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In this Books are Magic event with Isaac Fitzgerald, author Rachel Khong discusses the themes of race, family, and belonging in her second novel, Real Americans (Knopf, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “I think it’s both an American feeling and an immigrant feeling, that there’s not enough time and you need to make the most of it,” says Khong.
In this 2023 event co-presented by Bellevue Literary Review at the Center for Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips reads from her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Night Watch (Knopf, 2023), and discusses setting her story during the Civil War in West Virginia in a conversation with editor Danielle Ofri. “History gives us the facts, but literature tells us the story,” says Phillips. “The characters access the meaning of history for us.”
In this Politics and Prose event, Dylan Thomas Prize–winning author Nam Le reads from his debut poetry collection, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the choice to write poetry rather than prose, and the sometimes questionable authority of writing about trauma in a conversation with Natasha Sajé.
In this Politics and Prose event, award-winning author Tommy Orange reads from his second novel, Wandering Stars (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the musicality of language and the challenge of writing about trauma in a conversation with Kaveh Akbar. Wandering Stars is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“Some people say fiction is all a lie. To me, fiction is one of the best ways we can learn truth.” In this Unban Coolies interview, Amy Tan talks about the importance of observation in her writing, identity and biodiversity, and how her interest in bird conversation inspired her new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024), which is featured in “The Written Image” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“To make ancestors whole is to imagine, collectively, publicly, who they were and what their experiences were like.” In this New York Public Library event, former Cullman Center fellow and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gregory Pardlo discusses the themes within his latest poetry collection, Spectral Evidence (Knopf, 2024), and talks about interrogating the present-day erasure of Black history in a conversation with Imani Perry.
In this PBS NewsHour video, Kaveh Akbar speaks about writing his first novel, Martyr! (Knopf, 2024), and how pop culture as well as Persian and contemporary literature mix into the narrative in an interview with Jeffrey Brown. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this One Book, One Chicago event, Tommy Orange discusses the importance of Native American voices, the intricate plotlines of his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), and the historical roots of his forthcoming novel, Wandering Stars, in a conversation with Donna Seaman at the Chicago Public Library.
“There’s nobody left here now. Cows. Graves. Me. There’s not but a thousand acres of Bonaparte left between us.” In this virtual City Lights LIVE event, Ayana Mathis reads from her new novel, The Unsettled (Knopf, 2023), and speaks about finding her compass again after the success of her debut book and the need for quiet and privacy to develop characters in a conversation with author Angela Flournoy.
“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.
