‘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.’

Lunate contributors and friends on the books they’re reading this summer

‘I need to reach a certain point in a novel’s development where I feel it has acquired the necessary heft, before I can begin to discuss or share it with anyone else. Before that point, everything feels too fragile and tentative to expose to the air.’

‘They guard class conversation like black oil Dobermans. The first seminar is a prospectus collage sticky with sun-softened glue resin.’

‘Writing my memoir was akin to opening a time capsule, all the work that went into it. It was simultaneously exciting and exhausting.’

Read the opening chapters of Mother Naked, the long-awaited new novel from Glen James Brown

‘For those who appreciate not just Hanna’s music but a well-crafted and candid rock biography, Rebel Girl… succeeds as an unremitting testament to trying.’

‘It’s very easy to think that when you stop writing – or are forced to stop writing – that you’ll never write anything worth reading again. It is hard to hold on to self-belief, and feels indulgent too, but if everyone felt like this, about all the art they make, where would we be?’

‘There are four things you need to know about my brother. Sorry, I know it’s late. You’re tired. The book keeps slipping from your hands.’

‘A fascinating dissection of life given and life taken away, the dark intricacies of modern womanhood.’

‘The blossoms are pale apparitions. They ripple in a breeze. A bucketful of cream has been kicked over their branches. Each petal is the width of a baby’s palm. Clouds scud, smearing the sky. I think of our last meeting. It will be tonight.’

‘But the writing of the novel comes with an utterly different form of concentration, from the first line. I start at that first line, or perhaps a single image, and head on. Inevitably I will go back and chip away at it, again and again, but that's the foundation stone.’

‘As I walk along Bankside on my way to the Tate Modern, on the evening of what is certain— given the prognosis outlined by my oncologist—to be my last private view, I recall how it began one August morning, more than half a lifetime ago’

‘“Attend to your sentences,” from the titan that is Leone Ross, whom I consider a lifelong mentor. Every time we speak, she signs off with that instruction, and I think to myself, yes, I can’t do very much about the business-side of writing. The only thing that I can control are my sentences.’

‘That Vehicle especially has almost sold 2000 copies and has been well received shows that trad publishing has low expectations of both literature and readers.’

‘If I’m asked to write a piece about an artist, it’s actually probably less a true profile in the expansive, authoritative sense, but something more compressed: a story focused on them almost as a character — or maybe call it a portrait, an encounter with that artist.’

‘I’m not entirely sure what my creative process is yet. I started Rural at University (Masters in Creative Writing) so there were projects and deadlines, which I know I like to work to. I like a structure. So now I’m starting my next book, I’m feeling a little lost. Maybe I’ll need to pretend I’m doing my Masters again.’