Poets & Writers Theater

This virtual event, hosted by Booksmith in San Francisco, celebrates the release of ZYZZYVA’s Spring 2021 Technology Issue with readings by contributors Juhea Kim, Troy Jollimore, Lee Conell, and William Brewer, and a reading by Alex Torres of a short story by the late Anthony Veasna So.

“Here is another reason to write a memoir: to utter what must not be erased.” In this 2017 PBS NewsHour video, Richard Ford speaks about his reasons for writing, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (Ecco, 2017), a memoir about his parents. “I wrote about my parents because, decades after their deaths and when I was no longer young, I realized that I plainly missed them.”

“It was like a portrait of the room with different people using that room day after day.” In this video for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, artist and writer Sophie Calle speaks about her time working as a hotel maid and documenting her observations of guests for her book The Hotel (Siglio Press, 2021). Calle’s project is featured in “The Written Image: The Hotel” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My adoption story didn’t come to me in any linear form and that’s always how they kind of want you to write memoir,” says Megan Culhane Galbraith about the hybrid structure of her debut memoir, The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, 2021), in this Left Banks Books interview with Rena J. Mosteirin. Galbraith is featured in “5 Over 50: 2021” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this National Centre for Writing video, Hannah Chukwu, assistant editor at Penguin Random House’s imprint Hamish Hamilton, speaks about receiving submissions from agents, pitching, and the editing process for the literary fiction and nonfiction authors she has worked with, including Bernardine Evaristo, Arundhati Roy, and Zadie Smith.

“For nearly two hours, someone stood in my doorway watching me.” Get in the Halloween spirit with this animated video based on a true story produced by Jezebel for their annual Scary Story contest. Read this fiction prompt from The Time Is Now for inspiration to write your own terrifying tale.

“I am a product of this country that I interrogate in this book,” says Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021), in this episode of Coffee & Conversations with Enrique Rosell, program manager at Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab. Samaha’s debut memoir is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It wasn’t until I was assigned the family tree project at the age of nine, the same age as my mother when she became a refugee, that I began to understand that she had survived a war.” In this Greenlight Bookstore virtual event, Grace M. Cho reads from her memoir, Tastes Like War (Feminist Press, 2021), which is shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award in nonfiction, and speaks with Sun Yung Shin about breaking the conventions of writing genres.

“My daily life was one of hunger and fear, but all around me I saw skyscrapers and lights and beauty.” In this video, Qian Julie Wang talks about growing up as an undocumented child in New York City and what she hopes readers will take away from her debut memoir, Beautiful Country (Doubleday, 2021).

“In the summer of 1929, after completing his freshman year at Harvard, James Agee headed west to spend a few months working as a migrant farm hand,” reads Leslie Jamison from her essay collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019) in this 2019 Harvard University event with writer and critic James Wood.

Kat Chow reads from her debut memoir, Seeing Ghosts (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), and speaks about the macabre humor of her family and growing up with loss in this virtual event for DC Public Library’s Summer Challenge series. The memoir is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’ve found myself constantly using the adverb ‘almost’ and so, I call myself an almost-writer. I reuse it all the time,” says André Aciman in this conversation about his new book of essays, Homo Irrealis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), with author Brian Dillon for the London Review Bookshop. “It’s just my way of approaching and avoiding certainties—because I don’t think there are any certainties in life.”

In this episode of Literary Hub’s Personal Space: The Memoir Show with host Sari Botton, Lilly Dancyger speaks about her debut memoir, Negative Space (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2021). Dancyger is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2021” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Lauren Hough speaks about her debut essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing (Vintage, 2021), with Ashley C. Ford, author of the memoir, Somebody’s Daughter (Flatiron Books, 2021), in this Town Hall Seattle video. Hough and Ford are featured in “The New Nonfiction 2021” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Flag Day is a film adaptation of Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life, directed by Sean Penn with a screenplay by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. Penn stars in the film along with his daughter Dylan Penn, Josh Brolin, Regina King, James Russo, and Katheryn Winnick.

Charm City Books bookseller Brandon Rashad Butts hosts this episode of Between Two Succulents with poet and screenwriter Brian Broome who speaks about his debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books, 2021). Broome is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2021” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

James Tate Hill discusses the themes of disability and self-acceptance in his debut memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff (Norton, 2021), and speaks about process and the author-agent relationship in this Writing Workshops Dallas conversation with agent and author Eric Smith. Hill’s memoir is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“The life we lead as writers is awful—it’s boring, tedious, lonely,” says Vivian Gornick. “But when it’s working, there’s nothing in the world that compares.” In this installment of the Paris Review’s “My First Time” series, Gornick discusses the experience of writing and publishing her first book, In Search of Ali Mahmoud: An American Woman in Egypt.

In this Poets & Writers Live virtual event, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021), with poet and novelist Destiny O. Birdsong. Smith is featured in a profile written by Birdsong in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Over time, pets become like their owners. Over time, I had become more like the fox.” In this book trailer for Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship (Spiegel & Grau, 2021), Catherine Raven reads an excerpt from her memoir, which is featured Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.