“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.

“These are human stories of life and love and loss.” Matt Gallagher, a former U.S. Army captain and a writing instructor at the nonprofit Words After War, discusses the war stories that inspired his debut novel, Youngblood (Atria Books, 2016).

“Everybody feels ashamed when they write. It’s a shameful practice.” In this 2018 interview with Louisiana Channel, Zadie Smith, author most recently of Swing Time (Penguin Press, 2016), discusses the positive aspects of shame and how it can be productive for the writing process.

“It was the first time that literature felt personal, relevant, urgent....” Laura van den Berg talks about the transformative experience of reading contemporary fiction and short stories during her first writing workshop in college. Van den Berg’s second novel, The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I really think these characters were with me twenty years before I wrote the book.” In this video for A Word on Words, Ron Rash speaks about the inspiration for his latest novel, The Risen (Ecco, 2016), which centers around a murder in a small North Carolina town in the 1960s.

Boy Erased is a film based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 coming-of-age memoir of the same name. Lucas Hedges stars as a young man who is forced by his fundamental Baptist parents, played by Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, to attend a gay conversion therapy program. The film is written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also costars as the program’s head therapist.

“We headed into the forest up a hill to a thicket of tall trees, their tops so lush that I felt like crying.” In this 2016 video, Lisa Locascio reads from her debut novel, Open Me (Grove Press, 2018), for Poetry Center San Jose’s Well-RED series.

“I don’t know a thing about paradise || In my house nobody ever brought / it up...” Anna Moschovakis reads from her poem “Paradise (Film Two)” from her collection They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This (Coffee House Press, 2016) as part of the twenty-fourth annual Poets House Showcase in 2016. Moschovakis’s forthcoming debut novel, Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love will be released by Coffee House Press in August.

“I wanted writing to be something that involved relationships with other people.” Rachel Cusk talks about her experience teaching creative writing at Kingston University in London. Cusk’s novel Kudos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Outline (Picador, 2016).