Novelist and essayist Daniel Saldaña París reflects on the poets, cartels and piano tuners found in the Mexican capital

All Turkish authors are destined to write about Istanbul, sooner or later. While doing this very thing, author Sönmez examines the changing face of Turkey’s biggest city

Finding the old coffeehouses among the American chains in Mexico City is hard, says author and journalist Juan Villoros, but they’re wonderful spaces to write in – when you find one

Emerging Afghan writer Fazilhaq Hashimi looks back at an upbringing surrounded by war, even in language – and reclaims his country’s past status as the land of poetry, story-telling, fables and folktales

Nigerian author A Igoni Barrett recounts how a personal rebellion led him to writing – and to confronting his worse bully: his own country

As she returns to nature in her native Jutland, author Dorthe Nors reflects on the state of Scandinavian literature – from why crime fiction dominates publishing to why she wishes Danish men would read more

For Bangladeshi authors and bloggers, religious fanaticism is putting their security and freedom of speech at stake, in a level of repression only comparable to dictatorial regimes of the past. K Anis Ahmed explains what it means to be a writer in Bangladesh’s harrowing “new normal”

In the latest in our series of essays on what life and work are like for writers around the world, Nathalie Handal describes an existence where hearts race so fast it’s hard to find time for grief

In this account of a day in his life, sci-fi author Yoss reflects on the chaotic and frustrating reality facing writers in Havana

The Sierra Leone-born author reflects on finding himself strung between two very different literary poles in South Africa’s ‘sleepy city’

The Ukranian author explains why professional writers simply ‘do not exist’ in her country in this essay about its literature and culture

Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon recalls how he learned to write as if his life depended on it, and how a culture of silence and fear makes life creepily dangerous for writers in his country

Chinese avant-garde writer Can Xue recounts her journey from working as a ‘barefoot doctor’, workshop employee and tailor in 1980s China to being a writer, and recalls how she fell in love with performance as a child

Sri Lankan-born author Ru Freeman celebrates her country’s cultural tradition of respect for language and books and remembers a childhood without a pair of scissors – but with an English dictionary