Enlightening, absorbing and frequently very funny, collected here are brand new interviews with twenty of the most important women artists practising internationally and based in Britain today. The interviews, with artists spanning different generations and working in media and modes as diverse as performance art, painting, sculpture, video and installation, give first-hand insights into both the artists' lives and the creative process. Here we find out how it feels to perform in front of an audience; about having to make money whilst trying to make art, and about the struggle to work in the face of loaded intellectual and political expectations - having to defend a love of 'bourgeois' modernism, for example, or an ambivalent relationship with feminism. All the while the artists' genuine excitement about materials and the making process, as much as issues or ideas, shines through, making this is a collection which will be particularly enjoyed by artists themselves. Fortnum speaks to: Jananne Al-Ani, Gillian Ayres, Claire Barclay, Christine Borland, Sonia Boyce, Maria Chevska, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Anya Gallacio, Lucy Gunning, Jane Harris, Runa Islam, Vanessa Jackson, Emma Kay, Tanya Kovats, Maria Lalic, Hayley Newman, Paula Rego, Jemima Stehli and Tomoko Takahashi.