‘I write until I’ve written about forty thousand words and then I wonder what I’m doing for a couple of years and then I write about another thirty thousand words and at some point my husband, who is a brilliant ghost writer and editor, reads it and we have a conversation about it, then I cut a load of words and noodle about with it for a while longer and then give it to my agent.’

Lunate contributors and friends share their favourite books of 2024

‘In order to connect with what I’m writing, I read it out loud in character. It lets me feel the way the character might say something, listen to the rhythms, find the silences.’

‘The familiar grey had returned to our city. The streets no longer gleamed bright and the colours appeared less vivid. Clouds had crept back.’

‘A good writer should be a voracious reader. I never did a single creative writing course – I learnt everything from reading and studying other authors.’

‘Maddie came to meet me in her jeep to collect me from town and I thought here’s a woman for whom no poems have been written.’

‘The name is familiar, maddeningly so, but Emily can’t work out who it is. Not because it is an unusual name, but rather because it is such an ordinary, placeholder one, instantly forgettable.’

‘I try my best not to read reviews - people can be cruel and I am a fragile thing. But there’s one review that always makes me laugh, which said, “‘Spoilt Creatures’ is not a novel that I particularly admire.” Speak your truth.’

New books by Tim Winton, Phillipa Holloway, Niall Williams and Gina María Balibrera

'I’ve heard a few writers say - Zadie Smith being one of them - that the novel, short story, whatever it might be, is representative of the writer at that particular time. You will never think in exactly the same way and therefore you will never write the same again. A comfort, I think.'

‘On Wednesday
We listened to records and
Ate a kiwi fruit and
You are dead now’

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New stories by Lara Williams, Jamie Cameron, Noémi Kiss-Deáki, Han Smith and Heidi James

'My short stories can take just a few hours, or years, to make it to the page. Again, I get a lot of my ideas from close observation of place, people, and asking why and how.'

‘Samuel Walker was driving in to work when he first saw the shoe; caught the flash of orange against the brooding green of the forest. Something bright in the grey of the Minnesota winter. Something different.’

New books from Elizabeth Hand, Richard Fortey, Mark Bowles and Sam Sax

'Looking back, I really thought of the written world as a built, existing world - a discourse, to use the adult term - and my intention was not to make value judgements but orient myself within it.'

‘I could tell you this is an angry book; I still doubt you’d be prepared. In Sarah Manguso’s latest novel, Liars, rage is the main character — sharper and more accented than any of its actual cast. More specifically, women’s rage.’

‘It is very hard to feel that those around you value book festivals more than doing anything possible to put a spanner in this poisoned system that kills and maims racialised children every single day. Most people want a quiet life. That’s hard, because if you’re marginalised that's not an option for you; you’re right up against the world’s clamour every single moment.’

‘I have two primary ways of writing: 1) slowly and deliberately, and 2) accidentally. In the first case, a project usually starts with an idea that is persistent enough to grow more clear rather than dimmer in the time it takes me to attend to it. Once I am writing, the idea eventually yields a feeling—some line or passage reveals the heart of the piece.’

‘I am working on a new collection. It's set in Jersey, in the channel islands, where I spent exactly half of my childhood. It's a strange place, in lots of ways, but very beautiful too. Politically it's like Nigel Farage fell asleep watching The Truman Show, but the coastlines are breathtaking.’