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“Didn’t they know, low in their bones, that as long as they moved and the land unfurled, that as long as they searched, they would forever be searchers and never quite lost?” reads C Pam Zhang from her debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead Books, 2020), in this conversation with writer and comedian Karen Chee hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
In this virtual craft talk, Patricia Lockwood reads from her debut novel, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead Books, 2021), and talks about her writing process and how her poetry influences her prose writing with Zach Powers, novelist and director of communications at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“Roberto was brown and his people lived next door so of course I went over on weekends.” Listen to Bryan Washington read an excerpt from his debut story collection, Lot (Riverhead Books, 2019), for this Penguin Random House video series, which encourages listening to audiobooks before bed to help with sleep.
“I spent the first two years reworking the first twenty pages of this novel, over and over and over again,” says R. O. Kwon about writing her debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), in this 2018 Asian American Writers’ Workshop event with Alexander Chee. “I realized at the end of those two years that you can’t build a foundation if you don’t know what that house will look like,” says Kwon. “Am I building an opera house? Am I building a skyscraper?”
Watch the “first, the greatest, and possibly the last” Riverhead Variety Show hosted by Traci Thomas and starring Kristen Arnett, Katie Kitamura, Chang-rae Lee, Brandon Taylor, and Joanne Tompkins, as they speak about their new books and invite viewers into their refrigerators and closets.
“Is this a voice that I can sustain throughout this novel? Will it continue to be, and also most importantly, can it sustain my curiosity?” In this AAWW virtual event, Chang-rae Lee reads from his novel My Year Abroad (Riverhead Books, 2021) and speaks with Bryan Washington about developing characters and publishing a book during a pandemic.
“Pursue it as if it were possible,” says Álvaro Enrigue about advice for young writers in this 2017 interview filmed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. “I’m a kid from Colonia Nápoles in Mexico City…there was no way of making an equation that would start with my childhood and finish with me talking to you in Louisiana about my work, in Denmark, as a writer.” Enrigue is the author of several novels, including Sudden Death (Riverhead Books, 2016), his first to be translated into English.
In this Barnes & Noble Book Club virtual event, Brit Bennett speaks about the themes and writing inspiration behind her latest novel, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead Books, 2020), with Kiley Reid, and answers questions from readers. The novel was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.
“I come from a place of not belonging and perhaps I started writing in order to make a place where I belonged in the world of novels or plays.” In this AAWW video, Yu Miri answers questions about her life and writing process, and reads from her novel Tokyo Ueno Station (Riverhead Books, 2020), translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles, which won the 2020 National Book Award in translated literature.
National Book Award–winning novel The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books, 2013) by James McBride has been adapted into a seven-episode series starring Rafael Casal as Cook, Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass, Ethan Hawke as John Brown, and Joshua Caleb Johnson as Onion. The series finale airs this Sunday on Showtime.
