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In this National Book Festival event, George Saunders accepts the 2023 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and speaks about his writing process, how problems in a work-in-progress contain opportunities, and the place of empathy in storytelling in a conversation moderated by Library of Congress literary director Clay Smith.
“It was a curiosity, it was a fear that led me to write the book.” In this interview for the Otherppl With Brad Listi podcast, Athena Dixon speaks about living and dying alone, and the origins of her new essay collection, The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“It’s very disconcerting to translate oneself, but it’s a kind of pure contact with the work you make.” In this event welcoming Jhumpa Lahiri as the new Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author reads from her new collection, Roman Stories (Knopf, 2023), translated from the Italian by the author and Todd Portnowitz, and joins Brandon Taylor for a conversation about her work.
“I had to pretend I was someone else writing about me to gain some distance from myself because part of the subject of this book is how difficult it is for us to know ourselves.” Viet Thanh Nguyen talks about his family’s struggles and traumas, and the challenges of writing his new book, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial (Grove Atlantic, 2023), in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown. Nguyen’s memoir is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this 2019 Politics and Prose Bookstore event, award-winning author Carmen Maria Machado reads from her memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019), and discusses her challenges writing a second-person narrative and how she delicately confronted traumatic memories in a conversation with author Jeannie Vanasco.
Christopher Soto, author of Diaries of a Terrorist (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), talks about his origins as a poet growing up in Los Angeles and the connection between poetry and activism in this installment of the Line / Break series hosted by Copper Canyon Press publicist Ryo Yamaguchi. “Making Space: A Farewell Ritual for the Debut Book” by Soto appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I write toward what hurts. I write toward the truth, and I tell it again. I scribe the whole.” In this National Book Festival event, Jesmyn Ward, recipient of the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, speaks about how her grandmother influenced her work as a writer and joins Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a conversation about her award-winning novels, grief writing, and cultural authenticity.
In this interview, author Angie Kim talks about her second novel, Happiness Falls (Hogarth, 2023), a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, which follows the story of a biracial Korean American family whose lives are upended when their father goes missing.
“I want to trouble the idea that any representation is good representation. I think there’s a lot of frustration in Asian American circles about being told to appreciate the crumbs you’ve been given.” R. F. Kuang speaks about her fifth novel, Yellowface (William Morrow, 2023), issues of cultural appropriation, and her own experiences in the publishing industry as a Chinese American woman writer in this live conversation with Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast host Miwa Messer in New York.
“Science fiction is a reminder that not everyone had access to their history,” says Norwegian artist Sandra Mujinga who draws on science fiction in her artistic practice, which includes installation and video art, for this Louisiana Channel interview. “It’s so important to keep imagining other realities,” says Mujinga.
