Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Patricia Engel reads from her story collection The Faraway World (Avid Reader Press, 2023) and speaks with Naima Coster about writing habits and what inspires her to write. The Faraway World is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Nikki Giovanni and Renée Watson speak about their love of libraries, the writers who have influenced them, and Maya’s Song (HarperCollins, 2022), a picture book for young readers about the life and work of Maya Angelou written by Watson and illustrated by Bryan Collier.

The Lying Life of Adults is a television series adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2019 coming-of-age novel of the same name. Set in Naples in the 1990s, the six-episode Netflix series follows the adventures of Giovanna, who leaves the suburbs to meet her estranged aunt in the city.

“The way in is always through human beings.” Stephen Markley discusses his new novel, The Deluge (Simon & Schuster, 2023), and the importance of emotionally connecting to characters when writing about topics such as climate change in this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview.

“I think of literature as a science that really cares about experiments, you can consider the wildest ideas, and you can play with theories that are wrong, that are delirious and insane.” Chilean novelist Benjamín Labatut, author of When We Cease to Understand the World (New York Review of Books, 2021), translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West, speaks with his Danish translator Peter Adolphsen for this Louisiana Channel interview.

Living is a film directed by Oliver Hermanus with a screenplay by Nobel Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Set in 1950s London, Bill Nighy plays a hardworking civil servant who reflects on his life while facing a fatal illness.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Jeffrey Brown sits down with literary critics Gilbert Cruz of the New York Times and Maureen Corrigan of NPR to discuss their favorite fiction and nonfiction books of 2022, which include Trust by Hernan Diaz, Foster by Claire Keegan, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, Stay True by Hua Hsu, and Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun.

“Literature is there to show us how there can be beauty in meaning, and this is what makes the literary experience so unique...and I’m hunting for this feeling all the time.” Hernan Diaz, author most recently of Trust (Riverhead Books, 2022), speaks about his relationship with reading, writing, and language in this Louisiana Channel interview with Marc-Christoph Wagner at the New York Public Library.

Watch the trailer for Kindred, an FX/Hulu television adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s acclaimed novel of the same name. Adapted by showrunner and series creator Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the show stars Mallori Johnson as Dana, an aspiring writer who moves into a new home and is suddenly transported back and forth in time emerging at a nineteenth-century plantation.

“I should have turned out normal, but I didn’t. What happened?” Watch the book trailer for Kevin Maloney’s second novel, The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual reading, Poets & Writers editor in chief Kevin Larimer introduces the 2022 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors, Sari Botton, author of And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo (Heliotrope Books, 2022); Shareen K. Murayama, author of Housebreak (Bad Betty Press, 2022); Madhushree Ghosh, author of Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (University of Iowa Press, 2022); David Santos Donaldson, author of Greenland (Amistad, 2022); and Jane Campbell, author of Cat Brushing (Grove Atlantic, 2022).

“Joan Didion taught me that family was always part of the story, along with place, and that the writer’s job was to face the terror, beauty, banality, and truth inherent in being a citizen of both.” In this video, Hilton Als speaks about Joan Didion’s influence on his writing at a celebration of her life and work held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.

“This whole thing has been a great big fat lesson in just be yourself.” In this Center for Fiction event, Dawn Winter talks about writing her debut novel, Sedating Elaine (Knopf, 2022), with her editor Jenny Jackson, vice president and executive editor at Knopf.

In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, George Saunders speaks about his latest story collection, Liberation Day (Random House, 2022), and the need to be in a “holy state of not knowing anything” when starting a new writing project. Liberation Day is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, finalists for the 2022 National Book Award in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translated literature, and young people’s literature read excerpts from their honored works. The event, hosted by writer Saraciea J. Fennell, is presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and the NYU Creative Writing Program.

In this CBS Mornings interview, best-selling authors Angie Thomas and Dhonielle Clayton speak about the importance of telling stories about Black joy and love, and teaming up with authors Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon for Whiteout (Quill Tree Books, 2022), the follow-up to their young adult novel Blackout (Quill Tree Books, 2021).

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble is an FX limited series adaptation starring Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg as a couple going through a bitter divorce.

It’s National Novel Writing Month! In this NaNoWriMo video, Rachel from the YouTube channel Rachel Writes offers five tips to help overcome perfectionism during writing sessions, which include short writing sprints and limiting revision time.

Watch the trailer for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a new film adaptation of the 1928 novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence. Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre with a screenplay by David Magee, the movie stars Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell and premieres in December on Netflix.

Akwaeke Emezi talks about their love of romance novels, exploring stories of grief, and writing seven books in four years, including Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (Riverhead Books, 2021) and You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty (Atria Books, 2022), in this interview for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah. For more from Emezi, read their installment of our Ten Questions series.