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New poetry from Sean Elliot, Richie McCaffery, Katrina Naomi, Carolyn Waudby and Mark Leech.
Short stories from Drummond Bone and Olivia McCannon, with essays from James Bainbridge and Andrew Crompton.
TRO news and thoughts from Casi Dylan, Natalie Evans, and Bev Laroc.

In this issue, Jeanette Winterson talks with Jane Davis about her recently published memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, a title which is taken from the question Jeanette's stepmother asked her when as a teenager she decided to leave home so as to live with the woman she loved. In this searching interview she talks movingly about the book's main subjects matter, her suicidal breakdown and the search for her birth mother that followed on from it. Extracts from the book are interspersed throughout making a dazzling introduction to the book and a valuable insight into this author.

We have fine poetry from Peter Robinson and Julie-ann Rowell, and Kate Miller is the latest to take us behind the scenes of her poetry in 'Poet on her Work'.
In fiction, Gabriel Josipovici gives us a Christmas story with a twist, while in 'Shine' B. J. Epstein writes a modern Cinderella story. Keeping up the festive spirit Ian McMillan takes us back to his early Christmases. To help parents and our readers with young friends, we recommend seasonal books for children of all ages. Who could resist this face?

We have a diverse assortment of subjects in our essays, with Brigid Lowe Crawford talking about taking time out from work to raise her family and the objections she meets from disapproving (mostly male) former colleagues . Malcolm Bennett writes on ear wax and Alan Wall continues his series on the oddities of language.

Christopher Dowrick examines the good of stories in a health-setting and the crucial need for a patient to be able to ‘tell a good story’ about her- or himself.

Community nurse and dovegreyreader Lynne Hatwell gives a personal account of the way in which reading and nursing have twined themselves together in her life.

Raymond Tallis goes into very deep questions with Chekhov about his short story ‘Ward 6′.

There is also new poetry and fiction from John Kinsella plus all our usual features.

Add to this an interview with Richard Briers, and Janet Suzman’s vivid account of her childhood and experience in apartheid South Africa and you have an issue full to the brim with goodness.

Christopher Dowrick examines the good of stories in a health-setting and the crucial need for a patient to be able to ‘tell a good story’ about her- or himself.

Community nurse and dovegreyreader Lynne Hatwell gives a personal account of the way in which reading and nursing have twined themselves together in her life.

Raymond Tallis goes into very deep questions with Chekhov (in his short story ‘Ward 6′). Raymond writes:

There is also new poetry and fiction from John Kinsella plus all our usual features. Add to this an interview with Richard Briers, and Janet Suzman’s vivid account of her childhood and experience in apartheid South Africa and you have an issue full to the brim with goodness.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce (and his father Francis)

Ian McMillan (and his son Andrew)

Andrew McNeillie On Memory

Howard Jacobson On The Novel

Janet Suzman On Shakespeare

Raymond Tallis On Sex

New Fiction by Marilynne Robinson
New Poetry by Andrew Motion
Peter Robinson
Adam Phillips on W.H. Auden
Crime Fiction: Dashiell Hammett

Melvyn Bragg
Philip Pullman
Interview with Adam Phillips
Blake Morrison on Bibliotherapy
Phill Jupitus
Les Murray's Al-Time Favourite Poems from Australia
Tessa Hadley

A.S.Byatt
Howard Jacobson
Gabriel Josipovici
Mark rylance

Plus Older Voice: on Wordsworth and on Conrad

David Constantine
Patrick McGuiness
Ian McMillan
Neil Pearson
Erica Wagner

Bernard Beatty on Ecstatic Moments
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
David Constantine
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Tom Paulin
R.S. Thomas

Michael Symmons Roberts on poetry and music

Abigail Appleton

Jonathan Bate

Gabriel Josipovici

Ian Mcmillan

Jonathan Bate
Alison Brackenbury
David Constantine
Neil Curry
Dan Jacobson
Isobel Lusted
Les Murray
Carolo Rumens
Raymond Tallis

In this issue:

Peter Robinson
Hugh Underhill
Erica Wagner
Boyd Tonkin
Jane Shilling
Patrick Moore
Jeffrey Wainwright

In this issue:

Raymond Tallis
Terence Davies
Ann Stapleton
Philip Davis
Neil Curry

In this issue:

Rowan Williams
Carol Rumens
Les Murray
Sasha Dugdale
Myra Schneider
Julie-ann Rowell

In this issue:

Peter J Conradi
David Constantine
Jonathan Meades
Stanley Middleton
Bel Mooney
Carol Rumens
Jane Shilling

In this issue:

Neil Curry
John Kinsella
Michael Murphy
Les Murray
Jacob Polley
Ann Stapleton

Philip Edwards on Robert Louis Stevenson

Gwyneth Lewis suggests books to read at sea

Philip Errington on John Masefield

New poetry by Penelope Shuttle

Why read Mrs Gaskell?

