”The blood that moves through me right now is my great grandfather's blood, but the reason I know him, is because I read Ulysses” says Irish writer Colum McCann in this interview about James Joyce’s modernist novel.Colum McCann was interviewed by journalist Synne Rifbjerg backstage at the Louisiana Literature festival in August 2013.

Interview with the late Italian novelist Umberto Eco, author behind the bestselling novel ‘The Name of the Rose’. With great warmth and humour Eco shares how he has always taken pleasure in telling stories, and how he came to write his first novel.Umberto Eco was interviewed in his apartment in Milan by Tonny Vorm in May 2015.

“My writing became ventilation for my frustrations on the art scene.” Meet Norwegian visual artist and writer Matias Faldbakken, who has been described as “one of Scandinavia’s most important and most provoking authors.” In this video, Faldbakken talks about how both his novels and his art centre on the antagonistic.Matias Faldbakken was interviewed by Klaus Rothstein in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark in August 2019.

The award-winning American poet CAConrad here shares the moving story of how, following the brutal murder of his boyfriend and the subsequent indifference of the police, writing poetry conceived from rituals became healing: “I believed that I could do a ritual for poems, that could drag me out of that depression.”CAConrad was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg at the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2018. During this conversation  CAConrad reads poetry from ‘While Standing in Line for Death’ (2017).

“It is important to be able to write about violence with the same intimacy with which I write about love.” Enjoy this cordial interview with Indian Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy, who discusses writing about modern India and its many internal borders, in connection with her praised 2017-novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’.Arundhati Roy was interviewed by Danish writer Merete Pryds Helle in May 2018 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Enjoy this spellbinding performance by Anne Carson, heralded as one of the most important contemporary poets in the English-speaking world. Together with her collaborator, Robert Currie, Carson performs a staged reading of a text that tells creation stories while adopting the viewpoint of the sky. Anne Carson and Robert Currie performed ‘Lecture on the History of Skywriting’ (2016) at the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2018.

“The urge to create and the urge to copulate are very close.” In this interview the iconic feminist writer Erica Jong speaks candidly of being fuelled creatively by desire, her experiences as a female writer and what she has come to realize about men.Erica Jong was interviewed by Pejk Malinovski in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, August 2016.

British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad has been widely praised for her first novel ‘The Parisian’ (2018). In this video, she talks about Palestine in the fading days of the Ottoman Empire, about nostalgia for the past, and how the novel allows “a kind of leap” into the consciousness of someone else.Isabella Hammad was interviewed by Kathrine Tschemerinsky in August 2019 in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.

“I became a writer once I realised no one liked my stuff.”  Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey’s favourite author, Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead, on how rejections of his first stab at a novel made him realize that he wanted to pursue writing.Colson Whitehead was interviewed by Tonny Vorm in August 2017 in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

“Religion should be a personal, private issue. The state should not have any religion. This is the only way to achieve democracy.” Watch the world-renowned Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany speak straightforwardly about contemporary Egypt and why a great societal change is imminent.Alaa al-Aswany was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, in November 2019.