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In this Books Are Magic video, Amanda Hess reads from her debut memoir, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), and speaks with Wesley Morris about her experiences using the internet for information and support during her pregnancy. Hess is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Written and directed by Bill Condon, this movie musical is based on the Tony Award–winning musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, and is the second film adaptation of the 1976 novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig. The film stars Jennifer Lopez in the titular role, alongside Diego Luna and Tonatiuh.
Chloé Caldwell reads from her second memoir, Trying (Graywolf Press, 2025), in this Green Apple Books event with Ariel Gore and Mia Arias Tsang in which they speak about the meaning of failure, the nuances of writing about relationships, and the process of representing queerness on the page. Caldwell’s book is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Think of an ordinary object you see almost every day: a chipped coffee mug, a frayed doormat, or the traffic light you always catch red. Write an essay that treats this object as if it were a silent witness to one chapter of your life. Give this object a voice and allow it to narrate this portion of your history in fragments, in terms of what it has seen you gain, what it has seen you lose, and the small, private moments it holds for you. Allow the object’s “voice” to reveal something about you that you rarely admit to others.
In Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Atria Books, 2017), Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo is hailed for her beauty, glamour, and sensational public life, and after announcing to auction her famous gowns to raise money for a breast cancer charity in honor of her late daughter, she grants a last interview to unknown journalist Monique Grant. During their conversations, Evelyn reveals the sides of herself often kept from the public—her relationship with her dutiful daughter, her heartbreaks, and her one true love—and the two connect in an unexpected way. Craft a scene in which the protagonist of your story hides behind a persona. When the facade falters, what is shown to be concealed?
