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“Being born a writer, I had to tell, I had to blab these stories out.” Maxine Hong Kingston speaks about her award-winning book, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, (Knopf, 1976) and the power of imagination with Jeffrey Brown and Celeste Ng, who chose the book for PBS NewsHour’s Now Read This book club.
“I’m still in awe of the range of stories and voices that they bring and the worlds that they open up. It’s an incredibly eclectic group.” In this video, Afua Hirsch and fellow members of the judging panel talk about the six books on the 2019 Booker Prize shortlist, which include The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, Quichotte by Salman Rushdie, and Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann.
How does the atmosphere of a cathedral change when a carnival slide is installed inside of it? A recent New York Times article reported that in an attempt to engage people into visiting and attending their services, a number of ancient churches and cathedrals in England have incorporated installations such as a four-story-tall winding carnival slide, a space-themed exhibit with a reproduction of the moon’s surface, and a mini golf course. Write a story that takes place in a cathedral that has incorporated some untraditional elements. Does the incongruity offer a different perspective of the space? Are the new features considered a disruption or are they welcomed?
“I hope people who read this book start thinking a little bit about the human cost, and they think about their own relationship to their own jobs.” Mystery and crime author Rob Hart talks about the main characters, themes, and key messages he hopes will stick with readers of his dystopian novel, The Warehouse (Crown, 2019).
The King is a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s history plays known as the Henriad: Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, and Henry V. Directed by David Michôd, the film stars Ben Mendelsohn as King Henry IV, Timothée Chalamet as King Henry V, and Joel Edgerton as Falstaff. Michôd and Edgerton cowrote the screenplay.
“What is the difference between the truth and what the characters are telling themselves? If I can figure that out, then things really start to crack open,” says Téa Obreht in a profile by Amy Gall in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine about a question she poses to herself during the writing process. Keep this question in mind as you try writing a short story that revolves around a main character whose version of the truth—about another character, herself, or an event that has happened—differs drastically from a more objective reality. How does the storytelling perspective demonstrate this discrepancy to the reader? What is hidden underneath this version of the story?
Bronze statue of Cheryl Strayed unveiled; the two sides of rejection in the publishing world; Mary-Kay Wilmers on the language of book reviews; and other news.
Washington Post book critic Ron Charles tries not to spoil the plot of Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland (Random House, 2019), in this humorous video for his Totally Hip Video Book Review series. Obreht is profiled by Amy Gall in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I’ve learned that writing is not for the impatient.” —Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s classic coming-of-age novel, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Greta Gerwig. The story takes place in the years following the American Civil War and revolves around the March sisters played by Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, Eliza Scanlen, and Emma Watson.
