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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Barbara Kingsolver on Literature
“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.
Tags: Fiction | Barbara Kingsolver | Unsheltered | Harper | 2018 | November/December 2018 | Free Library of Philadelphia -
The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion
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.
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Books Featuring Refugees
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.
Tags: Fiction | 2011 | 2015 | 2017 | Book Riot | Books Featuring Refugees | Exit West | Girl at War | Harper | Inside Out and Back Again | Mohsin Hamid | Random House | Riverhead Books | Sara Nović | Thanhha Lai -
Louise Erdrich
“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.
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Mary Karr and Helen Macdonald
"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.
Tags: 2015 | memoir | Grove Press | Mary Karr | The Art of Memoir | Harper | 92Y | Helen Macdonald | H Is For Hawk | Poetry | Creative Nonfiction -
Stanley Crouch
"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.
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Tessa Hadley
"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.
Tags: 2015 | Harper | Penguin | short story | 2016 | Tessa Hadley | The Past | The Penguin Book of the British Short Story | Fiction -
Molly Crabapple
"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.
Tags: 2015 | Harper | talk | Molly Crabapple | Drawing Blood | Creative Nonfiction -
Bill Gates’s Summer Reading 2017
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.
Tags: Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Bill Gates | summer reading | animation | The Heart | Maylis de Kerangal | Hillbilly Elegy | J. D. Vance | Homo Deus | Yuval Noah Harari | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Harper | 2016 | 2017 -
Barbara Kingsolver
“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.
Tags: Harper | 2012 | Flight Behavior | Salon@615 | Nashville Public Library | Barbara Kingsolver | Fiction -
Drawing Blood
"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.
Tags: 2015 | Harper | illustration | book trailer | Molly Crabapple | Drawing Blood | Creative Nonfiction -
The Art of Memoir
"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.
Tags: 2015 | memoir | September/October 2015 | Mary Karr | The Art of Memoir | Harper | The Time Is Now | Creative Nonfiction -
The Small Backs of Children
"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.
Tags: 2015 | Harper | Lidia Yuknavitch | The Small Backs of Children | book trailer | Fiction -
Us
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.
Tags: Fiction | 2014 | Man Booker Prize | Harper | book trailer | David Nicholls | Us -
Ann Patchett
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.
Tags: Harper | Ann Patchett | State of Wonder | American Library Association | Fiction -
Nom de Plume
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."