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In this interview for the Otherppl With Brad Listi podcast, Morgan Talty offers advice about book advances and publishing, and talks about the popularity of short stories and writing his first novel, Fire Exit (Tin House, 2024). For more from Talty, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.
In this Louisiana Channel video, Russian poet and journalist Maria Stepanova offers her advice for young writers to look forward to something unknown and to be able to “look into the future with some degree of hope.”
“Words are the intricate bonds of language. Words make a family, a tribe, and a civilization. Language is the context of our experience.” Poet, novelist, and Native American scholar N. Scott Momaday speaks about the power of storytelling and his extensive writing career in a conversation with Dean Nelson from his home in New Mexico for the 2023 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University. Momaday died at the age of eighty-nine on January 24, 2024.
“I think I expect to suffer here, and my goal then is to suffer well or suffer skillfully.” In this conversation with Dawn Lanuza for the Fully Booked Chats series, Ocean Vuong discusses the differences between writing poems and novels, the question of whether literature can heal, and the story behind his name Ocean.
In this 2014 State of the Arts video, Brenda Shaughnessy speaks about the themes of her first three books, what motivates her to write, and her “Five Basic Rules” for aspiring poets. Shaughnessy’s essay “Air: Speak and Breathe” is featured in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“When you are comfortable with your own voice, you’re able to create other voices that are authentic as well.” In this short video, Derek Owusu, author most recently of Losing the Plot (Canongate Books, 2022) and one of Granta’s 2023 Best of Young British Novelists, talks about writing immigrant stories and finding your voice.
“The key to an amazing story is the heart of the story,” says novelist Daniel José Older in this segment of Penguin Random House’s Meet the Author series. “If you’re a writer, it’s your compass. It’s what’s going to guide you forward to finish the story.”
“When you think you’re getting good, be humble. There’s no end to the learning.” In this video, Arthur Sze visits his high school, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and offers advice from his years of experience as a poet. Sze is the recipient of the 2013 Jackson Poetry Prize and won the 2019 National Book Award in poetry for his collection Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).
Writers and editors Victor Dwyer and Charlotte Gill discuss how they determine good writing from bad writing, what they look for in a first read, and the changing landscape of writing in this 2014 conversation moderated by journalist Ian Brown at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada. “There’s the sense that the writer is being completely frank with their audience and yet at the same time, they’re completely in control and utterly trustworthy,” says Gill.
“Remember if you sit at your desk for fifteen or twenty years every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does.” In this excerpt of an interview for CUNY-TV’s Irish Writers in America series, Booker Prize–winning author Anne Enright shares her ten rules for writing fiction.
