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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.
In this Books Are Magic event, Patricia Engel reads from her story collection The Faraway World (Avid Reader Press, 2023) and speaks with Naima Coster about writing habits and what inspires her to write. The Faraway World is featured in Page One 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.
“An unhappy childhood is a treasure for a writer,” says Hilary Mantel in this CBS Saturday Morning interview about her story collection Learning to Talk, which was first published in England in 2003 and published in the U.S. for the first time by Henry Holt this month. The stories feature young characters growing up in mid-twentieth-century England and are inspired by Mantel’s childhood.
Drive My Car is a film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and starring Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura. The film, which won best screenplay at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and the 2022 Oscar for best international feature film, follows the relationship between a widowed theater actor-director and a young woman hired to be his chauffeur.
After Yang, a film adaptation of Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” from his collection Children of the New World (Picador, 2016), follows a family conflicted with how to repair their android companion. Starring Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, the film is directed by Kogonada and will be in theaters and available to stream on March 4.
“I remembered something that Raymond Chandler said, ‘When you don’t know what do to next, bring on the man with the gun,’” says Stephen King in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, in which he discusses experiencing writer’s block and shares the top five favorites stories he’s written.
“A story is an invitation to ask questions, to seek out answers or puzzle through ideas that…need narrative to think through,” says Meron Hadero, winner of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, in this virtual presentation of the prize featuring the short-listed writers and introduced by Goretti Kyomuhendo, chair of judges.
“Another lie. Though every one makes what I’m about to do all the more easier.” Watch the first episode of “To Be Continued…” written by author Sandie Jones and animated by Hailley Furkalo. This five-part series pairs authors from Reese’s Book Club with animators for a short story with twists, turns, and cliffhangers.
“All writing is really an act of translation, we’re trying to ask someone to inhabit someone else’s experience for long enough to understand some portion of it.” In this 2018 interview for Oregon Humanities Center’s UO Today, Danielle Evans reads from her debut story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Riverhead Books, 2010), and speaks about her writing practice and teaching. Evans is featured in “The Confounding Insistence on Innocence” by Naomi Jackson in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
