Poets & Writers Theater

“A lot of this book was me figuring out, how do you hold on to hope when it feels like the world is falling apart?” In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Celeste Ng talks about the process of writing her latest novel, Our Missing Hearts (Penguin Press, 2022). A profile of Ng by Renée H. Shea is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When I write, I feel much larger than the limits of my body,” says Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022), in this interview with his Danish translator Caspar Eric at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. “There is a mystery you tap into that is much bigger.”

“What do you want, I asked, forgetting I had / no language,” reads Ocean Vuong from his poem “The Bull,” which appears in his second poetry collection, Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022), in this WSJ. Magazine video directed by Gioncarlo Valentine.

“I would sneak out of recess, stay in the library to listen to tapes of famous speeches, and one of them was Martin Luther King,” recounts Ocean Vuong about his childhood in this interview with Michel Martin for Amanpour and Company. “You could hear the static when he was giving the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and I thought...who is this man talking about dreams in a snowstorm?” Vuong was awarded the 2020 Brooklyn Public Library Fiction & Poetry Prize for his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019).

Little Fires Everywhere is a television adaptation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel of the same name about the tensions between two families in the Ohio suburbs during the 1990s. The eight-episode miniseries is directed by Lynn Shelton and stars Rosemarie DeWitt, Jordan Elsass, Joshua Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Reese Witherspoon.

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).

In this PBS NewsHour video, NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada highlight their favorite books for summer reading, which include Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Jill Ciment’s The Body in Question (Pantheon, 2019), and José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018).

“It was an attempt to see if language can really be a bridge, as it is often aspired to be, and ultimately that it could fail.” In this video, Ocean Vuong speaks about the letter he wrote to his illiterate mother that inspired his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019). A profile of Vuong by Rigoberto González appears in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I have to wait a long time / for the softer voice of his own / to come through.” In this 2012 reading, the late Mary Oliver reads a selection of poems from her book A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012) at the 92nd Street Y.

“There is nothing one man will not do to another.” Carolyn Forché reads “The Visitor” and “The Colonel” from her second poetry collection, The Country Between Us (Copper Canyon Press, 1981), which bore witness to her travels in El Salvador in the late 1970s. Forché’s debut memoir, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019), documents that same period of time and is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Everybody feels ashamed when they write. It’s a shameful practice.” In this 2018 interview with Louisiana Channel, Zadie Smith, author most recently of Swing Time (Penguin Press, 2016), discusses the positive aspects of shame and how it can be productive for the writing process.

“What isn’t twisted and dark? Look around! Twisted and dark means new and interesting.” Ottessa Moshfegh speaks with Vintage Books about dark comedy in writing, the difference between art and entertainment, and why she writes about the female body. Moshfegh is the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Penguin Press, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The main advice I would have is to be really easy on yourself, to shut off as much as you can the voice that’s saying maybe you’re wasting your time, and maybe everything that you do is stupid.” Elif Batuman, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), talks to Granta about the literary model of Charles M. Schulz’s Snoopy and the blurred boundary between fiction and nonfiction.

“It was like the story of your relations with others...was constantly being recorded and updated, and you could check it at any time.” Elif Batuman reads from her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), a semifinalist for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

“I don’t have any heroes in fiction but I have been influenced by fictional heroes many, many times.” In this video, Karl Ove Knausgaard responds to the Proust Questionnaire for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona’s Kosmopolis Continuous Programme series. His most recent novel, Winter (Penguin Press, 2018), translated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey, is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination.” In this video poem, produced by We Are Wildness and Live Learn Evolve, Mary Oliver reads her classic poem “Wild Geese.” Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Press, 2017) is featured in Page One in the November/December 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Celeste Ng talks with Amazon senior editor Chris Schluep about becoming a mother while writing her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You (Penguin Press, 2014), elements of story inspiration, and the setting of her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (Penguin Press, 2017). Ng’s second novel is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Often my subjects are the simplest things in the world: joy, family, the weather, houses, streets—nothing fancy. And when I sit down with these subjects, my aim is clarity...” In her acceptance speech for the 2014 Moth Award, Zadie Smith shares her perspective on storytelling and how it has changed over the years. Smith’s fifth novel, Swing Time (Penguin Press, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The serious part of it is having a great capacity to be alone—that really is the key...” Zadie Smith talks about the writing life and inspiration, her identity as a writer, and how her routines have changed in a video for Denver Post's Pen & Podium series. Smith's new novel, Swing Time (Penguin Press, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Raphael Montes is featured in this book trailer for his English-language debut, Perfect Days (Penguin Press, 2016),​ a crime novel​ translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin​. ​Montes was a finalist for both the Benvirá Literature Prize and the Machado de Assis Prize from the Brazilian Academy of Letters for his first novel, Suicidas (Saraiva/Benvirá, 2012).