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"At death's door, you want to remember the best that humanity has to offer." The author of The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (Viking, 2014) speaks about the impact of literature and why we turn to reading and writing for connection.
Rick Moody moderates a panel of writers whose work appears in anthologies of noir fiction set in Iran and Israel, both published by Akashic Books in October 2014. Salar Abdoh is the editor of Tehran Noir, and Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron are the editors of Tel Aviv Noir.
"Modernism displaces its readers into the future.... I wanted to kind of purge myself of those tendencies." The award-winning poet and author, whose latest novel, 10:04, was published by Faber & Faber last September, speaks with Paul Holdengräber about modernist literature and what sincerity means.
"When I read Dostoevsky, I understand better the psychology of the human being." Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic memoir Persepolis (Pantheon, 2004), speaks with Paul Holdengräber at the New York Public Library about how reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's work changed her life.
Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard was well known for his fiction in his native country, but his six-volume, 3,600-page autobiography, My Struggle, has made him a literary sensation, with some calling his long form and brutal honesty ground-breaking. In this clip, author Jeffrey Eugenides interviews Knausgaard on what it was like to write without shame. "It felt like a rush, is it possible to say this? And if it is, that's freedom."
The novelist, essayist, and short story writer whose most recent novel, NW, was published by Penguin Press in 2012, is seen here reading from her essay "That Crafty Feeling" at the New York Public Library in 2010.
“Magical thinking makes you crazy and renders everything possible.” In this video, author Zadie Smith discusses her writing, literary influences, and the spiritual aspects of the creative process.
Watch this eloquent video that features inspiring images captured by a drone that was flown around the steps, hallways, and various rooms of the New York Public Library.
