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Laurent Binet talks about his two novels, HHhH (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012) and The Seventh Function of Language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), both translated from the French by Sam Taylor, as well as the topics of semiotics and meta-narrative writing in this video for Vintage Books. The Seventh Function of Language is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
At Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Argentinian writer Ariana Harwicz talks about her debut novel, Die, My Love (Charco Press, 2017), with Carolina Orloff, who cotranslated the book from the Spanish with Sarah Moses. The novel is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
“It was like the story of your relations with others...was constantly being recorded and updated, and you could check it at any time.” Elif Batuman reads from her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), a semifinalist for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
At the Waterstones bookstore in London, Jenny Zhang talks about several books that have significantly influenced her writing: Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (Random House, 1969), George Saunders’s Pastoralia (Riverhead Books, 2000), and Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Penguin Books, 1993). Zhang’s first short story collection, Sour Heart (Lenny, 2017), won the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
Stephanie Powell Watts talks to Mary Laura Philpott of A Word on Words about how her debut novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us (Ecco, 2017), is just like The Great Gatsby except totally different, and why honest criticism is necessary for a writer.
“In place of a mother tongue, I grew a forked fin.” Franny Choi reads her poem “Split Mouth” at the 2017 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Festival. Choi is the author of the debut collection, Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), and the chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017).
“I am writing to you as an act of / immolation, relief…” Allison Benis White reads from her third poetry collection, Please Bury Me in This (Four Way Books, 2017), which won the 2018 University of North Texas Rilke Prize.
“We are surreal beings.... We dream, which is the most surreal thing in the world.” Danez Smith speaks with Lauren K. Alleyne about imagination and language in this video for The Fight & The Fiddle, a publication of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in poetry.
Marie Arana, literary advisor at the Library of Congress, presents a video tribute of the late Denis Johnson, who was awarded the 2017 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Johnson’s second story collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Random House, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“One ear to the singing black boulder…” In this video, Simone White, recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for poetry, reads her poem “Some Creek” from her collection Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem Books, 2016).
