Poets & Writers Theater

“It seemed I had stumbled into a collective desire to connect in one of the only ways that felt safe to people.” In this Pop-Up Magazine video, Rachel Syme speaks about organizing a worldwide pen pal exchange called Penpalooza, which is featured in “Pandemic Pen Pals” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“For people who have so little…it’s so deeply appreciated that it’s almost life-changing.” In this 2010 video, Gary Fine speaks about the Prisoner Express program, which sends packages of books along with a personalized, handwritten note to participants who are incarcerated. For more on the growth of the program, read “Books Offer Lifeline in Incarceration” by Alissa Greenberg in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“You knew that she was motivated by the basic concept that we’re here for a short while, and we have to make sure we make it about something larger than just ourselves.” In this video from the 2020 National Book Awards Ceremony, authors and colleagues speak about the influence of Carolyn Reidy, the late president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, who was honored with the National Book Foundation’s 2020 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Reidy died on May 12, 2020 at the age of seventy-one.

In this Literary Hub video, Book Marks editors Dan Sheehan and Katie Yee offer a week in review of book news, including the Center for Fiction’s 2020 First Novel Prize longlist and plans for a new HBO Max series of bedtime stories read by celebrities such as Idris Elba, Lucy Liu, and Keanu Reeves.

“If we only read the same type of authors all our lives it’s like you’re only hearing one thread, one voice.” In this video from the 2019 Louisiana Literature festival, Elif Shafak talks about reading the same books over and over again as a child, and why it’s more inspiring to read “from East and West, fiction and nonfiction.”

In this edition of PEN to Paper, James Hannaham talks about how “word choice creates atmosphere and character all by itself” and leads writers through several language-related exercises, including one that involves taking a New York Times online quiz on dialect.

“I’m also asking you to unleash the cry of the subconscious, and to listen and record that voice from within without fear or judgment. Listening to yourself in that way is actually a radical act of self-love.” Ananda Naima González leads an exercise in asemic writing for PEN to Paper, a video series of original writing exercises from authors participating in PEN America’s 2020 Digital World Voices Festival: These Truths.

“I acquired a copy of my great-great-grandfather’s diaries in 2013,” says Lauren Russell about the inspiration for her new book, Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020), at an event with author Megan Milks for Brown University’s Authors in the Archives series in 2019. Descent is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The most astonishing thing to happen in the almost 14 billion years since the birth of the cosmos is that ordinary, apparentle inert matter, has—by its self-organizing capacity (or, autopoesis)—become conscious.” Harry Dodge reads from his debut book, My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin Books, 2020), and discusses its themes in a conversation with Maggie Nelson in their Los Angeles home.

As part of a fundraising effort to help Chicago independent bookstore Volumes Bookcafe during the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, Rebecca Makkai enlisted over two dozen writers—including Kristen Arnett, Alexander Chee, Garth Greenwell, Andrew Sean Greer, Lauren Groff, Mira Jacob, Mitchell S. Jackson, R. O. Kwon, Victor LaValle, and Susan Orlean—to participate in a collective performance of the dance scene from John Hughes’s classic 1985 high school film, The Breakfast Club.  

In this PEN to Paper series video, PEN America president Jennifer Egan guides viewers through a short writing exercise involving a “word throw,” designed to help writers to free up their minds to the unconscious imagination. The series is part of PEN America’s 2020 World Voices Festival: These Truths, held digitally this year.

On The Kristen Arnett Show based at the Black Mountain Institute and presented by Literary Hub on Instagram Live, Arnett talks about launching the paperback edition of her first novel, Mostly Dead Things (Tin House Books, 2019), and discusses life during the pandemic with special guest Hanif Abdurraqib.

For the Literary Hub’s Rekindled series, ZYZZYVA magazine editor Oscar Villalon interviews illustrator and cartoonist Lisa Brown about her book Long Story Short: 100 Classic Books in Three Panels (Algonquin Books, 2020), which distills well-known works of literature—including Atonement, Beloved, Madame Bovary, Twilight, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being—to three-panel comic strips.

“We would try by any means / To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, / To let go the means, to wake.” In the first installment of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s AAWW at Home series in which writers share how they have been spending their time during the coronavirus pandemic, Celeste Ng talks about her current activities and concerns, and reads Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness (Vintage Books, 1968).

“This is how you tell a story,” says narrator Tilda Swinton in a short film written and directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, which goes through six steps of a writer’s process paired with a dance choreographed by Kyle Abraham. “There is a problem. It is an obstacle so monumental that it seems unlikely our tiny protagonist will be able to overcome something so impressive. It’s a mountain pressing down, it’s a witch, a curse, a giant.”

“We are all connected. We are not separate from the waters of the world.” In this TEDx Talk, artist and water advocate Basia Irland speaks about her ongoing project Ice Receding/Books Reseeding, which is featured in “The Written Image” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“People turn to the dictionary for lots of reasons and we can be sure of one thing from this evidence: words matter.” In this video, Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large of Merriam-Webster, explains how the 2019 Word of the Year was chosen and what the most looked up words say about our mindset.

“A good bookseller absolutely is another kind of discoverer and thinker of history,” says Kevin Young in this trailer for The Booksellers. The documentary, directed by D. W. Young and executive produced by Parker Posey, explores the history, personalities, and business of bookselling in New York City.

“In the silence of the house with the rain falling all around me—and the sound of African rain is very unique unto itself—I did two things: I picked up a piece of paper and I drew with great detail and care what was on the mantelpiece. And I finished that, and I took another piece of paper, and I wrote a poem about the rain.” Booker Prize–winning author Ben Okri talks about the life-changing moment when he began writing poetry in this interview from the 2019 Louisiana Literature Festival in Denmark.

Vita & Virginia is a film adaptation of Eileen Atkins’s 1992 play of the same name, based on love letters Virginia Woolf exchanged over the course of a decade-long affair with Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration behind Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando: A Biography. Directed by Chanya Button, the biopic stars Gemma Arterton as West, Elizabeth Debicki as Woolf, and Isabella Rossellini as Baroness Sackville.