Poets & Writers Theater

Watch this 2018 reading and conversation with Nobel Prize–winning author Annie Ernaux celebrating the English publication of her book The Years, along with translator Alison L. Strayer and Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, France.

In this Knopf video, Kazuo Ishiguro, who was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, speaks about what he calls “double-cross metaphors” and how “tilting the reality of the world just a little bit” in his stories provides inspiration. For more Ishiguro, read “Never Let Me Go: A Profile of Kazuo Ishiguro” by John Freeman from the May/June 2005 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Writing has always been a pleasure. Even as a boy at school I looked forward to the class set aside for writing a story,” reads Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, from his lecture titled “Writing,” in which he discusses his earliest memories of reading and writing, as well as how his observations of colonization and immigration influenced his desire to write.

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.” Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson reads Derek Walcott’s poem “Love After Love” from Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986) for a tribute to the poet and playwright. Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, passed away on March 17, 2017.

“Many people aren’t even remotely interested in [poetry]. But it’s so clear to me that, of course, it’s what you want to do.” Louise Glück ruminates about her writing process in this short documentary from the Academy of American Poets. Glück has been named the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Anything will break given sufficient strain.” Nobel Prize–winning author William Golding speaks about the optimism that may often go unnoticed in his novel Lord of the Flies for this Faber & Faber video celebrating the sixty-fifth anniversary of the book.

The Wife (Scribner, 2003), Meg Wolitzer’s novel about a devoted wife looking back on life choices and sacrifices as her husband is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Björn Runge, the film stars Glenn Close, Max Irons, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, and Christian Slater.

In this video, V. S. Naipaul accepts the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature and reads his speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm. Described by the Swedish Academy as “a literary circumnavigator,” the prolific author published more than a dozen novels and several nonfiction books. Naipaul died at the age of eighty-five on August 11, 2018.

“Like literature, my own field, the Nobel Prize is an idea that, in times like these, helps us to think beyond our dividing walls...” In this video, Kazuo Ishiguro delivers a heartfelt speech to accept the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm.

“There are a number of people my own age, who are doing extraordinary, remarkable work, but I feed more on the young—the sounds they are making are different, new.” In this 2012 interview for the Academy of Achievement, Nobel Prize–winning poet Louise Glück speaks on a variety of subjects, including falling in love with poetry, starting out as a writer, teaching, and her prolific career.

"This is what we must do—not to sleep well when people suffer anywhere in the world." Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaks about the power of law to change people's lives while accepting the 2012 William O. Douglas Award.

“I was fascinated by the tales of my grandmother...it was enough for me. I didn’t need any books.” Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenzaburō Ōe discusses his life and work in an interview with UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler in 1999. His latest novel, Death by Water (Grove Press, 2015), is longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

"You invent whole sections of something and then later some biographer wants to know which is true and what isn't, and you have to sit and think." In this short video produced in 2013, the late Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing shares anecdotes from her life as a writer. Currently, a search is on to appoint a new biographer for Lessing.

French novelist Patrick Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. Known for his detective mysteries and brief novels, Modiano focuses on the themes of memory and loss.

Nobel Prize–winner Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist whose One Hundred Years of Solitude established him as a colossus of twentieth-century literature, died on April 17, 2014 in Mexico City at the age of eighty-seven.

Renowned author Doris Lessing—who wrote notable novels such as The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and The Good Terrorist and won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature—died on November 17, 2013 at age ninety-four. Watch this BBC News video that reflects on her colorful personality, prolific writing career, and occasionally controversial life.

Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, announces Alice Munro as the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature and comments on what her work has meant to him.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, died on August 30, 2013. This video features a compilation of excerpts from the many occasions the celebrated poet recited his popular poem, “Digging.”

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected." The author of twenty-seven books, including The Grapes of Wrath (1939), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; East of Eden (1952); and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) is seen here giving his acceptance speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm on December 10, 1962.

Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize-winning neuropsychiatrist describes the "aha phenomenon" and speculates on ways that individuals and groups can think more creatively.