Poets & Writers Theater

“It took Arnold six and a half seconds to fall five hundred feet. During that time, an image of his son, Paris, flashed before his eyes....” At the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Edwidge Danticat reads “Without Inspection” from her third story collection, Everything Inside (Knopf, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Looking for Alaska (Dutton Books, 2005), John Green’s debut young adult novel based on his own experiences at a boarding school, has been adapted into a television miniseries for Hulu. Created by Josh Schwartz, the teen drama stars Kristine Froseth, Charlie Plummer, Uriah Shelton, and Sofia Vassilieva.

“What we can contribute is an open space that’s really excited about learning and welcoming poets and writers from across different communities of literature in New York.” In this BRIC TV video, Rachel Valinsky, the artistic director of the Brooklyn nonprofit Wendy’s Subway, talks about the organization’s history and programming, and how it functions in the community as a reading room, event space, and publisher.

“There’s a long history, and many families and stories that just haven’t been told.” Tommy Orange talks about the need for more Native American stories in literature and the origins of his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), in this interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” The life of Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison is remembered through this 2004 interview for CBS Sunday Morning highlighting what was most important to her: being a mother and a writer. Morrison died at the age of eighty-eight on August 5, 2019.

Geovani Martins, author of the debut short story collection, The Sun on My Head (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches, talks about incorporating slang and the language used by different regions in Rio de Janeiro into his writing, and the new generation of thinkers and artists from the favelas of Brazil.

On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, presents her summer reading recommendations including Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift Hogarth, 2019), Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black (Knopf, 2018), and Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

“I don’t really think you can teach people to write, you can just teach them to read. Read everything you can about your setting or your characters or whatever it is you don’t know.” In this Granta video, Sarah Moss, the author most recently of Ghost Wall (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), offers advice on first drafts, research, and the importance of reading to a writer.

“Each book has an individual, singular voice…some are very interior, some are very extravagant,” says Xiaolu Guo, one of the judges for the 2019 Booker Prize, about the thirteen titles nominated for the longlist of the prize. The “Booker Dozen” includes The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma, and Lanny by Max Porter. 

Actor and musician Daveed Diggs explains the historical premise of Rivers Solomon’s Afro-futurist science fiction novella, The Deep (Saga Press, 2019), which is inspired by the Hugo Award–winning song of the same name written by Diggs’s rap group Clipping.

The Kitchen is a film adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novel of the same name written by Ollie Masters and illustrated by Ming Doyle. Directed by Andrea Berloff and starring Tiffany Haddish, Melissa McCarthy, and Elisabeth Moss, the film set in the 1970s follows three women in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen who take over organized crime operations after their husbands are sent to prison.

“The ‘need’ is many things in the book...a child’s need for milk and then also the mother’s need for the child to relieve her of the milk and the mother’s need for her children, that love going two directions.” On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Helen Phillips talks about her second novel, The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019), different reactions to the book, her own experiences as a mother, and some of the inspiration for its themes. For more Phillips, read her answers to Ten Questions about her novel.

“You pick the right tool for the job, and sometimes fantasy is a way to open up a story and convey a universal truth, and sometimes realism.” Colson Whitehead speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his writing process and the true story that inspired his latest novel, The Nickel Boys, which was published this week by Doubleday.

The Good Liar (HarperCollins, 2016), the debut novel by Nicholas Searle about a wealthy widow who crosses paths with a seasoned con artist, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Bill Condon, the film stars Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, and Russell Tovey.

“The protagonist of my novel is forced to construct a persona because the persona that he inherits from his father and from society doesn’t match who he actually is.” Nigerian American author Tope Folarin, winner of the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing, talks about the theme of identity construction in his debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man (Simon & Schuster, 2019).

This book trailer by filmmaker Diego Ongaro introduces Courtney Maum’s third novel, Costalegre (Tin House Books, 2019), which tells the story of an American heiress and art collector, her neglected teenage daughter, and the elite group of artists who escape into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II. For more from Maum, read her installment of Ten Questions.

“I like questions, my imagination likes them too.” In this A Word on Word series video, Alexander Chee speaks about his essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (Mariner Books, 2018), and his writing process which involves engaging in conversation with his fictional characters.

“We can be unrelentingly hard to ourselves, and under such circumstances, it’s a shame to not let the world’s light stick to us when we have the chance.” Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf Press, 2019), speaks about the importance of prioritizing compliments over criticism in this PBS NewsHour video.

In this PBS NewsHour video, NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada highlight their favorite books for summer reading, which include Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Jill Ciment’s The Body in Question (Pantheon, 2019), and José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018).

“Ultimately I knew that words have power.” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary about Toni Morrison is an exploration of the author’s life story, her values and challenges, and her creative work. The film includes engaging interviews with Morrison, as well as notable peers, colleagues, and admirers such as Hilton Als, Russell Banks, Angela Davis, Walter Mosley, Sonia Sanchez, and Oprah Winfrey.