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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

How I wrote

Writers reflect on the book that made them famous

October 2021

  • Illinois U.S. Senator-elect Barack Obama, holding his daughter Milia, 6, acknowledges applause from supporters through a flurry of confetti after giving his acceptance speech in Chicago, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. Obama, only the fifth black U.S. Senator to be elected in history, defeated Republican Alan Keyes in the nation's first Senate race with two black major-party candidates. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

    Barack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his future

    The former president of the United States was at a crossroads in his life when he wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father

September 2021

  • On Saturday, July 14th, 2018 Author Lauren Groff, who recently released a short-story collection called “Florida”, poses for portraits at Reed College in Portland, OR. Leah Nash for the Guardian.On Saturday, July 14th, 2018 Author Lauren Groff, who recently released a short-story collection called “Florida”, poses for portraits at Reed College in Portland, OR. Leah Nash for the Guardian.

    Lauren Groff on Fates and Furies: ‘I thought it would be interesting to write a book questioning marriage’

    The author on the years of scribbling ideas on her walls that eventually became this novel
  • Observer New Review Books Sebastian Faulks Author 31/08/2018

    Sebastian Faulks on Human Traces: ‘I had no idea I would turn out to be 3% Neanderthal’

    The author on his exhilarating research into the human mind, teaching creative writing at Broadmoor – and his new, follow-up novel
  • SCANLON,BUTTERFIELD, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, 2008<br>RWDXDG SCANLON,BUTTERFIELD, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, 2008

    ‘An image came into my head of two little boys sitting on either side of a fence’ - John Boyne on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    The novelist on how it took him two days, writing through the nights, to complete a first draft of his famous Holocaust novel for younger readers, and how he remains ‘immensely proud’ of it

August 2021

  • Achilles mourning the death of Patroclus - Gavin Hamilton<br>JHXRAW Achilles mourning the death of Patroclus - Gavin Hamilton

    Madeline Miller on The Song of Achilles: ‘It helped people come out to their parents’

  • Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - Eurybates and Talthybios Lead Briseis to Agamemmon - WGA22334<br>HKWKP0 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - Eurybates and Talthybios Lead Briseis to Agamemmon - WGA22334

    Pat Barker on The Silence of the Girls: ‘The Iliad is myth – the rules for writing historical fiction don’t apply’

July 2021

  • Jonathan Coe.

    Jonathan Coe on The Rotters’ Club: ‘My diary provided endless material, but I didn’t like the person I was’

    The author on mixing semi-fact with fiction – and the school rule about swimming naked that inspired the novel’s big comedy set piece
  • Curtis Sittenfeld

    Curtis Sittenfeld on American Wife: ‘I thought Democrats wouldn’t read it because it was about a Republican’

    The US author on writing a fictionalised version of the former first lady Laura Bush’s life – and why she expected so few people to read it
  • Caitlin Moran

    Caitlin Moran on How to Be a Woman: ‘It was a thrill to rifle through the box marked TABOOS’

    Handbags, lap dancing, Botox, comfort food … the columnist recalls how she only had five months to write the feminist bestseller about everything

June 2021

  • Anne Enright

    Anne Enright on The Green Road: ‘I set out to write another King Lear’

    The author on writing her novel a cottage in County Clare, and letting her scattered characters take on lives of their own
  • Julian Barnes

    Julian Barnes on The Sense of an Ending: ‘I learned to do more by saying less’

    The author on maturing as a writer, the power of concision – and the reviews that claimed he was inspired by Frank Kermode
  • Esther Freud.

    Esther Freud on Hideous Kinky: ‘Memories came back to me, humorous and chilling’

    The writer was a struggling actor when she began to write about her early childhood on the hippy trail in Morocco

May 2021

  • Jane Rogers

    Jane Rogers on writing Mr Wroe’s Virgins: ‘I was wildly ambitious, and had a chip on my shoulder’

  • ‘Writing the screen adaptation certainly has opened doors to me.’ Emma Donoghue.

    Emma Donoghue on writing Room: ‘I toned down some of the horror of the Fritzl case’

April 2021

  • Lionel Shriver.

    ‘When I started, the heavens didn’t part’: Lionel Shriver on We Need to Talk About Kevin

  • Poet Wendy Cope. London. 30/10/14

    'A poem about a dream': Wendy Cope on Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis

March 2021

  • ZIMBABWE-CORRUPTION-POLITICS-DEMO<br>Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga holds a placard during an anti-corruption protest march along Borrowdale road, on July 31, 2020 in Harare. - Police in Zimbabwe arrested on July 31, 2020 internationally-aclaimed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga as they enforced a ban on protests coinciding with the anniversary of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s election. Dangarembga, 61, was bundled into a police truck as she demonstrated in the upmarket Harare suburb of Borrowdale alongside another protester. (Photo by ZINYANGE AUNTONY / AFP) (Photo by ZINYANGE AUNTONY/AFP via Getty Images)

    'I wrote it as a fugitive from what my life had become': Tsitsi Dangarembga on Nervous Conditions

    The Booker-nominated writer on how growing up between England and Zimbabwe inspired her first novel - and why she started over after reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch

February 2021

  • Jackie Kay

    'I felt a strange grief when I found my birth mother': Jackie Kay on The Adoption Papers

    The poet explains how researching her history led her to tell the story from three perspectives: the birth mother, the adoptive mother and the daughter
  • David Nicholls.

    David Nicholls on One Day: 'I wanted to write an epic love story'

    The bestselling novel was initially inspired by Nicholls studying Tess of the D’Urbervilles as a teenager – but he didn’t begin writing about Emma and Dexter for another 20 years
  • VANESSA REDGRAVE, ERIC BANA, THE SECRET SCRIPTURE, 2016<br>RER86F VANESSA REDGRAVE, ERIC BANA, THE SECRET SCRIPTURE, 2016

    'No one seemed to know what happened to my aunt': Sebastian Barry on The Secret Scripture

    After a slow start, the Costa prize-winner completed his novel, inspired by a family mystery, in between visits to his mother in hospital
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