Poets & Writers Theater

“Look at the old house in the dawn rain / all the flowers are forms of water…” In this excerpt from the documentary Even Though the Whole World Is Burning, the late W. S. Merwin reads his poem “Rain Light.” Merwin’s final collection, Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), was featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

Yaa Gyasi and Zadie Smith speak with Courtney Martin about representation and risks in writing, the power of fiction to invoke curiosity and transform behavior, issues of history and identity, and their current projects at the 2018 Obama Foundation Summit.

“This is a great one to give—it’s the sort of thing you can keep in the loo at Christmas when you’ve eaten too much food.” Jeanette Winterson reveals some of her favorite books for the holiday season, including The Trouble With Women (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016) by cartoonist Jacky Fleming, Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir (Random House, 2018), and her own collection of winter tales and festive recipes, Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days (Grove Press, 2016).

“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.

“These are human stories of life and love and loss.” Matt Gallagher, a former U.S. Army captain and a writing instructor at the nonprofit Words After War, discusses the war stories that inspired his debut novel, Youngblood (Atria Books, 2016).

“Everybody feels ashamed when they write. It’s a shameful practice.” In this 2018 interview with Louisiana Channel, Zadie Smith, author most recently of Swing Time (Penguin Press, 2016), discusses the positive aspects of shame and how it can be productive for the writing process.

“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 really think these characters were with me twenty years before I wrote the book.” In this video for A Word on Words, Ron Rash speaks about the inspiration for his latest novel, The Risen (Ecco, 2016), which centers around a murder in a small North Carolina town in the 1960s.

Boy Erased is a film based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 coming-of-age memoir of the same name. Lucas Hedges stars as a young man who is forced by his fundamental Baptist parents, played by Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, to attend a gay conversion therapy program. The film is written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also costars as the program’s head therapist.

“We headed into the forest up a hill to a thicket of tall trees, their tops so lush that I felt like crying.” In this 2016 video, Lisa Locascio reads from her debut novel, Open Me (Grove Press, 2018), for Poetry Center San Jose’s Well-RED series.

“I don’t know a thing about paradise || In my house nobody ever brought / it up...” Anna Moschovakis reads from her poem “Paradise (Film Two)” from her collection They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This (Coffee House Press, 2016) as part of the twenty-fourth annual Poets House Showcase in 2016. Moschovakis’s forthcoming debut novel, Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love will be released by Coffee House Press in August.

“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’m very fascinated by people on thresholds....” Dorthe Nors talks about her writing interests, short stories versus novels, and the differences between the Danish and English languages with Rosie Goldsmith at the 2016 European Literature Festival in London. Nors’s fourth novel, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Graywolf Press, 2018), translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra, is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I wanted their lives, especially our working-class women, to be out there. People need to be seen. I wanted to show that.” Nicole Dennis-Benn talks about the working-class town she grew up in Jamaica and how her experiences inspired her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun (Liveright, 2016), in this video for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series.

Sweetbitter (Knopf, 2016), Stephanie Danler’s debut novel about a young woman’s coming-of-age experience working at an exclusive restaurant in New York City, has been adapted into a television series. The series stars Daniyar, Eden Epstein, Caitlin FitzGerald, Evan Jonigkeit, and Ella Purnell.

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).

“That was really one of my goals when I wrote the book, to create a human experience rather than the so-called North Korean experience for readers.” Author and translator Krys Lee speaks about her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean (Viking, 2016), and what she hopes to accomplish through her writing.

“One ear to the singing black boulder…” In this video, Simone White, recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for poetry, reads her poem “Some Creek” from her collection Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem Books, 2016).

Fred Moten reads from his poetry collection The Service Porch (Letter Machine Editions, 2016) at an event cosponsored by San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center and the Green Arcade bookstore. Moten received a Grant to Artist award for 2018 from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.