Poets & Writers Theater

“She likes to lean her head against my neck. I had never wished she could speak, because we understand each other.” In this Square Books virtual event, Rivka Glachen reads from her second novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), and speaks with Alexandra Kleeman about research and process. The novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Didn’t they know, low in their bones, that as long as they moved and the land unfurled, that as long as they searched, they would forever be searchers and never quite lost?” reads C Pam Zhang from her debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead Books, 2020), in this conversation with writer and comedian Karen Chee hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

“It’s not as though I want to change the past. It’s really trying to understand how these things come together to bring you where you are.” Amy Tan speaks about her creative process in this video from PBS and American Masters previewing her documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir directed by James Redford.

“I look back, just with a little wonder. Wonder that I stuck with this thing.” In this 2004 interview with Jeffrey Brown for PBS NewsHour, Philip Roth reflects on his writing career and the role of a writer. Roth died at the age of eighty-five on May 22, 2018.

“The minute I’m within a sentence, I’m within an orbit of urgencies and rules that to some extent leave me in a position of caginess and wiliness,” says poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum about the presence of spontaneity in writing in this conversation about fables, expressions of queerness, and process with countertenor and actor Anthony Roth Costanzo. The Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists series is coproduced by Artforum and Bookforum, and sponsored by the Morgan Library & Museum.

“What do you see when you look at me?” Monster is a film adaptation of the 1999 YA novel of the same name by the late Walter Dean Myers, which tells the story of seventeen-year-old film student Steve Harmon and how his life is altered when he is charged with felony murder. With a screenplay written by Radha Blank, Cole Wiley, and Janece Shaffer, the film stars Kelvin Harrison, Jr.; Jennifer Hudson; John David Washington; and Jeffrey Wright.

In this virtual craft talk, Patricia Lockwood reads from her debut novel, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead Books, 2021), and talks about her writing process and how her poetry influences her prose writing with Zach Powers, novelist and director of communications at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. 

In this CBS Sunday Morning video, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles gives his book report on new recommendations for the summer, including Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel, Gold Diggers (Penguin Press, 2021), Great Circle (Knopf, 2021) by Maggie Shipstead, and The Man Who Lived Underground (Library of America, 2021) by the late Richard Wright, which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Nine Perfect Strangers is a television adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name starring Bobby Cannavale, Luke Evans, Regina Hall, Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, and Michael Shannon. The Hulu miniseries follows nine strangers who attend a wellness retreat at a place called the Tranquillum House run by a mysterious woman.

“I had always been interested in blending reality or elevating the surrealistic elements of real life.” In this episode of the Woolfer Author Series, host Carmen Tanner Slaughter talks with Morgan Jerkins about transitioning between nonfiction and fiction writing, and her debut novel, Caul Baby (Harper, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

The Mosquito Coast is a new Apple TV Plus television series based on the 1981 best-selling novel of the same name by Paul Theroux. The seven-episode series stars Justin Theroux as Allie Fox, a radical idealist and inventor who uproots his family to Mexico when they find themselves on the run from the U.S. government.

“I hadn’t really planned this to be narrated by an AI creature,” says Kazuo Ishiguro answering questions from readers about his latest novel, Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 2021), in this video for the Get Lit virtual book club series with host of WNYC’s All Of It Alison Stewart.

In this 2018 video, novelist Anne Garréta answers a series of questions at Albertine Books in New York City. Garréta’s new novel, In Concrete (Deep Vellum, 2021), translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Discipline is a massive component of creating a body of work, and the further I get, the more I see that that really is true,” says Rachel Cusk in this 2019 interview with Tonny Vorm at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Cusk’s novel Second Place (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It was sodden daylight. The rain had stopped, but she could hear water dripping off things.” In this Stony Brook University virtual event, Elizabeth McCracken reads from her new story collection, The Souvenir Museum (Ecco, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Roberto was brown and his people lived next door so of course I went over on weekends.” Listen to Bryan Washington read an excerpt from his debut story collection, Lot (Riverhead Books, 2019), for this Penguin Random House video series, which encourages listening to audiobooks before bed to help with sleep.

“I spent the first two years reworking the first twenty pages of this novel, over and over and over again,” says R. O. Kwon about writing her debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), in this 2018 Asian American Writers’ Workshop event with Alexander Chee. “I realized at the end of those two years that you can’t build a foundation if you don’t know what that house will look like,” says Kwon. “Am I building an opera house? Am I building a skyscraper?”

In this Books Are Magic video, authors Katherine Angel, Jo Ann Beard, Dantiel W. Moniz, and Jeannine Ouellette discuss the theme of desire for the Red Ink series, a quarterly series focused on women writers curated and moderated by Michele Filgate and cosponsored by Literary Hub.

The author of the best-selling novel The Alchemist sits down with Oprah Winfrey for a rare television interview. Coelho discusses the idea of the “personal legend” and how this guided his path to become a writer.

“You do not separate between dancing, music, writing, painting, it’s all one, it is expression of the self,” says Nawal El Saadawi about her journey to become a writer in this 2018 interview with Athena40’s Elizabeth Filippouli. The Egyptian writer and activist died at the age of eighty-nine on March 21, 2021.