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In celebration of Women’s History Month, the folks at Open Road Media put together this clip of some of their authors talking about "the suffragettes, poets, novelists, daughters, and grandmothers whose courage, talent, and dedication serve as daily inspiration in their work."
2016 is a Leap Year, meaning February gets an extra day on Monday, February 29. Push this one step further and invent—instead of an extra day—an extra month. Where would this thirteenth month fall in the calendar? In what season? Would it be named for an event or a person? Write a story that takes place within this month, using the invented details to enhance the story’s plot and tone.
Jérémie Guez, author of the new novel, Eyes Full of Empty (Unnamed Press, 2015), translated from the French by Edward Gauvin, talks about being inspired by James Ellroy's work. Ellroy enthusiastically introduces Guez at Skylight Books in Los Angeles for a reading of the new novel.
Raphael Montes is featured in this book trailer for his English-language debut, Perfect Days (Penguin Press, 2016), a crime novel translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin. Montes was a finalist for both the Benvirá Literature Prize and the Machado de Assis Prize from the Brazilian Academy of Letters for his first novel, Suicidas (Saraiva/Benvirá, 2012).
Umberto Eco speaks with Paul Holdengräber at Kensington Town Hall in November 2011 about his novel The Prague Cemetary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), and the future of books.
In an interview with Tonny Vorm, Umberto Eco speaks from his home in Milan about the "pleasure of spending six, seven, eight years to prepare a story" and shares other words of wisdom and advice to offer to aspiring young writers. Eco's latest novel, Numero Zero, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon, was published in November by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
"I didn't have any intention of representing India accurately or inaccurately. I had a story in mind and I pursued the story ruthlessly." Karan Mahajan speaks about his debut novel, Family Planning (Harper Perennial, 2008), and the creative challenges faced by a new generation of Indian writers. His second novel, The Association of Small Bombs (Viking, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“A lot of poems for me begin in the sense of feeling annihilated in some way or another.” Idra Novey discusses her poetic beginnings at the Academy of American Poets’ 2014 Poets Forum. Her debut novel, Ways to Disappear (Little, Brown, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“‘Working in a soup kitchen is great for a writer or any artist. There are many unproductive days when you might hate yourself otherwise. You are eating the food, using the water, breathing the air—and NOT HELPING. But if you feed the hungry, you can’t deny you’re doing something worth doing,’” writes Annie Dillard to John Freeman in “Such Great Heights” by Freeman in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Write a scene in a short story in which a character with creative inclinations feels like he’s not being a helpful member of society. How does he shake himself out of it? Does his chosen course of action help his productivity as an artist? What does this change reveal about his place in the world of the story?
"A lightning flash split the gloom and a rumble of cascading boulders burst from the sky." At an event at the Library of Congress, A. Igoni Barrett reads from "The Shape of a Full Circle," a short story from his collection Love Is Power, Or Something Like That (Graywolf Press, 2013). His debut novel, Blackass (Graywolf Press, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
