Poets & Writers Theater

“I have written somewhere that there is only one story, but there are many stories in the one, and I like that idea.” In this video from PBS’s American Masters series, N. Scott Momaday speaks with Robert Redford about the oral tradition, hearing stories from his father, and the importance of language and story. Momaday’s second memoir, Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land (Harper, 2020), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book really is inspired by my grandfather, and a lot of it is actually true.” In this Politics and Prose video, Louise Erdrich talks about her most recent novel, The Night Watchman (Harper, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’ve always found that the things I find the most intimidating end up being the most intellectually satisfying.” At the Louisiana Literature Festival in 2019, Roxane Gay speaks about what moved her to write Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), and begins her reading with a piece about loving Mister Rogers.

“I didn’t know real people could be writers when they grew up. That would have been like saying that I wanted to be a fairy or a movie star.” Barbara Kingsolver, the author most recently of Unsheltered (Harper, 2018), talks to the Free Library of Philadelphia about how a childhood love of books made her a “citizen of the world” despite growing up in a small town in Kentucky. Kingsolver and Richard Powers speak about writing fiction in “A Talk in the Woods” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Roxane Gay reads part of “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion” from her essay collection, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014). Her debut memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Book Riot offers six recommendations for books that feature refugees including Girl at War (Random House, 2015) by Sara Novi­ć, Inside Out and Back Again (Harper, 2011) by Thanhha Lai, and Exit West (Riverhead Books, 2017) by Mohsin Hamid.

“I love the physical book. I love the printed page.” Louise Erdrich, author of LaRose (Harper, 2016), talks about her love of books and her bookstore Birchbark Books & Native Arts located in Minneapolis. For more on Erdrich and her bookstore, read “Best-Selling Booksellers” by Lynn Rosen in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Writing memoir, if it's done right I think, is like knocking yourself out with your own fist." For a reading at the 92nd Street Y moderated by Kathryn Schulz, Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir (Harper, 2015), joins Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk (Grove Press, 2015), to speak about their love of memoir and poetry.

"He always had very intense intellectual pursuits in his personality...today people don't really realize that truly sophisticated artists thought a lot." Novelist and poet Stanley Crouch, a recipient of the 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, talks about Charlie Parker, the subject of his most recent book, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker (Harper, 2013), the first in a planned two-volume series.

"As a writer, I love the irresponsibility of the short story.... There's something beautifully free and single gesture about writing a short story." Tessa Hadley, author of the new novel, The Past (Harper, 2016), and whose work appears in The Penguin Book of the British Short Story (Penguin, 2015), talks about her experience writing both short stories and novels.

"I believe in following your dreams—being incredibly passionate, and being ruthlessly practical about what it takes to get there." Molly Crabapple, whose memoir Drawing Blood (Harper, 2015) features her illustrations, talks about how to succeed as an artist and a creative entrepreneur. 

In this animated video, Bill Gates recommends five books for summer reading, which include The Heart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) by Maylis de Kerangal, Hillbilly Elegy (Harper, 2016) by J. D. Vance, and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harper, 2017) by Yuval Noah Harari.

“A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away and it is one part rapture.” Barbara Kingsolver reads from her novel Flight Behavior (Harper, 2012) and answers questions from the audience for an event presented by Salon@615 at the Nashville Public Library.

"Art was my dearest friend. To draw was trouble and safety, adventure and freedom." Molly Crabapple's new memoir, Drawing Blood (Harper, 2015), includes her illustrations and details her life as an artist, journalist, and activist.

"What I love about memoir is that solitary voice trying to learn how to be a human being." Mary Karr, whose forthcoming book, The Art of Memoir (Harper, 2015), is featured in The Time Is Now in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, comments on the power of the memoir form with the help of some well-known writers.

"What is a girl but this? This obscene and beautiful making, this brilliant imagination inventing meaning." Lidia Yuknavitch's novel The Small Backs of Children is forthcoming from Harper in July.

Author and screenwriter David Nicholls describes his latest novel as a road movie, comedy, and love story about family and marriage. Published in October by Harper, Us was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

At this year's American Library Association conference, held June 27 to July 2 in Chicago, novelist Ann Patchett, whose most recent book is State of Wonder (Harper, 2011), talked about her "profoundly uninteresting" life as a reader and opening an independent bookstore, Parnassus Books, in Nashville.

Next month Harper will publish Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms, in which Carmela Ciuraru tells the stories of more than a dozen pseudonymous authors, including Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, Lewis Carroll, and George Eliot, and explores the creative process and "the darker, often crippling aspects of fame."