On this week’s show, Claire Armitstead sits down with celebrated US author Marilynne Robinson to talk about her life in writing. Perhaps most famous for her elegiac Gilead trilogy, set in “a dogged little outpost in Iowa”, Robinson is the recipient of the Pulitzer prize, the Orange prize for fiction and, in 2012, the National Humanities Medal, awarded to her by President Barack Obama, a longtime admirer of her novels.

Now, in a new collection of essays titled What Are We Doing Here?, Robinson turns her mind to contemporary US politics, democracy, the media and faith. In front of a Guardian Live audience, she shares her thoughts on Donald Trump’s presidency, Marxism and the historical debts her country owes to Russia.

Reading list

What Are We Doing Here? by Marilynne Robinson (Virago)