Poets & Writers Theater

“I hadn’t really planned this to be narrated by an AI creature,” says Kazuo Ishiguro answering questions from readers about his latest novel, Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 2021), in this video for the Get Lit virtual book club series with host of WNYC’s All Of It Alison Stewart.

“The novel in general is about what it means to start widening your circles of care.” Jenny Offill talks about her latest novel, Weather (Knopf, 2020), the dread she feels about the climate, and what brings her hope in this interview with Mary Laura Philpott for A Word on Words. Offill speaks about starting the Writers Rebel NYC branch in “Writers Confront Climate Crisis” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s gonna happen. And it’s a nightmare.” Watch the trailer for Cherry, a film adaptation of Nico Walker’s 2018 debut novel of the same name, starring Tom Holland as a young man who ends up robbing banks to support his drug addiction.

“I am convinced that the more I am well-known, the better known I am, the easier it is for other writers to come along,” says Toni Morrison in this 1987 interview with PBS NewsHour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault on her success as an author and what inspired her novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

“My father was raised in Calcutta, in the neighborhood where all of these Bengali films were shot,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri about growing up surrounded by Bengali cinema and how it influenced her second novel, The Lowland (Knopf, 2013), in this 2017 interview for Criterion Collection.

“What is lost is already behind the locked doors.” This mini-documentary by Made to Measure about the life of Joan Didion, outlines her early career as a research assistant at Vogue leading to her cult following in the sixties, and her literary impact as she was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2012. Didion’s essay collection Let Me Tell You What I Mean (Knopf, 2021) is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When she first moved in, she endured months of casual cruelty like a tree would—without flinching.” In this video, Arundhati Roy reads from the first chapter of her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Knopf, 2017). Roy speaks about her much-anticipated book in “Worth the Wait” by Renée H. Shea in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Joanna Rakoff’s memoir My Salinger Year (Knopf, 2014) has been adapted into a feature film directed by Philippe Falardeau and starring Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver. Set in 1995, an aspiring writer and poet takes a job at a literary agency in New York City that represents the notoriously reclusive J. D. Salinger and handles his fan mail.

This book trailer reveals the cover for Kazuo Ishiguro’s anticipated novel Klara and the Sun, forthcoming in March from Knopf. The novel explores the world of an “Artificial Friend” named Klara who observes potential customers in the hopes that one day she will be taken home by someone.

“The deal with Florida is the charlatans and lunatics and Snapchat-famous plastic surgeons. It is the Ponzi schemes, the byzantine corruption, the evangelical fervor and the consenting-adult depravity....” In this Books & Books virtual event, Kent Russell reads from his memoir, In the Land of Good Living (Knopf, 2020), and discusses Florida and his writing experience with author and sibling Karen Russell. In the Land of Good Living is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Poetry exists in a relationship so that it can speak to your interior life. That’s why I believe that reading is relationship.” In this 2019 5x15 Stories video, Edward Hirsch, whose latest collection Stranger by Night is out now from Knopf, speaks about the craft of writing poems and how “poetry exists to inspire the reader.”

“In the morning, the one who is mostly enlightened comes in.” At this Free Library of Philadelphia author event, Jenny Offill reads from her new novel, Weather (Knopf, 2020), and speaks about her writing process and love of libraries. Weather is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“And I dreamed of our world, a spinning ball of confusion, heart-wrenching injustices…” Patti Smith reads a poem and performs a cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” in this video from the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Smith’s new memoir, Year of the Monkey, is out now from Knopf.

“This novel is about violence and loss, but it’s also about finding answers.” At a Penguin Random House event with librarians, Julia Phillips speaks about her debut novel, Disappearing Earth (Knopf, 2019), which is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in fiction.

“Being born a writer, I had to tell, I had to blab these stories out.” Maxine Hong Kingston speaks about her award-winning book, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, (Knopf, 1976) and the power of imagination with Jeffrey Brown and Celeste Ng, who chose the book for PBS NewsHour’s Now Read This book club.

“It took Arnold six and a half seconds to fall five hundred feet. During that time, an image of his son, Paris, flashed before his eyes....” At the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Edwidge Danticat reads “Without Inspection” from her third story collection, Everything Inside (Knopf, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There’s a long history, and many families and stories that just haven’t been told.” Tommy Orange talks about the need for more Native American stories in literature and the origins of his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), in this interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, presents her summer reading recommendations including Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift Hogarth, 2019), Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black (Knopf, 2018), and Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

“The book clearly describes the horror, the conflict, the chaos, the death, the trauma that came from the war, and then after that, the invisible dream that I started pursuing.” Abdi Nor Iftin, author of the debut memoir, Call Me American (Knopf, 2018), talks about growing up during the civil war in Somalia and what the American dream means to him.

“I adopted the six days for creation and a seventh for rest model. I figured, if it worked for building this world, it should work for fictional ones as well.” Novelist Nathan Englander, author of kaddish.com (Knopf, 2019), shares how his religious upbringing has influenced his writing rituals in this PBS NewsHour video.