“In a lot of African storytelling, unlike storytelling in the West, it’s the trickster who is telling the story, so you already know you can’t quite believe it.” On Late Night With Seth Meyers, Marlon James speaks about the influences behind his new novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Riverhead Books, 2019), the first title of his Dark Star Trilogy, ranging from the television series The Affair and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. A profile of James by Kima Jones appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My work is a tragic form of fiction that is both European and African at the same time.” In this interview for the Louisiana Channel, Chigozie Obioma speaks about how his early influences of Shakespeare and Igbo folklore led him to write his debut novel, The Fishermen (Little, Brown, 2015). Obioma is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I like to have a story be just the essential.” Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black (Mariner Books, 2018), talks about why he enjoys the short story form, writing Black characters, and his connection with his students in this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview. 

“Not only did To the Lighthouse help me to understand my own story, but my own story helped me to better understand To the Lighthouse—there’s sort of a beautiful reciprocity there.” Katharine Smyth talks with Michelle Dunton Cronauer about how Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel led to writing her debut memoir, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf (Crown, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Yaa Gyasi and Zadie Smith speak with Courtney Martin about representation and risks in writing, the power of fiction to invoke curiosity and transform behavior, issues of history and identity, and their current projects at the 2018 Obama Foundation Summit.

Sophie Mackintosh reads from her debut novel, The Water Cure (Doubleday, 2019), at Waterstones bookstore and talks about being influenced by Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth, Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the recent sociopolitical climate.

“A story or a character should change. The events that happen change us.” George R. R. Martin, whose book Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (Bantam, 2018) is a history of the Targaryen family from his fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, talks to John Hodgman about how the realness in Stan Lee’s comic books influenced him as a writer.

Josh Malerman talks about writing novels while touring with his band, incorporating performance and radio play elements into his book readings, and the inspiration behind his debut novel, Bird Box (Ecco, 2014), in this video from the 2015 Midwest Literary Walk. The novel has been adapted into a feature film directed by Susanne Bier and starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, and Trevante Rhodes.

“You’ve got to do two very contradictory things as a writer: you’ve got to enjoy spending a lot of time alone—and a lot of people don’t—and you’ve also got to go out and see about the world and immerse yourself in that world....” Irvine Welsh, whose latest novel, Dead Men’s Trousers, is forthcoming from Melville House in February, contemplates the words of wisdom and advice he would offer to young writers in this interview with Christian Lund for Louisiana Channel.

“Carson McCullers is probably the author I feel the strongest connection to, in the way of empathy and seeing the world.” Benedict Wells, whose fourth novel, The End of Loneliness (Penguin Books, 2019), translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about his writing process, how he began as a writer, and some of the authors who have inspired him.