Poets & Writers Theater

“That’s what gets me through now. I have curiosity about everything.” In this virtual interview for A Mighty Blaze hosted by Caroline Leavitt, author Gail Godwin talks about the experiences that shaped her latest memoir, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (Bloomsbury, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this New York Public Library event, Man Booker International Prize–winning translator Jennifer Croft discusses her debut novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey (Bloomsbury, 2024), in a conversation with Daniel Saldaña París. “I feel, as a translator, that I’m always on this mission of seeking an essence, a mysterious thing that can’t really be articulated...something I can capture and reconstitute in my language,” says Croft. Her novel is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Catherine Lacey reads from her latest novel, Biography of X (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and Miriam Toews reads from her latest novel, Fight Night (Bloomsbury, 2021), in this Christopher Lightfoot Walker Reading Series event at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

“I realized as I started to write it, that it was going to be a lot more focused on my childhood than I expected it to be,” says Isaac Fitzgerald about the process of writing his first memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Bloomsbury, 2022), in this interview for Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast produced and hosted by Miwa Messer. Fitzgerald’s memoir is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It is so painful to be loved sometimes. Intolerable even.” In this 2020 virtual event hosted by Salve Regina University, Melissa Febos reads from her new essay collection, Girlhood (Bloomsbury, 2021), and answers questions about her writing process. A profile of Febos by Brian Gresko appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Rebecca Dinerstein Knight’s debut novel, The Sunlit Night (Bloomsbury, 2015), has been adapted into a feature film directed by David Wnendt and starring Gillian Anderson, Zach Galifianakis, Alex Sharp, and Jenny Slate.

“We are cheating death, all the time, passing one overcrowded town, then another, and another.” This short animated film offers a preview of Tishani Doshi’s novel Small Days and Nights (Bloomsbury Circus, 2019), which is shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2020.

“The questions that I try to answer in the book, through fiction, are questions about people I knew when I was a child…I made up the answers because I could not access the real answers.” In this Entertainment Weekly video, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of the debut novel, In West Mills (Bloomsbury, 2019), speaks with fellow debut authors Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Sarah M. Broom, Linda Holmes, and Lisa Taddeo about the inspiration and evolution of their books. Winslow is featured in “First Fiction 2019” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Based on real events, Women Talking is the story of eight women in a remote Mennonite colony who face an agonizing decision in the aftermath of a series of unspeakable sexual crimes.” This book trailer introduces Miriam Toews’s seventh novel, Women Talking (Bloomsbury, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This tonight is culture, it’s international culture, it’s compassionate culture, it’s activist culture—it’s a room full of believers…” In this video, George Saunders accepts the 2017 Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (Bloomsbury, 2017). Saunders is the second American in a row to win the award.

“I didn’t understand that I had to be ruthless. I didn’t understand that my job as a writer wasn’t to coddle my characters and create these fairy tales for them to live.” At Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Jesmyn Ward and Edwidge Danticat discuss writing about their homes and the power of place.

“I tell my students that if you want to be a writer you need to learn how to look.” In this TEDxNavesink video, Melissa Febos shares her lifetime habit of secrecy and explains how telling your secrets can set you free. Her debut essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury, 2017), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I decided that she was a cross between Tina Turner and maybe Walter Benjamin or Baudelaire, perhaps a little bit of Angela Carter’s wonderful aerialist in Nights at the Circus...” Deborah Levy, whose novel Hot Milk (Bloomsbury, 2016) is shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, reads from and talks about her inspiration and the characters in her dramatic verse book, An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell (And Other Stories, 2014).

"In 1929, three decades into what were the great years for the blue-collar town of Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, a private swimming pool opened and they called it Dreamland." Journalist Sam Quinones discusses his book Dreamland: The True Story of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), which was awarded the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction.

This animated trailer for Rebecca Dinerstein's debut novel, The Sunlit Night (Bloomsbury, 2015), was created by Jonty de Klerk. Read more about Dinerstein in “First Fiction 2015" in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and catch her tour in the Reading Tour Manager.

Book critic Ron Charles provides a humorous plot summary of Daniel Handler's new novel, We Are Pirates (Bloomsbury, 2015). You can read Charles's full review of the book in the Washington Post.

Actor Steve Martin interviews the author and cartoonist about her start as a staff cartoonist at the New Yorker. Chast won the Kirkus Prize in nonfiction for her graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Guernica publisher Lisa Lucas moderates a reading and discussion with Mitchell Jackson, author of The Residue Years (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division (Agate Bolden, 2013), on the issues of race and class in literature. An interview with Lucas is featured in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine Jesmyn Ward discusses her new memoir, Men We Reaped. This video clip shows the author reading from Salvage the Bones, a novel for which she won the 2011 National Book Award.

British author Howard Jacobson, who has been described as the love child of Jane Austen and Philip Roth, won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Finkler Question.