CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: NIK PERRING

A weekly author Q&A series that folds back authors and breaks their spines. In the last of this current series, we question Nik Perring, whose collection of short stories Not So Perfect will be followed by Freaks!, co-written with Caroline Smailes, in spring next year. He is the headline act in this Thursday's unmissable Flash Mob Literary Salon for Chorlton Arts Festival.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

‘Dear Everybody’ by Michael Kimball, without question. And why? Because it’s brilliant.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

That would have been with a cat, I think. I was asking it why it wouldn’t talk. The cat was stubborn and the conversation, lengthy and one-sided.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

Tissue paper, so the reader’s tears of joy (despair) would have something suitable to fall on. And it could also be useful if they didn’t like my words.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

Well, I would say me, but I can’t dance. So, let’s see. Someone iconic, someone important and someone fun. I’m going to say István Örkény, because I bloody love his Café Niagara story.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Blue. Mine’s blue. So blue, without question. Definitely blue, so long as it’s that particular shade. If not, then black. With yellow on it. Like Slaughterhouse 5, because that’s ace. Red’s nice too.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

Long words? I’m not sure how many I know.

Well I’d like to espouse the acquisition, by as many bibliophiles, or non-bibliophiles as possible, of my monograph of short fictions, entitled, consummately appropriately, Not So Perfect (Roast Books), and also encourage the acquisition, around the vernal equinox of 2011of a differing compendium, namely, Freaks! (The Friday Project – HarperCollins), which I have co-authored with fictionist, Caroline Smailes.

In other words: I would like to plug my short story collection, ‘Not So Perfect,’ and also Freaks!, which is due out in spring next year, which I’ve co-written with Caroline Smailes and that’s been illustrated by Darren Craske.

Conversations With Humans will be back with a second series of interviews in a few months.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: JENN ASHWORTH

A weekly author Q&A series that rummages into the handbag of authors and finds an out-of-date Tesco clubcard voucher. This week, we question Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind Of Intimacy. Jenn will launch her new black comedy Cold Light, along with Tom Fletcher's The Thing On The Shore, at An Outlet on May 13th, 8pm. You can also see her at the unmissable performance project Station Stories later in May.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

Recently I have been really impressed with Russ Litten's Scream If You Want to Go Faster. I don't think I'm old enough to have a favourite of all time. Or even a third favourite. But the books I keep going back to, amazed, are Moby Dick, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

Every day I have long conversations with my cats. I'm in the house a lot either on my own, or with a little baby that doesn't answer back yet. So some of the conversations last days. They are usually about what I am writing at that minute, or rants about some domestic failure of mine. The cats are called Freddy and The Nolan Sisters. Freddy is a much better conversationalist, but the Nolans are genuinely good listeners.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

The rice paper that the outsides of those flying saucer sweeties are made of. Edible books!

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

I don't know what this question means. Who is Bez? (scuttles off to google) Sorry. I am still no clearer. I am prepared to fail this question. I feel a bit embarrassed now.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Yes, I like red too. I have a red chair and red bookcases so I reckon a red book would do nicely. Although 'teal' is also a firm favourite of mine. If I was at home reading, red would do nicely. Although if I was out and about, teal would be better as it would match more of my outfits.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

This is tricky. I'm such a bad speller I usually make it a policy to avoid long words. I am awaiting the publication of my second novel with trepidation and chickenheartedness. I am industriously working on my third, which is about a family made up of one disconsolate son, a gravid daughter, a homeward-bound proselyting brother, an almost-philandering father and a passive-aggressive, hypochondriac mother. I am also carrying on with my pedagogical pursuits.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: DAVID GAFFNEY

A weekly author Q&A series that braves the paper-cut of author's wit so you don't have to. This week, we question David Gaffney, a prolific Manchester-based author who wrote the Edge Hill Prize long-listed The Half-Life of Songs. He is one of the stars of this month's Station Stories.

What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

To establish accurate rankings of my favourite examples of certain cultural genres, I use a blend of the basic alternative vote system and a favourable characteristic matrix score. For example, to establish my third favourite novel I would calculate the number of favourable characteristics of my first favourite crime novel, my second favourite American novel, and my third favourite English literary work, add them together, divide by three, and then rank them by the favourable characteristics total score of each. So my third favourite novel is of course The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills. If you all try this at home the answer is always The Restraint of Beasts – it’s weird.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

When I was15, I spoke to my younger sister’s budgerigar for a long time about an unrequited love I harboured for a girl called Angela Watson who lived down past the farm. I was out of my head on drugs most of the time back then, living in the edge really, and the budgerigar seemed to speak back to me, and it spoke a lot of sense - about life, and cages and mirrors, and it was a really existential experience, and it asked me if I had thought about getting some big mirrors for my bedroom, because this strategy had really worked for the budgerigar, it meant there was no need to worry about searching for a real companion. I took this on board and lived like that until was thirty three, until one day I hired a professional cleaner to sort out my mirrors and fell in love with her.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

I have always wanted to have my books printed on Margaret Thatcher’s dead body because I’m really left wing and cool and I really hate Margaret Thatcher cos she really fucked the country up in the eighties - didn’t she drop bombs down mines and kill Yorkshire people and invent poll vaulting, and things like that? She was terrible. In fact I would like the printing process to actually be the thing that kills her - the little needles with ink in them would also have poison in and Margaret Thatcher would gradually die a slow death from having my short stories injected into her skin.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

