In reply to john yates:
I've considered doing more spoken/live interviews, but in the case of this series I reckon the questions require a fair bit of time to construct a response. They're tough questions (which Ed explicitly asked me for!) and even some of the simpler ones like 'What was the first book you read?', 'Which book disappointed you most?' etc would take some thought...or I'd certainly need a while to reflect, anyway!
I rarely have the opportunity to meet the authors in person or conduct a spoken interview via Skype, which takes time to transcribe and often requires rewriting multiple times (most people don't speak as eloquently as they write, especially in the case of writers and when they read their answers back it often sounds too informal, or they haven't got their point across as well as they had intended, etc.) Spoken interviews can work well, but it depends on the interviewee and the subject of discussion, I think. Simple catch-ups and news interviews - fine. But some stuff doesn't work as well, I've found. Writers generally seem to enjoy taking the time to 'write' answers back to me. Personally, I'm much more expressive in writing than I am in speech.
As it happens, the next one may be possible to do in person, so I'll suggest it to the author and see what she says! It'll be an interesting experiment!
As an example, my interview with Lynn Hill was conducted on Skype, and took days to transcribe and we went through three or four iterations before Lynn was happy to publish. I suppose it depends how you talk. Lynn's speech was very Americanised and colloquial, which she wasn't too keen on transferring to the finished, written piece:
https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=9151
Post edited at 22:11