Facing the Blank Page
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"Filling the blank page is agony." Daniel Kehlmann, author of Measuring the World (Pantheon, 2006), shares his feellings on first drafts and the joyful satisfaction of writing in longhand.
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Theater video tags: talk
Andrew O'Hagan
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"The material for a novel is very often like tinder in your mind and in your heart, waiting for a spark to be thrown onto it." Andrew O'Hagan recounts the inspiration behind his newest novel, The Illuminations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
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Benjamin Moser
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"The reason she's legendary is that she has this work that is extremely weird... she wrote like nobody else." Benjamin Moser, editor of The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, published by New Directions this month, talks with Open Letter Books publisher Chad Post about the appeal of Lispector's writing.
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Arthur Sze on Translation
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"For me, translation is, in a way, the most intimate form of reading, the most concentrated form, and it's also vital to my process of creation." At the Academy of American Poets' 2014 Poets Forum, Arthur Sze speaks about how translation has influenced his work as a poet and reads from two Chinese poets—one classical and one contemporary.
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Poetry, Justice, and Alienation
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“In the realm of the poem, we can feel our full feelings and it doesn't have to present as nonpartisan or distant in any way.” In this conversation moderated by Eric Liu, executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program, poets Elizabeth Alexander and Claudia Rankine discuss recent events and poetry's role in history.
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David McCullough
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Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough recounts childhood memories of spending time in the library, and how important librarians have been to his work as a writer. His new book, The Wright Brothers, was published by Simon & Schuster last month.
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Ruth Rendell
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Ruth Rendell speaks about how to get into the mind of a character in a talk at the Center for Fiction in New York City. Rendell, best known for her Chief Inspector Wexford series, passed away on May 2 at the age of eighty-five.
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Holly Painter
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In this short film by Echelon Creative Studio, spoken word poet Holly Painter shares her experiences on becoming a poet and what storytelling means to her. Painter is a teacher, public speaker, and two-time Grand Slam Champion of the London Poetry Slam in Canada.
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The Music of Poetry
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"The lessons in tone, rhythm, cadence that you can learn from listening [to music] are important as a poet." Nathaniel Mackey, winner of the 2015 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, describes how listening to international music has influenced his writing process.
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The Breakbeat Poets
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Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall, editors of the poetry anthology The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015), speak about the impact hip-hop has had on poetry and on their own writing.
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