. What do the pair think this story says about tech, love and grief? In the wings of the London film festival, a group of young influencers are discussing theirContinue Reading

With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well? In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim intoContinue Reading

From Roman-era political potboilers to stories of Catholic priests struggling to impose their authority, what could the reading list of vice-president JD Vance’s wife be trying to tell us? Usha Vance, a very clever woman with dubious taste in men, likes to keep herself busy. While lesser mortals (me) wasteContinue Reading