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Weike Wang speaks with Mary Laura Philpott of A Word on Words about her debut novel, Chemistry (Knopf, 2017), and why her main character doesn’t have a name. Wang is a 2017 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction.
Sweetbitter (Knopf, 2016), Stephanie Danler’s debut novel about a young woman’s coming-of-age experience working at an exclusive restaurant in New York City, has been adapted into a television series. The series stars Daniyar, Eden Epstein, Caitlin FitzGerald, Evan Jonigkeit, and Ella Purnell.
In this 2013 video, Lucie Brock-Broido reads her poem “You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World” from her collection Stay, Illusion (Knopf, 2013), which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. Brock-Broido died on March 6, 2018 at the age of sixty-one.
“Everything you live through changes you, inevitably, and I think as you change, your writing changes.” Maggie O’Farrell speaks about receiving Specsavers Bestseller Awards for four of her novels, including The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), and how she has evolved as a writer. O’Farrell’s debut memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death (Knopf, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“Sing of disappointments more repeated than the batter of the sea....” At the Lannan Foundation in 1998, William Gass reads from his second novel, The Tunnel (Knopf, 1995), which took twenty-six years to write and earned him the 1996 American Book Award. Gass died on December 6, 2017 at the age of ninety-three.
“Learn how to write jokes...” Gabe Hudson, author of the science fiction novel, Gork, the Teenage Dragon (Knopf, 2017), talks about the craft behind humorous writing, and having to adapt to a new environment during his MFA years at Brown University.
Erika L. Sánchez reads her poem “Forty-Three,” which reflects on the 2014 abduction of forty-three students in Guerrero, Mexico, as Ashley Rockwood interprets the poem through dance for this video produced in partnership with Chicago magazine. The poem is from Sánchez’s debut collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017), and her debut novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2017), is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in young people’s literature.
“I think that’s one of the great things that fiction has the power to do: it allows you to create a character, a character you might find despicable or with whom you might not agree, but then give them the power to basically make their case as though they were making it before God.” Elliot Ackerman talks to PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his second novel, Dark at the Crossing (Knopf, 2017), which is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in fiction.
“If you read it, I hope you enjoy it.” In this short video, Tom Hanks sits in front of his collection of vintage typewriters to announce the publication of his debut short story collection, Uncommon Type: Some Stories (Knopf, 2017).
The Snowman (Knopf, 2011), the crime novel written by Jo Nesbø and translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, the film stars Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, and Chloë Sevigny.
