Jump to navigation Skip to content
“Every hand that once reached / for me still haunts me at the most unexpected times.” In this video, Aimee Nezhukumatathil reads a selection of poems covering her time as a high school mascot, bad reviews of the seven wonders of the world, and The Incredible Hulk for Poetry @ Tech in Atlanta. A Q&A with Nezhukumatathil by Ross Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I can make worlds. That’s literally my job, is to make worlds,” says Awkaeke Emezi in this American Writers Museum video. “Instead of searching for other people to give me a place to belong, I just bent one into existence myself.” Emezi’s latest novel, The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead Books, 2020), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“the highest promise we could offer / was one to a land or man or idea / greater than we.” In this O, Miami video, Nate Marshall reads a poem from his new collection, Finna, out this month from One World. A Q&A with Marshall by Julian Randall appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I worked on the book until I was about halfway done with it before I told anyone about it.” Adrian Tomine talks about his graphic memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn and Quarterly, 2020), and how he was able to revert to his childhood version of making comics for his own amusement in this virtual Politics & Prose Bookstore event with critic Jason Zinoman. For more Tomine, read his answers to our Ten Questions.
“The Nickel Academy becomes a proving ground for people’s goodness, for their tendency towards evil, and it proves character,” says Colson Whitehead about his latest novel, The Nickel Boys (Doubleday, 2019), in this video for the Get Lit virtual book club series with host of WNYC’s All Of It Alison Stewart.
“It’s full of bold writing, fresh writing, accomplished writing, from points of view that aren’t always expected.” Judges Margaret Busby, Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson talk about the thirteen novels longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, which includes This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel, The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Real Life by Brandon Taylor, and How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang.
In this edition of PEN to Paper, James Hannaham talks about how “word choice creates atmosphere and character all by itself” and leads writers through several language-related exercises, including one that involves taking a New York Times online quiz on dialect.
“The deal with Florida is the charlatans and lunatics and Snapchat-famous plastic surgeons. It is the Ponzi schemes, the byzantine corruption, the evangelical fervor and the consenting-adult depravity....” In this Books & Books virtual event, Kent Russell reads from his memoir, In the Land of Good Living (Knopf, 2020), and discusses Florida and his writing experience with author and sibling Karen Russell. In the Land of Good Living is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“If you’re not happy, you’re nothing at all.” In this new television adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel, Brave New World, a seemingly perfect society is challenged and begins to unravel. Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Jessica Brown Findlay, Hannah John-Kamen, Harry Lloyd, and Demi Moore, the series premiered on the new Peacock streaming service on July 15.
“On the day we met, she told me she was named after the sexiest country music star alive. And that she knew how to fire a gun. And that she was one hundred percent Cherokee.” In this video, Ashleigh Bryant Phillips reads “Shania” from her debut story collection, Sleepovers (Hub City Press, 2020). Phillips is featured in “First Fiction 2020” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
