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"Ezekiel likes meetings as much as he likes fiddle music and black garter belts and dancing, and he makes no distinction among these things, which all comfort him." Lee Smith reads from her novel The Devil's Dream (Berkeley Books, 1992) at the New School. Smith's memoir, Dimestore: A Writer's Life (Algonquin Books, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Jhumpa Lahiri talks with Ann Goldstein, translator of Elena Ferrante's novels, about Ferrante, literature, translation, and writing at the Center for Jewish History. Lahiri, who is featured in the the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, has a new memoir, In Other Words (Knopf, 2016), which is translated from the Italian by Goldstein. For more from Lahiri and Goldstein, listen to the latest episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
"I hate to write. I loathe writing, but there's something in it that brings me back." Ethan Canin talks about inspiration, process, and his novel America America (Random House, 2008). His new novel, A Doubter's Almanac (Random House, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
A black bear wanders into a backyard in Florida and tries out lounging in a hammock. A sloth is found stranded on a highway in Ecuador, clinging to a guardrail for dear life, and is rescued by transportation officials. A rabbit gets catapulted up onto a roof during a windy storm in Northern Ireland and is saved by firefighters. Write a scene in which a character—human or animal—finds himself in a situation where he is a fish out of water. Does he explore the new and foreign environment surrounding him, or is he in need of rescue?
Tsitsiqui Apantzequa Chanaqua, a word in the Purépecha language found in Álvaro Enrigue's new novel, Sudden Death (Riverhead Books, 2016), translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, refers to "a game played with roses as if with balls." Several attempts are made to pronounce the term correctly, before Enrigue himself steps in.
In this humorous take on an author interview, Zach Galifianakis talks with John Wray, author of the novel Lowboy (Picador, 2010). Wray's newest novel, The Lost Time Accidents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), follows three generations of a family through multiple time periods and geographical locations.
"I wanted to regain control of experiencing my life in time." Heidi Julavits speaks about the inspiration behind her latest book, The Folded Clock: A Diary (Doubleday, 2015), and why bad book reviews prompted her to start the Believer.
The second year of Poets & Writers Live debuted with an event at the Brava Theater in San Francisco on January 10, 2015, featuring a "poetry keynote" by Pulitzer Prize–winner and former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan; conversations about inspiration and the writing life with dozens of authors, including Michelle Tea, David Shields, Wendy Lesser, and D. A. Powell; advice from agent Danielle Svetcov and other publishing professionals; a multigenre, multimedia “inspiration experiment” featuring dancer Sarah Fiske and musician Ben Arthur; and much more.
Melissa Faliveno, associate editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, leads a conversation with authors Wendy Lesser, Yiyun Li, Alejandro Murguia, D. A. Powell, and Michelle Tea about the personal, political, and professional reasons we choose to write while living in a culture, a family, or a community that doesn’t always value what we do.
Poets & Writers Live was at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, on October 17, 2015, for a program on independent publishing, featuring Barry Lopez, Matthew Dickman, Elena Passarello, Leni Zumas, Tom Spanbauer, Michael Wiegers, Mindy Nettifee, and many other authors, editors, agents, and literary professionals. More information about this and other Poets & Writers Live events can be found at pw.org/live.
