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Novelist A L Kennedy talks to Mariella Frostrup about her book On Writing. Based on her Guardian blog, the book follows the writer over a three-year period during which she finished one collection of stories, started another and published a novel. It's a frank and witty portrayal of the highs and lows of being a novelist from the back pain and the brown hotel rooms encountered on tour to the joys of finding that perfect sentence at three in the morning.

Pankaj Mishra and Sri Lankan novelist Roma Tearne discuss how much literature can play a role in exposing human rights violations and what kind of pressure do such expectations place on all writers, particularly those who live under authoritarian regimes.

As J M Coetzee publishes a new novel, The Childhood of Jesus, author Justin Cartwright provides a Readers' Guide to the Nobel Prize and twice Man Booker winning author of such classics as Life and Times of Michael K, Disgrace and Summertime.

Producer: Andrea Kidd.