Theater video tags: Louisiana Channel

Domenico Starnone

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“I believe that the best books aren’t those that entertain us. The best books are those that hurt us.” In this 2018 interview at the Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, Italian writer Domenico Starnone talks about the pleasure and exhaustion of writing and refers to a letter Kafka wrote about the importance of writing books “that are like an axe that breaks the frozen chest.” Starnone’s novel Trust (Europa Editions, 2021), translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri, is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Rachel Cusk on Discipline in Writing

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“Discipline is a massive component of creating a body of work, and the further I get, the more I see that that really is true,” says Rachel Cusk in this 2019 interview with Tonny Vorm at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Cusk’s novel Second Place (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Álvaro Enrigue’s Advice to the Young

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“Pursue it as if it were possible,” says Álvaro Enrigue about advice for young writers in this 2017 interview filmed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. “I’m a kid from Colonia Nápoles in Mexico City…there was no way of making an equation that would start with my childhood and finish with me talking to you in Louisiana about my work, in Denmark, as a writer.” Enrigue is the author of several novels, including Sudden Death (Riverhead Books, 2016), his first to be translated into English.

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Writers on the Moon

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“That’s the moon—it’s the ghost of the sun wandering the sky at night,” says Daniel Kehlmann. In this video from Louisiana Channel, Kehlmann and fellow writers CAConrad, Georgi Gospodinov, Guadalupe Nettel, Delphine de Vigan, and Yoko Tawada discuss the moon’s mysterious presence and why writers are drawn to it as we watch visuals of the moon captured by NASA paired with Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

Elif Shafak on Diverse Reading Lists

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“If we only read the same type of authors all our lives it’s like you’re only hearing one thread, one voice.” In this video from the 2019 Louisiana Literature festival, Elif Shafak talks about reading the same books over and over again as a child, and why it’s more inspiring to read “from East and West, fiction and nonfiction.”

Roxane Gay Reads From Hunger

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“I’ve always found that the things I find the most intimidating end up being the most intellectually satisfying.” At the Louisiana Literature Festival in 2019, Roxane Gay speaks about what moved her to write Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), and begins her reading with a piece about loving Mister Rogers.

Ben Okri

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“In the silence of the house with the rain falling all around me—and the sound of African rain is very unique unto itself—I did two things: I picked up a piece of paper and I drew with great detail and care what was on the mantelpiece. And I finished that, and I took another piece of paper, and I wrote a poem about the rain.” Booker Prize–winning author Ben Okri talks about the life-changing moment when he began writing poetry in this interview from the 2019 Louisiana Literature Festival in Denmark.

Isabella Hammad

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“It’s really hard to inhabit the mind of another,” says Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian (Grove Press, 2019), about the difficulties and joys of writing fiction in this Louisiana Channel interview. “You use your emotional experience, you use your literal experience, you use the experience of others you know to access imaginatively another subjectivity.”

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Ariana Reines

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“My heart had recently cracked // Open. Fear had departed me.” Ariana Reines reads “To the Reader” from her poetry collection, A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019), and talks about the origins of the book, her writing background, and the power of poetry to reach the deepest levels of human experience in this Louisiana Channel interview.

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Yoko Tawada

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“I believe literature should always start from zero. So, I write stories in both languages on purpose.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Yoko Tawada speaks in German, English, and Japanese about thinking and writing in two different languages and about her novel Memoirs of a Polar Bear (New Directions, 2016), translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.

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