In this video, Jess Arndt’s action text “Collective Body Possum” is performed by Swedish electronic music duo the Knife during their 2014 world tour. Arndt, whose debut story collection, Large Animals, was published in May by Catapult, is featured in “First Fiction 2017” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Based on the 1966 Southern gothic novel by Thomas Cullinan, The Beguiled takes place during the Civil War as a young, injured Union Army corporal is taken in at a Southern girls’ boarding school. This film adaptation is written and directed by Sofia Coppola and stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell.

“That’s the beauty of fiction...you can tell a really specific story and it has a way of connecting with people. And they can continue telling that story to other people.” Editor and author Rakesh Satyal speaks about his writing process and new novel, No One Can Pronounce My Name (Picador, 2017), on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

Roxane Gay reads part of “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion” from her essay collection, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014). Her debut memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The first summer fair of the season, the East Avalon Fair, was a ‘coming out’ party for everyone on the eastern tip of the island.” Julia Fierro reads from a draft of her novel The Gypsy Moth Summer (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, for the Why There Are Words reading series.

“I was not at my mother’s side when she took her last breath.” Sherman Alexie reads from his debut memoir, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (Little, Brown, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Is this love the trouble you promised?” Tracy K. Smith, who has been named the twenty-second poet laureate of the United States, reads her poem “Wade in the Water,” which will be published in a poetry collection in 2018.

“the sky unbearable / red / hungry / as a skinless hook...” Raven Jackson reads “jar” from her chapbook, little violences (CutBank, 2017), in this short film by Felipe Vara de Rey.