“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.

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore video, Eric Nguyen speaks about his debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water (Knopf, 2021). Nguyen is featured in “First Fiction 2021” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I had written two books on slavery, and writing about slavery is to be in the center of a very difficult psychic territory, and so when I started doing the research for this project, I was very hungry for beauty—and I think I discovered it here,” says Saidiya Hartman about writing her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (Norton, 2019), winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, in this 2019 reading at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

“Hannah dreams the family buries her mother, a woman they haven’t seen in more than forty years.” Eman Quotah celebrates the book launch for her debut novel, Bride of the Sea (Tin House, 2021), with author Susan Muaddi Darraj in this Politics and Prose virtual event. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When people say nothing has changed, we’re trying to say through March, come and walk in my shoes.” In this 2013 Politics and Prose Bookstore video, the late congressman and author John Lewis speaks about the personal experiences that led to the creation of his award–winning graphic memoir trilogy March, cowritten by Andrew Aydin and illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell. Lewis died at the age of eighty on July 17, 2020.

“What I was interested in was the idea of this character committing to whiteness as this act, and the idea that race can be performed but at the same time it has these real implications in your life.” In this Politics and Prose virtual event, Brit Bennett speaks about the topics of duality, passing, and family in her latest novel, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead Books, 2020), with New York Times Magazine editor Jazmine Hughes.

“In those brown albums, our family at times looks like a family and at other times not.” Porochista Khakpour reads from her new book, Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity (Vintage, 2020), and talks to author Tania James in this virtual Politics and Prose Bookstore event video. 

“This book really is inspired by my grandfather, and a lot of it is actually true.” In this Politics and Prose video, Louise Erdrich talks about her most recent novel, The Night Watchman (Harper, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.