Poets & Writers Theater
Every day we share a new clip of interest to creative writers—author readings, book trailers, publishing panels, craft talks, and more. So grab some popcorn, filter the theater tags by keyword or genre, and explore our sizable archive of literary videos.
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“Knowing your true origins connects you to history, it tells you where you are in time, in the world,” says Carmen Rita Wong about discovering family secrets and facing the revelations as she wrote her memoir, Why Didn’t You Tell Me? (Crown, 2022), in this video for Penguin Random House’s Inside the Book series.
Tags: Creative Nonfiction | Carmen Rita Wong | Why Didn't You Tell Me | Crown | 2022 | memoir | Penguin Random House -
“I hope people who read this book start thinking a little bit about the human cost, and they think about their own relationship to their own jobs.” Mystery and crime author Rob Hart talks about the main characters, themes, and key messages he hopes will stick with readers of his dystopian novel, The Warehouse (Crown, 2019).
Tags: Fiction | Rob Hart | The Warehouse | 2019 | Crown -
“Not only did To the Lighthouse help me to understand my own story, but my own story helped me to better understand To the Lighthouse—there’s sort of a beautiful reciprocity there.” Katharine Smyth talks with Michelle Dunton Cronauer about how Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel led to writing her debut memoir, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf (Crown, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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“I wanted to learn how to write English and learn how to tell a story so I could communicate the experiences that I did not see in history books....” Clemantine Wamariya talks about storytelling and her debut memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After (Crown, 2018), which she cowrote with Elizabeth Weil.
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Ernest Cline’s debut novel, Ready Player One (Crown, 2011), a dystopian science fiction adventure following a teenager’s quest for fortune through a virtual reality game, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by Cline and Zak Penn, the film stars Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Tye Sheridan.
Tags: Fiction | Ernest Cline | Ready Player One | Crown | 2011 | 2018 | science fiction | movie trailer | film adaptation -
The Man Who Invented Christmas (Crown, 2008), a biography by Les Standiford focusing on the events in 1843 that inspired Charles Dickens to write A Christmas Carol, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, the film stars Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, and Dan Stevens.
Tags: Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | The Man Who Invented Christmas | Crown | 2008 | Les Standiford | biography | biopic | Charles Dickens | A Christmas Carol | movie trailer | film adaptation | 2017 | 1843 -
Dan Stevens, who stars as Charles Dickens in The Man Who Invented Christmas, talks about researching Dickens’s life and learning more about his writing process for A Christmas Carol. Directed by Bharat Nalluri and costarring Christopher Plummer and Jonathan Pryce, the film is based on Les Standiford’s 2008 Dickens biography of the same name.
Tags: Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Charles Dickens | The Man Who Invented Christmas | A Christmas Carol | 2017 | Les Standiford | Crown | 2008 | biopic | film adaptation