Sarah Hall

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.

I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.

I used to dislike bookshops immensely as a child and was won over only later in life.

I am tired of angry feminists. I like my women happy, gregarious... and bathed.

Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when 'American Pie' topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape.

I don't like to get in front of people.