Poets & Writers Theater

“It matters what you call a thing,” reads Solmaz Sharif from her poem “Look” in this 2017 reading and conversation with Evie Shockley for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. For more Sharif, read “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from the January/February 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What’s usually called inspiration…where that comes from, for me, is literature. The immersion in literature.” In this video, William Giraldi, author of the new memoir, The Hero's Body (Liveright, 2016), speaks about his relationship to the classics he's read and how this informs his writing. Giraldi talks about the craft of memoir with Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again (Graywolf, 2007), in "Pay Attention" in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Before Paul Kingsnorth's debut novel became a bestseller in the U.K., he posted this book trailer on Unbound, a crowdfunding website for publishing, to ask for pledges. The Wake was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the first crowdfunded book to make the list, and was published by Graywolf this month.