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In this 2020 McSweeney’s Instagram Live reading, Mai Nardone reads an excerpt from his short story “The Tum-Boon Brigade,” which appears in his debut story collection, Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023). Nardone’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I try my hand at remembering. An origin story is what you make of it. It can be a culture, a treasured heirloom, or a history, reduced.” In this Center for Fiction event, Hafizah Augustus Geter reads from her book The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin (Random House, 2022) and speaks with New York Times Magazine staff writer and author J Wortham. For more from Geter, read “Twelve Ways to Create Space to Write No Matter Where You Are” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, George Saunders speaks about his latest story collection, Liberation Day (Random House, 2022), and the need to be in a “holy state of not knowing anything” when starting a new writing project. Liberation Day is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“The best writing advice I ever got was, don’t give up and you can be a writer, if you work really hard and don’t stop writing.” In this Audible interview, New Yorker staff writer and author Ariel Levy speaks about finding her voice, writing about women’s lives, her experience with maternal grief, and her memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply (Random House, 2017).
“When I think about people, I think about space, how much space a person takes up and how much use that person provides.” In this Alaska Quarterly Review reading, Weike Wang reads from her second novel, Joan Is Okay (Random House, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“The place was so deathly still and deserted that you might have thought the time long after midnight.” In this 2001 reading at the 92nd Street Y, the late W. G. Sebald reads from his novel Austerlitz (Random House, 2001), translated from the German by Anthea Bell, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Everyone can do a paragraph.” Emily Rapp Black speaks about working with a writing partner during the pandemic in this video for the Throw Us a Line series hosted by Lighthouse Writers Workshop program director Andrea Dupree. Black’s new memoir, Sanctuary (Random House, 2021), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“It follows the band’s ascent up the wobbly ladder of stardom and the Faustian pact with fame, the hidden costs of getting what they want and the way dreams are not quite the same when they come true.” In this Booktopia TV video, David Mitchell talks about the premise of his eighth novel, Utopia Avenue (Random House, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“For me, the library was an ultimate treat, it was a second home, and it was a place that I could lose myself if I had to, it was an escape.” In this 2019 video, Afia Atakor speaks about how the library inspired her writing career and introduces a crowd of librarians to her debut novel, Conjure Women (Random House, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I have an obligation to human beings, my characters, so that’s all I care about.” In this PEN International interview, Yiyun Li speaks about the expectation as a Chinese American writer to be a spokesperson for a particular experience, and how she enjoys exploring the interior struggles of her characters. Li won the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for her novel Where Reasons End (Random House, 2020).
