Poets & Writers Theater

“Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind.” In this animated TED-Ed video, poet Jane Hirshfield discusses the art and use of metaphors in our daily lives and in the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Carl Sandburg.

“There’s something in people that is naturally story-like. You’re taking all this unformed, chaotic stuff and making sense of it.” Award-winning novelist and poet Peter Straub speaks about creating characters and his love of writing horror stories in this 2012 Open Road Media interview. Straub, who received the 2008 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award for his generosity to the literary community, died at the age of seventy-nine on September 4, 2022.

This new Netflix miniseries about a woman growing up in a strict Hasidic Judaism sect in Brooklyn who flees her arranged marriage and cuts ties with the community is loosely based on Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. The four-episode series is directed by Maria Schrader and stars Shira Haas, Amit Rahav, and Jeff Wilbusch.

“Beauty’s just a bite / away from want. / I’ve seen Fox chew / off her own limb / for one more taste / of freedom.” In this 2012 video, Tiffany Midge reads from her collection The Woman Who Married a Bear (University of New Mexico Press, 2016) at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Midge’s debut memoir, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed...” In this animated video, the late Mary Oliver reads her poem “The Summer Day” recorded from a 2012 92Y reading.

“Rule No. 10: Revise, revise, revise. I cannot stress this enough. Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t.” Colson Whitehead, whose seventh novel, The Nickel Boys (Doubleday, 2019), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads his 2012 New York Times piece “How to Write” at the Muldoon’s Picnic variety show in New York City in 2015.

“I have to wait a long time / for the softer voice of his own / to come through.” In this 2012 reading, the late Mary Oliver reads a selection of poems from her book A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012) at the 92nd Street Y.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Little, Brown, 2012), Maria Semple’s comedic novel narrated by a teenage girl searching for her agoraphobic architect mother who has gone missing, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Richard Linklater, the movie stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, Judy Greer, and Kristen Wiig.

My Brilliant Friend (Europa Editions, 2012), the first novel in the Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, has been adapted into HBO’s first foreign-language series. Directed by Saverio Costanzo, the eight-episode miniseries stars Elisa Del Genio, Gaia Girace, Margherita Mazzucco, and Ludovica Nasti.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (Free Press, 2012), Susannah Cahalan’s memoir about her experience as a young journalist struggling with the diagnosis of a rare and mysterious neurological disease, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Gerard Barrett, the film stars Richard Armitage, Thomas Mann, Chloë Grace Moretz, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tyler Perry, and Jenny Slate.

This independent documentary film directed by Oscar Corral explores Tom Wolfe’s writing life and his fourth novel, Back to Blood (Little, Brown, 2012), which is set in Miami and focuses on the subject of immigration. Wolfe died at the age of eighty-seven on May 14, 2018.

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.

Brenda Shaughnessy reads her poem “I Have a Time Machine” and discusses the role that poetry can play in recovering from traumatic experiences for a TEDx event at Harvard University. Shaughnessy is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).

Robin MacArthur reads a love letter to her home state of Vermont for an episode of State of the Re:Union with music scored by Red Heart the Ticker, MacArthur’s band with her husband Tyler Gibbons. MacArthur’s debut novel, Heart Spring Mountain (Ecco, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Ed Lin’s hardboiled thriller trilogy, This Is a Bust (Kaya Press, 2007), Snakes Can’t Run (Minotaur Books, 2010), and One Red Bastard (Minotaur Books, 2012), is being reissued by Witness Impulse. The mystery novels take place in the 1970s, and feature Chinese American detective and Vietnam veteran Robert Chow solving crimes in New York City’s Chinatown. 

“The thing when you write about pop culture—especially pop culture that you’re interested in—that you have to avoid, is just saying ‘isn’t this cool?’ again and again...I realized that I needed to put myself into it.” Elena Passarello talks about writing creative nonfiction and reads from her first book, Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande Books, 2012). Passarello’s Animals Strike Curious Poses (Sarabande Books, 2017) is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Ideally, you’re trying to get your eye as close to the text as you can.” At the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars, author Molly Antopol speaks with Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae about editing and acquiring manuscripts.

“The idea was to use a kind of fragmented approach to talking about colonialism...because I think that’s increasingly the way we think about and access historical narratives.” In this video, Katie Kitamura talks about the structural choices behind her second novel, Gone to the Forest (Free Press, 2012). Kitamura’s most recent novel, A Separation (Riverhead Books, 2017), tells the story of the end of a marriage and a husband gone missing in Greece.

“Nothing makes me want to hurl a book across the room harder and faster than when the writer gives me a quick little emotional recap to make sure I’m keeping up.” For the Word Works series at Hugo House, Pam Houston, the author most recently of Contents May Have Shifted (Norton, 2012), delivers a lecture on crafting dialogue.

This book trailer provides an atmospheric preview of Jon Boilard’s debut novel, A River Closely Watched (MacAdam/Cage, 2012). Boilard’s first short story collection, Settright Road (Dzanc Books, 2017), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.