Poets & Writers Theater

“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.

In this video for Poets House, Carl Phillips, whose most recent poetry collection, Pale Colors in a Tall Field, was published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, reflects on his process for putting a book together, as well as his journey as a poet, teacher, and mentor. 

“Unnatural cycles seemed to be / establishing themselves, without regard to our lives.” In this reading and conversation hosted by Green Apple Books, Henri Cole reads from his latest poetry collection, Blizzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and speaks to Pulitzer Prize–winning author Forrest Gander about inspiration and the writing process.

“I was also writing a story that I wanted to see and that I felt in my own life.” In this Greenlight Bookstore video, Raven Leilani celebrates the launch of her debut novel, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and speaks about the journey to write the book in this conversation with Samantha Irby. Luster is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We’d cut school like knives through butter, the three / Of us — Peter, Stephen and I — to play / Just about all the music we knew…” In this video, award–winning poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “Boys” from his second collection of poems, Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2016. 

“Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.” In this book trailer, Andrés Neuman narrates a selection from his latest novel, Fracture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, a cross-cultural story set against the backdrop of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In this video, Marie-Helene Bertino celebrates the launch of her new novel, Parakeet (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), with Alexandra Kleeman and Angel Nafis for a virtual reading hosted by BOMB Magazine and Greenlight Bookstore. Parakeet is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“These are people who are basically pulled all over the world, and they have various antecedents that are a bit everywhere.” In an interview with Parul Sehgal at the 92nd Street Y, André Aciman, whose latest novel, Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), is a sequel to his 2007 novel, Call Me By Your Name, talks about how his cultural background has influenced the way his characters communicate and interact with one another.

In this Waterstones video, André Aciman introduces his latest novel, Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), the sequel to his 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name, and shares three books from the shelves of the bookstore that have influenced his writing.

“I got into the habit of writing very, very, very quickly,” says Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy and the essay collection, Coventry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), about taking long breaks from writing to live a normal life and the experience of being a mother to young children without the time to make notes. “I had to hold things and then find an opportunity to express them.”

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.

“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.

“Every conversation between us then had a way of spiraling into the same abyss. Real men were impossible to understand. Real men suffered. Real men were broken.” Jaed Coffin reads from his second memoir, Roughhouse Friday (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and talks about his experiences barroom boxing in Alaska with Kathryn Miles for Portland Public Library’s Literary Lunch series.

“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.