Poets & Writers Theater

News of the World is a film adaptation of Paulette Jiles’s 2016 novel of the same name, which was a National Book Award finalist. Tom Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a war veteran, widower, and newsreader in the 1870s who travels from town to town reading the news to locals and comes across a young orphaned girl played by Helena Zengel. 

“My father was raised in Calcutta, in the neighborhood where all of these Bengali films were shot,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri about growing up surrounded by Bengali cinema and how it influenced her second novel, The Lowland (Knopf, 2013), in this 2017 interview for Criterion Collection.

“That’s the moon—it’s the ghost of the sun wandering the sky at night,” says Daniel Kehlmann. In this video from Louisiana Channel, Kehlmann and fellow writers CAConrad, Georgi Gospodinov, Guadalupe Nettel, Delphine de Vigan, and Yoko Tawada discuss the moon’s mysterious presence and why writers are drawn to it as we watch visuals of the moon captured by NASA paired with Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

“Librarians and libraries have such a special place in my heart because growing up, like a lot of people, they were a safe place to go to after school.” In this video for Baker & Taylor, a provider of books for public libraries, Mateo Askaripour talks about the importance of libraries and his debut novel, Black Buck (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Barnes & Noble Book Club virtual event, Brit Bennett speaks about the themes and writing inspiration behind her latest novel, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead Books, 2020), with Kiley Reid, and answers questions from readers. The novel was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.

The Dig is a Netflix film adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan based on the 2007 novel of the same name by John Preston, which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England.

“To me, it was really important to do justice to the complexity of the lives of queer and trans people in my community, and the lives of queer and trans people of color more broadly.” In this Simon & Schuster video, Zeyn Joukhadar speaks about the journey of the protagonist in his second novel, The Thirty Names of Night (Atria Books, 2020). For more Joukhadar, read his installment of Ten Questions.

“I come from a place of not belonging and perhaps I started writing in order to make a place where I belonged in the world of novels or plays.” In this AAWW video, Yu Miri answers questions about her life and writing process, and reads from her novel Tokyo Ueno Station (Riverhead Books, 2020), translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles, which won the 2020 National Book Award in translated literature.

“She’s seen by those around her as being too much, but in fact, it’s not that she is too much, it’s that the world around her isn’t enough.” In this video for Perthshire Pride, Douglas Stuart introduces the characters from his debut novel, Shuggie Bain (Grove Press, 2020), for which he won the 2020 Booker Prize, and reads a short excerpt.

“When she first moved in, she endured months of casual cruelty like a tree would—without flinching.” In this video, Arundhati Roy reads from the first chapter of her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Knopf, 2017). Roy speaks about her much-anticipated book in “Worth the Wait” by Renée H. Shea in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I had a teacher who said, ‘Instead of lying, write it down. Cause it’s fiction. It’s not a lie anymore,’” says Jacqueline Woodson. “I feel like that’s one of the things I go back to, is that moment where my stories became legitimized.” In this episode of BookTube, Woodson sits down with CeCe Ewing, Ebony and Denice Nuñez, and Elaine Welteroth to discuss writing and reading, as well as gender and queer identity.

National Book Award–winning novel The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books, 2013) by James McBride has been adapted into a seven-episode series starring Rafael Casal as Cook, Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass, Ethan Hawke as John Brown, and Joshua Caleb Johnson as Onion. The series finale airs this Sunday on Showtime.

Let Him Go is a film adaptation of Larry Watson’s 2013 novel of the same name published by Milkweed Editions, which tells the story of a couple on a dangerous journey to reclaim their young grandson. Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, the film stars Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, and Lesley Manville. 

Looking for something eerie to watch? The Haunting of Bly Manor is a supernatural horror drama loosely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The Netflix series created by Mike Flanagan stars Carla Gugino, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, T’Nia Miller, Victoria Pedretti, Kate Siegel, and Henry Thomas.

“Maybe meeting a new flavor is alchemy. Today you can’t stand it, tomorrow it’s all you can stand.” In this New Yorker video essay, Bryan Washington talks about frequenting Korean restaurants in Houston and learning how to cook soondubu, a Korean tofu stew, as a way to reconnect with his mother. Washington’s new book, Memorial (Riverhead Books, 2020), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I really was thinking like I have to work harder than any other writer in the world. I just wanted so badly to figure this out, to figure out how to write.” In this installment of the Paris Review’s “My First Time,” Sheila Heti discusses writing her first book, The Middle Stories (McSweeney’s, 2001), and how she came to write short stories after quitting theater school.

“In Kenya, we have many peoples who make up the Kenyan nation. Please note: I am not using the word tribe. I do not use the word tribe to describe anybody.” In this African Literature Festival video, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o speaks with hosts Samuel Ndogo and Mingqing Yuan about writing his first novel in verse, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (New Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Director Barry Jenkins has released a teaser trailer for the upcoming television adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning historical fiction novel, The Underground Railroad (Doubleday, 2016). The limited Amazon series stars Thuso Mbedu as Cora, a woman who escapes a plantation in Georgia and finds the Underground Railroad, an actual train system transporting runaways to the north.

Rumaan Alam reads from his third novel, Leave the World Behind (Ecco, 2020), and speaks with Laura Marsh about developing his characters in this virtual event for the New Republic salon book series. A Q&A with Alam by Joshunda Sanders is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“If I had been comfortable with the world in which I was living, I would never have written a word.” In this video, 2020 MacArthur fellow Cristina Rivera Garza speaks about how she came to be a writer and the ways in which she explores the tension between English and Spanish from a transnational perspective. Rivera Garza’s Grieving: Dispatches From a Wounded Country (Feminist Press, 2020) is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.