Mrs. Fletcher (Scribner, 2017) by Tom Perrotta—whose novels Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers have previously inspired screen adaptations—has been adapted into an HBO television series. The comedy series stars Kathryn Hahn as Eve Fletcher, a divorcée who has a midlife sexual awakening after her son leaves home for college.

“I wanted to encapsulate the experience I was having, and particularly the memories in terms of what they mean to me now, as someone who’s thirty-three years old.” At Unbound, a literary series copresented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore, Saeed Jones talks about the drive that compelled him to write his debut memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The book is really about how these people, while they have superpowers on their own, don’t truly become powerful until they’re together as a group.” Bob Proehl talks about his dystopian science fiction novel, The Nobody People (Del Rey, 2019), which follows a group of outcasts with supernatural abilities who band together against violent mobs and a discriminatory government.

“I was writing just about the experience of grief and life amidst dying...then I wanted to tell stories that made my parents alive, that brought them back to life and made it clear why this was such a loss.” In this A Word on Words interview, Margaret Renkl talks about her debut essay collection, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which is featured in “5 Over 50” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jojo Rabbit is a film adaptation of Christine Leunens’s novel Caging Skies (Overlook Press, 2019), a dark comic story set in 1940s Vienna about a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth who discovers that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Directed by Taika Waititi, who also costars as an imaginary Adolf Hitler, the satire stars Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Rebel Wilson.

“Olive is going through the late—very late—autumn of her life.” Elizabeth Strout talks about the title character and depictions of weather and seasons in her new novel, Olive, Again (Random House, 2019), the follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008). Olive, Again is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Waterstones video, Bernadine Evaristo introduces her novel Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton, 2019), which she describes as “fusion fiction” and a “celebration of Black womanhood,” and the books that influenced her as a young writer. Evaristo won the 2019 Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, sharing the prize with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments (Chatto & Windus, 2019).

In this Brainwaves video anthology installment, Reginald Dwayne Betts reads “Essay on Reentry” from his third poetry collection, Felon, out in October from Norton. A profile of Betts by Mahogany L. Browne appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“the long, drunk room a darkened sanctuary. / windows blocked opaque to make day insignificant / light impaired.” In this short film, Kevin Coval reads “Ode to the Dive Bar” from his poetry collection Everything Must Go (Haymarket Books, 2019), illustrated by Langston Allston, which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“How do you tell interesting stories? You puncture through reality and you let magic and weird stuff and ghosts bleed back through.” In this video, Carmen Maria Machado talks about the influence Gabriel García Márquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude had on her writing with Jared Arraes and Adriana Couto at the 2019 International Literary Festival of Paraty in Brazil. A profile of Machado by Jera Brown appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.