Interviews

Science thrives when it is open to anyone who has the talent for it, and the taste for the hard work involved. And society thrives when our institutions are seen to be fair. But my argument is that the case for diversity is epistemic as well as moral. I’ve never heard a scientist say, Yeah, it’s really great that the feminists pointed this out because once we understood the epistemic benefits of diversity, we realized that we could do better science.” My goal is that, in the future, scientists will say that.

‘I hope I’ve answered to that young boy that I once was. I hope he is happy that I was able to make something of his childhood vow to put his culture before his country.’

‘The when-and-where of my initial reading was this wildly unstructured but avidly associative scramble through historical and imaginative space-and-time.’

‘I think it is important for women of colour to know that we are not objects or tokens to be used and dispensed.’

‘It’s amazing how far your poems may reach even in a country with censorship.’ An interview with celebrated translator of Chinese literature, Bonnie S. McDougall.

‘Thirty years ago I wrote to Helen Garner, via her publisher, and asked if I could interview her.’

‘I am really interested in the language that my family speaks, and one day, in my head, I’d like to write a book around all of the idioms I’ve been taught, because Turkish idioms are so much more complex, as well as profane, than English words.’

‘I do commercial translations, literary translation doesn’t pay the bills and requires a lot more work. I translate insurance forms, information leaflets for medication, instructions for prostate operations… It’s a repetitive job and in general very boring. But I think about Kafka, about how his job at an insurance office may have pushed him to immerse himself more fully in his fiction, and that gives me some consolation’ – Fabian Martinez Siccardi.

‘I really wanted especially to have a voice for those kids who think they’re weird, think they’re strange, and there’s always going to be kids like that.’

‘When my collection, An Elegant Young Man came out, I think it virtually sent me around the bend.’