This poem from Chris Tse tells the story of a Cantonese goldminer murdered on a Sunday in 1905, a year of the snake. Tse's first full-length collection How to Be Dead in a Year of Snakes (Auckland University Press, 2014) revisits the historic event, piecing together narratives of the dead and the guilty.

French novelist Patrick Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. Known for his detective mysteries and brief novels, Modiano focuses on the themes of memory and loss.

“Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life horror has no more form than it does meaning. Horror just is.” Richard Flanagan reads from his latest novel, for which he was awarded the 2014 Man Booker Prize yesterday.

"I wanted to try to capture the magic of hearing the voice of a stranger on a little device in your home." Anthony Doerr discusses what inspired him to write his new novel, which took him ten years to complete. All the Light We Cannot See, published in May by Scribner, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in Fiction.

"It has a skeleton of realism, but inside its rib cage it has a sort of paranormal heart." David Mitchell introduces and reads from his most recent book, The Bone Clocks (Random House, 2014), which was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

"That her skydance went for nothing / hanging fire on empty air." David Harsent reads "Bowland Beth" from his 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize–winning collection, Fire Songs (Faber & Faber, 2014).

Actor Steve Martin interviews the author and cartoonist about her start as a staff cartoonist at the New Yorker. Chast won the Kirkus Prize in nonfiction for her graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Award-winning author Brock Clarke reads from his latest novel, The Happiest People in the World (Algonquin Books, 2014), at the 2014 Colgate Writers' Conference. Clarke is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"The river courses through the city / turning concrete roadways to canal banks / that shrug their shoulders in dark water..." Irish poet Jessica Traynor reads from her debut poetry collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), for Dublin City Public Libraries' One City, One Book initiative.

Award-winning slam poet and teacher Joaquin Zihuatanejo performs a moving poem in sign language to thank his student Jon. This performance is from the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam in Phoenix, Arizona, and shared by Button Poetry.