Poets & Writers Theater

“Love was not a word that was ever said in our house. It suddenly felt like a great secret, rediscovered.” Chris Rush’s coming-of-age debut memoir, The Light Years (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), is set in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the author’s childhood and teen years spent exploring drugs and counterculture.

Khaled Khalifa talks with Renée Ragin at Duke University about questions of Arab and Syrian identity, the relationship between his writing and war, and themes of death and difficult journeys in his fifth novel, Death Is Hard Work (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). The novel, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price, is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It was the first time that literature felt personal, relevant, urgent....” Laura van den Berg talks about the transformative experience of reading contemporary fiction and short stories during her first writing workshop in college. Van den Berg’s second novel, The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I wanted writing to be something that involved relationships with other people.” Rachel Cusk talks about her experience teaching creative writing at Kingston University in London. Cusk’s novel Kudos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Outline (Picador, 2016).

“I can say in all honesty and sincerity that I can’t tell the difference between my fiction, my thinking about my fiction, and my life.” Gerald Murnane, who writes his books on typewriters, talks to Ivor Indyk about writing at home in the small town of Goroke in rural southeast Australia. Murnane’s books Border Districts and Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane are both forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April.

Laurent Binet talks about his two novels, HHhH (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012) and The Seventh Function of Language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), both translated from the French by Sam Taylor, as well as the topics of semiotics and meta-narrative writing in this video for Vintage Books. The Seventh Function of Language is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.

Carl Phillips gives a craft talk on poems by Thom Gunn, francine j. harris, and Louise Glück at the 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Phillips’s most recent poetry collection, Wild Is the Wind (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I write with prose, but I write as a failed poet.” André Aciman speaks about the origins of his writing, working with editors, and teaching Proust with Dennis Glauque and Bing Yang for the Classic Talk series. Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) has been adapted into a feature film directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet.

“A few years ago I used to tell myself I wanted to marry a cowboy.” In this short film produced by Park Pictures, director Alison Maclean adapts Lydia Davis’s short story about an English professor who fantasizes about a life of adventure. “The Professor” is included in Davis’s collection The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

“Each book that you write, you swim a long way from the pier at a certain point. You just don’t know what’s going to happen.... If you keep going, you’ll figure out how to shape the thing.” Jeffrey Eugenides recalls his experience writing his first book, The Virgin Suicides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), for the Paris Review’s “My First Time” video series. Eugenides’s first story collection, Fresh Complaint (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“Now that your life nears its end / when you turn back what you see / is ruin.” Frank Bidart reads a selection of poems from his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Language is tough. Using the right words is so important to me.” Paul Beatty, author of the Man Booker Prize–winning novel, The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), speaks about the labor of writing and his advice to students on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“Honestly I think that the reason his head was in my brain was because of that hair metal band Tesla...” Samantha Hunt reveals the inspiration behind her second novel, The Invention of Everything Else (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), which fictionalizes the last days of inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla’s life. Hunt’s first story collection, The Dark Dark (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

This animated book trailer captures the elements of thriller, mystery, and fable present in Australian author Fiona McFarlane’s debut novel, The Night Guest (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). McFarlane received the 2017 International Dylan Thomas Prize for her story collection, The High Places (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).  

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.” Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson reads Derek Walcott’s poem “Love After Love” from Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986) for a tribute to the poet and playwright. Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, passed away on March 17, 2017.

This book trailer for John Darnielle's Universal Harvester, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February, offers a glimpse into the mysterious contents in copies of VHS tapes that set the stage for this suspenseful novel.

“What does it say of you if everything is dispensable?” Jonathan Safran Foer speaks about the themes and characters in his new novel, Here I Am (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It's a series of pages that have huge holes, or volumes, where words fly off the page into your imagination, into your face. It's kind of a book that has no rules.” Choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Olafur Eliasson speak with Kathleen Flood of the Creators Project about Jonathan Safran Foer’s art book, Tree of Codes (Visual Editions, 2010), which was the inspiration for their 2015 dance performance. Foer’s new novel, Here I Am (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"I kind of always assume that you don't write the poem you want to write...that's actually quite freeing because it means you discover something in the act of composition that you didn't know in advance." Ben Lerner talks about his first poetry collection, The Lichtenberg Figures (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), for the Paris Review's "My First Time" video series. Lerner's first nonfiction book, The Hatred of Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"It is a plea for the idea that fiction is a way to access or try to access the truth, not a way to escape from it." Alejandro Zambra, recipient of the 2013 Prince Claus Award, speaks about his novel Ways of Going Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) and on what writing means to him. Zambra is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine and in our original podcast reading from his latest novel, Multiple Choice (Penguin Books, 2016), translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.