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“In literature you get these magical moments when you can actually feel yourself to be somebody else...and those moments I think are incredibly important for the development of a society because they’re expansive moments.” Hisham Matar, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in autobiography for his debut memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (Random House, 2016), talks about the role literature plays in creating social change.
“You read so many versions of girlhood or what it’s supposed to look like and it can feel very alienating and untrue.” At the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, author Emma Cline discusses her writing process and the inspiration for her debut novel, The Girls (Random House, 2016), with Ellen Sussman.
“A story is made up of situations.” In this Skillshare video, Yiyun Li explains the difference between an everyday situation and a story. Li’s debut memoir, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life (Random House, 2017), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Written and directed by Graham Sack, this virtual reality film is an adaptation of George Saunders’s debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (Random House, 2017). Saunders speaks about his debut novel in “The Emotional Realist Talks to Ghosts” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“There are no rules to writing...and if there are rules, really they’re there to be broken.” Colum McCann, author of Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice (Random House, 2017), speaks to Jeffrey Brown about the challenges and excitement of writing today at the 2017 AWP conference and book fair.
In this video, Book Riot offers six recommendations for books that feature refugees including Girl at War (Random House, 2015) by Sara Nović, Inside Out and Back Again (Harper, 2011) by Thanhha Lai, and Exit West (Riverhead Books, 2017) by Mohsin Hamid.
In this Louisiana Channel interview, Imbolo Mbue speaks about her love of New York City and the challenges of being black and working-class in America, which she explores in her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016). Mbue is one of the debut authors featured in “First Fiction 2016” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this New Yorker video, Teju Cole, author of Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016), reflects on his American citizenship and Nigerian upbringing from his home in Brooklyn. Cole is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I didn’t understand that I had to be ruthless. I didn’t understand that my job as a writer wasn’t to coddle my characters and create these fairy tales for them to live.” At Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Jesmyn Ward and Edwidge Danticat discuss writing about their homes and the power of place.
“I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light...” This animated video by Milos features Billy Collins narrating his poem “Introduction to Poetry” fromThe Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1996). Collins’s new poetry collection, The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
