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In this Books Are Magic event, Lana Lin reads from her book The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2025) and discusses how she uses both Gertrude Stein and Audre Lorde’s genre-bending approaches to autobiography in order to highlight Asian diasporic narratives in a conversation with Monique Truong.
In this Books Are Magic event, Jaquira Díaz reads from her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom (Algonquin Books, 2025), and discusses what inspired her to write a queer coming-of-age story in a conversation with Lupita Aquino and Angie Cruz. Díaz’s novel is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this Books Are Magic video, Amanda Hess reads from her debut memoir, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), and speaks with Wesley Morris about her experiences using the internet for information and support during her pregnancy. Hess is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Marissa Davis reads from her debut poetry collection, End of Empire (Penguin Books, 2025), in this Books Are Magic event with poets Sasha Burshteyn and A. D. Lauren-Abunassar. Davis’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this 2022 Books Are Magic event, Jonathan Escoffery discusses his debut story collection, If I Survive You (MCD, 2022), and how he explores themes of identity, immigration, and belonging through storytelling in a conversation with novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn. Escoffery introduces Jemimah Wei in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this Books Are Magic event, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda reads from her English translation of Yoko Tawada’s essay collection Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions, 2025) and discusses Tawada’s defamiliarization of the Japanese and German languages in a conversation with fellow translator Susan Bernofsky.
In this Books Are Magic event, Lydi Conklin celebrates the release of their debut novel, Songs of No Provenance (Catapult, 2025), with John Shakespear performing an original song, “Green Weeks,” based on the book and a conversation with Jenny Xie about music and writing.
In this Books Are Magic event, Cathy Linh Che reads from her second poetry collection, Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), and talks about how her parents’ experience as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now shaped her book in a conversation with poet Wo Chan.
In this Books Are Magic event, Tiana Clark reads from her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025), and discusses the cinematic quality of poems and whether poetry should always tell the truth in a conversation with Terrance Hayes.
In this Books Are Magic event, Ada Calhoun talks about the themes of love and identity in her debut novel, Crush (Viking, 2025), the expectations of marriage as a Gen Xer, and the current state of women’s literature in a conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