Doris Lessing interview

Susn Sontag remembered

Othello's language

George Eliot's letters

Translations Issue:

Anne Stevenson: 'Why should we trust poetry?'

Helen Constantine: 'The Spirit of the Place'

Robert Chandler: 'To Foreignise or to Domesticate'

The Theatre Issue

Will Self

Colin Redgrave

John Redmond

New poetry from Howard Wright and Ben Passikoff

New fiction from Leeya Mehta and Karen King-Aribisala

New essays from David Constantine and Raymond Tallis

Reviews from John Scrivener, Jenny Swann and Rhea Trede

Peter Robinson, 'Becoming a Reader'
James Aitchison, 'The Poem and the Reader'

Poetry from David Costantine and Joolz Denby

In this issue:

Graham Swift
A.S.Byatt
Stanley Middleton
Ruth Padel

In this issue:

Jill Rudd on 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
Les Murrary
Adam Nicholson
Susan Wicks
Dan Jacobson

In this issue:

John McGahern
Elizabeth Jennings
Anthony Sher
Bernard Beatty
New poetry

In this issue:

John Kinsella
Les Murray
R.S. Thomas
Jonathan Bate
Russell Hoban
Stanley Middleton

Test

More words about it.

Bel Mooney, Beowulf - A Reassesment

Poetry from Alan Davis and Dave Gould

Jane Davis talks to Michael Schmidt

Raymond Tallis, Not True Vertigo

Ralph Pite, Dante - Some Ways of Starting

* New poetry by Les Murray, Connie Bensley and Tom Paulin; and John Greening writes the latest in our ‘Poet on His Work’ series

* New fiction by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Richard Flanagan

* Essays by Catherine Pickstock on Tracey Emin, and Paul Kingsnorth of the Dark Mountain Project on the myths and stories that threaten our world

* The Reader Gets Angry a searing indictment of teacher-training in this country from Gabriella Gruder-Poni

* Interview with Liverpool composer Kenneth Hesketh

* Recommendations from Adam Phillips and Frank Cottrell Boyce

* New poetry by John Kinsella and Michael Parker

* New fiction by Vanessa Hemingway, a writer with a very famous grandfather, and a great voice of her own

* Seamus Heaney’s prose poem about Thomas Hardy

* Peter Robinson writes on his poem, ‘Otterspool Prom’, the latest in the series Poet on His Work

* Essays by Angela Patmore on why stress is good for you, and Hans van der Heijden, the architect behind the fabulous redesign of Liverpool’s Bluecoat, on Wittgenstein

* Eric Lomax (The Railway Man) talks to Angela Macmillan

* Blake Morrison, Philip Davis and Josie Billington discuss the importance of reading in groups, the latest contribution to The Reading Revolution series

And much more inside!

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Featured inside:

* In ‘Memoir’, David Constantine writes movingly about his father’s depression and his uncertain utterances:

Before he died I often felt I should want to speak for him; now it would be truer to say I want to reassure him… I used to want to hide my eyes in love and pity from the spectacle of such an openness to wounding… Here was a man trying something out, often nothing very much, with all the confidence he could muster; often not much. Therein their force to trouble and move me lay.

* Richard Gwyn provides a bewildering vivid account of his experience of hepatic encephalopathy, or as he calls it ‘brain fog’, describing the puzzlement of being at the centre of a neurological disease, inwardly stuck and aware of losses that awareness cannot restore.

* Poet on His Work: Michael Schmidt (author of the brilliantly useful Lives of the English Poets and editor of PN Review) writes on his poem, ‘Also, Poor Yorick’.

* New poetry by Neil Curry, Patrick McGuinness, Alison Brackenbury and Julie-ann Rowell.

* Hanif Kureishi writes on the relationship of the teacher of creative writing to the students in their struggle to realise their subject matter.

* David Almond (author of Skellig and the 2009 Liverpool Reads book The Savage) talks to Jane Davis about his schooldays and his relationship to books, writing and religion.

Issue 40 - Reaching Forty

Featured inside:

* An interview with Sonja Sohn – star of the acclaimed television drama The Wire and co-founder of the Baltimore charity Rewired for Change

* Clare Allan – author of Poppy Shakespeare – investigates the genetic make-up of her dog, Meg

* Fiction by Salley Vickers and Stanley Middleton

* Poetry from David Constantine and Angela Leighton

* and we couldn’t have everything without all the fantastic features and competitions you’d expect from your quarterly dose of Reader goodness.

Issue 38 - The Reading Revolution