A Steinway grand piano carved with Maori patterns is part of Michael Parekowhai's installation at this year's Venice Biennale.

David Larsen talks to Australian writer Margo Lanagan about Twitter and fantasy novels.

Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Hours, was in debt to both life and literature. His new novel, By Nightfall, also displays a strong allegiance to both.

The small, superb story has become a talisman in the author's Italy. Since its publication there 15 years ago, it's won plaudits and prizes and been made into a Mastroianni film.

Mixing reality and fantasy with little help given to the reader makes an odd book - but it's no lemon.

It would be very easy in these economically grim times to write novels casting bankers in the harshest of lights - simple moustache-twisting pantomime villains.

Charlotte Randall is a Christchurch-based author whose latest novel, Hokitika Town (Penguin, $30), is on the best-seller list.

Copenhagen in the early 1990s. Bernardo Greene is a patient at a Clinic for Torture Victims. In his native Chile, he'd been tortured for two years by the Pinochet regime.

It's not always easy to travel with children (or grandchildren) because their needs and interests are rather different.

When a serious academic turns her hand to fiction, the result is magic.

Harlan Coben is a United States author of best-selling thrillers whose latest, Live Wire, ($39.99 RRP, Orion) was released last month.

Back in the 1970s Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City columns captured the off-beat spirit of San Francisco. One of Maupin's leading characters was Mary Ann Singleton, a TV presenter.

This issue of the British literary journal is dedicated to Pakistan.

American writer Patrick Rothfuss tells David Larsen why he avoids clichés in both life and literature.

Contractors Bonding Ltd have stumped up $300,000 to fund the project, which will be on permanent loan to the stadium.

Seeing Hemingway through his first wife's eyes is an intriguing view.

Self-publishing has traditionally been a surefire route to obscurity and dismal sales. Now a British thriller writer who sells his novels as ebooks for as little as 71p ($1.50) is proving the naysayers wrong.

Works from the gothic vault suggest some some deep premonitions of disaster.

Australian illustrator Shaun Tan's life in recent weeks has been as fantastical as his children's books.

Winston Aldworth looks back an a fantastic weekend of music in New Plymouth.

Thriller writer Robert Crais talks to Craig Sisterson about the allure of Hollywood and turning an enigmatic sidekick into a leading man.