Chris Somerville

For a long time, even before I’d written a book but told people, misguidedly, that I was working on a collection of short stories, the response I received would usually be, ‘I heard short stories are making a comeback’, sometimes…

Here is how I ended up with a copy of Americana: I was 17 and it was lent to me by a neighbour, a professor at the university my father had worked at, who told me it was good…

Gabrielle Carey talks to Chris Somerville about the reclusive novelist Randolph Stow, the secrets families keep and her new memoir, ‘One night I dreamt I saw Randolph Stow. He was sitting in a cave, wearing a long robe, his chest…

Chris Somerville talks about some of his music highlights in the television drama, Currently I’m trying to catch up on Breaking Bad before the season ends and everyone talks about it on social media. I realise, of course, that this…

Chris Somerville writes on the anxieties of literary taste, and the lies we tell to cover them. When I was around nineteen or in my early twenties, I went into a second hand bookstore near my house. Where I live…