In this 1988 episode of Voices & Visions, a series produced by the New York Center for Visual History for PBS, the life and work of American poet Hart Crane is explored through interviews, archival footage, and readings.

“It’s not as though I want to change the past. It’s really trying to understand how these things come together to bring you where you are.” Amy Tan speaks about her creative process in this video from PBS and American Masters previewing her documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir directed by James Redford.

“I have written somewhere that there is only one story, but there are many stories in the one, and I like that idea.” In this video from PBS’s American Masters series, N. Scott Momaday speaks with Robert Redford about the oral tradition, hearing stories from his father, and the importance of language and story. Momaday’s second memoir, Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land (Harper, 2020), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This is how the past interrupts our lives, all of it entering the same doorway…” In this clip from PBS’s Articulate, former poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey reads her poem “Letter to Inmate #271847.” An interview by Joshunda Sanders with Trethewey about her new book, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (Ecco, 2020), is featured in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We’re hoping to start a conversation and get people to fall in love with novels again.” In this eight-part PBS series hosted by Meredith Vieira, a list of one hundred of America’s best-loved novels are tabulated based on a nationwide vote and revealed through interviews with celebrities, authors, and book lovers.

“I didn’t begin with the dog—I wrote that book the way I’ve written all my books which is I start at the beginning and I move on and create the story as I go along.” Sigrid Nunez talks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about her latest novel, The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018), at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.

"Dinky planet on a skateboard of dynamite / Oh, what to do..." Juan Felipe Herrera, who has been appointed a second term as poet laureate of the United States, speaks about meeting young poets and reads from his most recent collection, Notes on the Assemblage (City Lights Publishers, 2015), at the 2016 AWP conference and book fair in Los Angeles. 

“When you think about all her heroines who struggled to curb their temperament and discipline themselves, you get a sense of the writer herself.” Directed by Nancy Porter, this film biography from PBS's American Masters series, offers an intimate portrait of Louisa May Alcott and the influence her novel Little Women continues to have across cultures and generations.

“In this book of mine, Brave New World, I postulated a substance called ‘soma’...I think it’s quite on the cards that we may have drugs which will profoundly change our mental states without doing us any harm.” In this Blank on Blank animated video of a 1958 interview with journalist Mike Wallace, Aldous Huxley speaks about his 1932 novel and his predictions for the future of political leadership, propaganda, and technology.