Bez is a hollow cheeked Marraca shaking drug-addicted dancing fool – so who other than Julian Barnes himself, whose louche activities with the ladies and experiments with illegal substances are well documented, and whose well known book the Naked Lunch is full of racy, suburban wife swapping, mountain biking, and reefer baking, and is like a distilled bottle of Bez’s spirit in book form.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

I did actually look into the effect of a book’s colour on sales when my book Aromabingo came out and it was pink. It wasn’t selling so well and this was clearly down to the colour of the cover not the content so I had a look at the top one hundred fiction sellers and it turns out that dark green is the best colour for fiction. There’s no question about it.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

My latest book The Half-Life of Songs is being performed live at Manchester Piccadilly station by a choir of insects, amplified and sound manipulated by digital artists. This is happening this month - see http://www.stationstories.com/ for more information.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: LEE ROURKE

A weekly author Q&A series that dives into a pool of authors and retrieves a few bricks of truth. This week, we question Lee Rourke, author of The Canal and winner of the Guardian's 2010 Not The Booker prize.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

Today (it changes) it's 'Molloy' by Samuel Beckett. Because it's my third favourite of the trilogy.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

I talk to my two cats everyday. They like to tell me how much they enjoy murdering and torturing smaller animals for fun and, as one of them says, 'killing practice'.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

Radio waves beamed into infinite space.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

Ian McEwan.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Red.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I've just finished 'A Brief History of Fables: from Aesop to Flash Fiction' which is published this September.

I'm working on two things: my novel 'Amber' which is about dwelling. And a short story collection called 'I Like to be Stationary' which is about stasis.

The only big word I know is ultracrepedarian which I fear I am.

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: NICHOLAS ROYLE

A weekly author Q&A series that shakes fiction's cage to release some feathers of truth. This week, we question Nicholas Royle, author of Antwerp, the brains behind independent publisher Nightjar Press and now British literary fiction editor for Salt Publishing.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

That would have to be Echoes of Celandine by Derek Marlowe, reissued by Penguin as The Disappearance after there was a film adaptation.

Marlowe is my favourite author of all time, so one of his, probably Nightshade, would get top spot. With fairness in mind, I would give 2nd place to a novel by my favourite living novelist, Steve Erickson, and it would probably be Days Between Stations, his first.

So then for 3rd place I could go back to Marlowe and I think I would pick Echoes of Celandine/The Disappearance. It has never been reissued since that Penguin edition in 1977; none of Marlowe's novels has, despite various efforts by enthusiasts over the years. I could go on and on and on about Marlowe, but sense I should move on to Q2.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

I often ask Max, our cat, why he's so aggressive, why he bites and scratches all the time, and the only response I get is a bite or a scratch.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

I once tried to get the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to print a story of mine on the side of a house, an end terrace, so that my ex-girlfriend who lived near there would pretty much have to read it.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

It's got to be Anthony Burgess. If we're picking from Manchester writers.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

The only problem with red is an unfortunate association with a football team based in Salford or Trafford or somewhere. Not sure where, but I know it's not Manchester. I rather like sky blue for a book cover. Funnily enough, the cover of The Best British Short Stories 2011 is for the most part sky blue.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I just did that. Damn. So let me plug another book. In fact, two books. Is that cheating? Since neither of them is by me I get to plug two. Fair?

Vault is a first novel by David Rose, published by Salt in a couple of weeks' time. It's very short and very good. Experimental fiction but highly readable, unlike, you have to admit, most experimental fiction. I'd like to champion readable experimental fiction.

Secondly, The Thing on the Shore, the second novel by Manchester writer Tom Fletcher, out now from Quercus. You will never regard west Cumbria in quite the same way again. I apologise for not using any words longer than experimental. How about I just finish by saying quotidian and haemaglobinopathy?

CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANS: LARS IYER

A weekly author Q&A series that scratches beneath the surface and discovers it has won £5 on the lottery. This week, we question Lars Iyer, who will be reading from his debut novel Spurious at Blackwell Manchester tonight at 6.30pm.

Q. What's your 3rd favourite novel of all time? And why?

Third favourite? A random favourite instead: Clarice Lispector’s The Passion of G.H., a dialogue (of sorts) with a cockroach.

Q. What is the longest conversation you've ever tried to have with an animal, and what was it about?

Spurious is a Passion of G.H.-like dialogue with the tiny snails which fall through the hole in my kitchen ceiling. And a dialogue (a one-way dialogue) with the damp itself, which says the same thing as God to Moses: I am that I am.

Q. If your books could be printed on something other than paper, on what would you print them?

If it were possible to print in an ink of dryness on walls of damp, that would be my wish. To print with dry ink, the printed words swallowed up by a fresh wave of damp by morning.

Q. Let's have a Madchester-style revival but for fiction writers instead. Who gets to be Bez?

I would be Bez, a kind of idiot jester, shaking my maracas at the sky.

Q. What's the best colour for a book cover? No, really. I like red.

Brown, damp-brown, mottled with green.

Q. Plug any current book or project you're working on: please use as many long words as you can.

I am always working at the blog Spurious, and with long words like apocalypse and Armageddon.