Poets & Writers Theater

In this Center for Fiction event, author Mariana Enriquez talks about the supernatural themes and local Argentinian language and humor within her short story collection A Sunny Place for Shady People (Hogarth, 2024) with translator Megan McDowell in a conversation moderated by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

“Books sustain us. Books inspire us. Books fortify us. Books help us become who we are,” says poet John Keene in this video featuring National Book Award–winning authors—including Tess Gunty, Megan McDowell, Imani Perry, Samanta Schweblin, and Sabaa Tahir—speaking about why they believe books matter for the National Book Foundation’s Read With NBF program.

Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin talks about living in Berlin and reads from her debut novel, Fever Dream (Riverhead Books, 2017), translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. Fever Dream, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, was the winner of the 2018 Tournament of Books beating out George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (Random House, 2017) in the final round.

"It is a plea for the idea that fiction is a way to access or try to access the truth, not a way to escape from it." Alejandro Zambra, recipient of the 2013 Prince Claus Award, speaks about his novel Ways of Going Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) and on what writing means to him. Zambra is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine and in our original podcast reading from his latest novel, Multiple Choice (Penguin Books, 2016), translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.