Poets & Writers Theater

In this event hosted by the Royal Society of Literature, Claire Messud, author most recently of This Strange Eventful History (Norton, 2024), and Anne Michaels, author most recently of Held (Knopf, 2024), speak about the shared themes of history and memory in their new novels in a conversation with novelist Elif Shafak.

“The book is, in many ways, about expectations and change.” In this Fane Productions event, Juli Min reads from her debut novel, Shanghailanders (Spiegel & Grau, 2024), and discusses her choice to begin the novel in the future in Shanghai and how the diverse and multifaceted city is its own character in a conversation with author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.

In this NBC News video, New York Times Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz talks about assembling the newspaper’s recently released list of top 100 books of the twenty-first century with the help of a panel of novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and book lovers.

In this event at the Writer’s Center, John Vercher reads from his third novel, Devil Is Fine (Celadon, 2024), and discusses how surrealist and absurdist fiction can be a vehicle to greater truths in a conversation with author Chet’la Sebree.

In this Books Are Magic event, Kat Tang reads from her debut novel, Five-Star Stranger (Scribner, 2024), and describes her experience revisiting a novel manuscript years after finishing her MFA in a conversation with author Jinwoo Chong.

Watch the trailer for the short film Greta, directed by Benjamin Font and based on the short story of the same name by Miciah Bay Gault, which was first published in Switchyard magazine.

In this NGC Bocas Lit Fest event, Edwidge Danticat speaks about the roots of her work and reads excerpts from her works of fiction and nonfiction, including the preface from her new essay collection, We’re Alone (Graywolf Press, 2024), in a conversation with Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw. A profile of Danticat by Renée H. Shea appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event, authors Hiromi Kawakami and Adam Ehrlich Sachs discuss writing about specific places, fiction’s relationship to personal truth, and their literary inspirations in a conversation with Motoyuki Shibata, translator and founder of the Japanese journal MONKEY New Writing From Japan. Kawakami’s new novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird (Soft Skull Press, 2024), ), translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda, is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2020 video hosted by Philip Brady, Johnny Temple, publisher and editor-in-chief of Akashic Books, and Ibrahim Ahmad, the press’s former editorial director, discuss a day in the life of a small press and offer insights on the publishing process. Ahmad, currently an executive editor at Viking, is featured in Agents & Editors in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Penguin Random House video, China Miéville and Keanu Reeves answer questions from readers about the writing process and inspiration for their collaborative novel, The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey, 2024), based on the comic book series BRZRKR.

“At the heart of it, it’s all about making things.” In this Ride Channel video, Bret Anthony Johnston, author most recently of the novel We Burn Daylight (Random House, 2024), talks about the link between skateboarding and writing, and how they are both “a way to escape yourself” and “give yourself over to something much bigger than you.” For more from Johnston, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this installment of the Visions of America: All Stories, All People, All Places series hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and PBS Books, Kaoukab Chebaro, head of Global Studies at the Columbia University Libraries, discusses the importance of first-person storytelling and her work in preserving the individual history of Arabs across the globe.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Dinaw Mengestu discusses the complex characters with sometimes uncertain motivations in his latest novel, Someone Like Us (Knopf, 2024), the nature of diasporic communities in American cities, and the mainstream expectations placed upon immigrant stories.

In this interview, Ferdia Lennon talks about his Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize–winning novel, Glorious Exploits (Henry Holt, 2024), which opens in Sicily in 412 BCE with two characters hatching a plan to direct a production of Euripides’s Medea.

In this virtual event hosted by the Strand Book Store, Sue Shapiro, author of The Forgiveness Tour: How to Find the Perfect Apology (Skyhorse, 2021), leads a conversation about best practices for pitching, submitting, and querying with agents and editors including Miya Lee, Rakesh Satyal, and Howard Yoon.

“I like being an outsider. It allows for that distance to enjoy the carnival for what it is.” In this event hosted by the Library of Congress, bestselling author Kevin Kwan speaks about his experiences as an author and the process of writing his latest novel, Lies and Weddings (Doubleday, 2024), with Library of Congress literary director Clay Smith.

Watch the trailer for The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, a film adaptation of the 2013 best-selling novel of the same name by Edward Kelsey Moore. Directed by Tina Mabry, and starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba, the film follows three lifelong best friends through life’s challenges and joys over four decades.

“I’m very interested in taking away a lot of the traditional furniture of a novel and making it a shorter experience and a more intense experience.” In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Kevin Barry reads from his new novel, The Heart in Winter (Doubleday, 2024), and talks about Irish labor history, his time spent with Irish communities in Montana, and his experiences writing in different forms.

In this New York Public Library event, comic book writers and artists Amy Chu, Arielle Jovellanos, Soo Lee, and Amy Reeder talk about character development and the diverse and influential roles women play in shaping the world of comics at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York.

In this CBS Sunday Morning video, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles recommends books for the summer, including the novels Godwin by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon, 2024), Same as It Ever Was (Doubleday, 2024) by Claire Lombardo, and Bear (Hogarth, 2024) by Julia Phillips, who is profiled in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.