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Icelandic writer Sjón talks to Matthew Sweet about fiction, poetry and making music with Björk. Curator Sacha Llewellyn explores the art of Winifred Knights, Katie Roiphe looks at writers dying and in the first of our commissioned columns from 2016 New Generation Thinkers - Sarah Jackson from Nottingham Trent University explores touch and frostbite.

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón was named Best Icelandic Novel of 2015. The English translation which is out now is from Victoria Cribb.

Winifred Knights (1899-1947) is the first major retrospective of the award-winning Slade School artist which will display all her completed paintings for the first time since their creation, including the apocalyptic masterpiece The Deluge, 1920. It runs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery from June 8th to September 18th 2016.

Katie Roiphe's new book The Violet Hour considers the deaths of six literary figures Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, Maurice Sendak and James Salter.
Sarah Jackson from Nottingham Trent University is one of the 2016 New Generation Thinkers and a poet whose collection Pelt was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.

Producer: Fiona McLean.

Main image: Winifred Knights, Edge of Abruzzi; boat with three people on a lake, 1924-30, oil on canvas, (detail)
(private collection, from the book Winifred Knights: 1899-1947, by Sacha Llewellyn, published by Lund Humphries).