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“I always start asking myself, if I really love this book, how did it get to me?” In this conversation with Politics and Prose Bookstore co-owner Bradley Graham, Paul Yamazaki talks about his book, Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale (Ode Books, 2024), and discusses his life and career as the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco.
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.
In this 2019 Politics and Prose Bookstore event, award-winning author Carmen Maria Machado reads from her memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019), and discusses her challenges writing a second-person narrative and how she delicately confronted traumatic memories in a conversation with author Jeannie Vanasco.
“When you have a name like Alejandra Kim, teachers always stare at you like you’re a typo on the attendance sheet.” In this Politics and Prose event, Patricia Park reads from her debut YA novel, Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim (Crown Books for Young Readers, 2023), and speaks about shifting from writing adult fiction to YA fiction with author Dolen Perkins-Valdez.
“You can slash a book. There are different ways to measure depth, but not many readers measure a book’s depth with a knife, making a cut from the first page all the way down to the last.” Yiyun Li reads from her novel The Book of Goose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) in this Politics and Prose event with Maud Casey in Washington, D.C.
“Writing is my true, true joy, and that’s what makes me feel alive and nourished.” Erika L. Sánchez talks about her memoir, Crying in the Bathroom (Viking, 2022), and the process of book promotion and being a writer with Sandra Cisneros in this virtual event for Politics and Prose, produced in partnership with Books and Books and Café con Libros. Sánchez’s memoir is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“It has taken me almost ten years to get to this point of publishing this book.” In this Politics and Prose Bookstore video, Nawaaz Ahmed talks about what led him to write his debut novel, Radiant Fugitives (Counterpoint, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“‘Sometimes it’s a relief,’ he said lugubriously, ‘to see a face you recognize in an unfamiliar place. Other times you think, oh no, not him again,’” reads Rachel Cusk from her novel Transit (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), the second volume in her Outline trilogy, in this 2017 reading at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
In this Politics and Prose Live video, Tahmima Anam reads from her new novel, The Startup Wife (Scribner, 2021), and discusses writing about marriage and the start-up world with author and editor Megha Majumdar.
