Coping: We augment and adjust our bodies in minor and major ways all the time, doing everything from removing body hair to piercing holes in our flesh

Plus: Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile (eek: Kurt and Courtney) craft a ramshackle gem

Alexandra Kleeman’s disturbing dystopia takes on body image and the beauty myth

Not since Lincoln has there been a president so fundamentally shaped by reading and writing as Barack Obama

The children of a New York family pick up the pieces of a selfish adult world

Interview: The travel journalist and author has set his latest novel, Hunters in the Dark, in Cambodia, after a trip there to cover the genocide trials awakened his interest in the country

Brought to Book Q&A: Irish author and academic on how he writes and what he reads

A trip to New York forced Loah to take her music seriously, and now the part-time pharmacist, who has worked with Hozier and Kíla, is about to strike out on her own

Zadie Smith is runner-up for £15,000 prize

‘The Spinning Heart’ nets novelist £10,000 prize

If WB Yeats really could be “all over” YouTube and Twitter, he’d suffer many writers’ greatest problem

Granta has published its list of the best young British novelists, but can one publisher define a generation and what do young writers have over their older colleagues?