Poets & Writers Theater

Simon & Schuster president and CEO Jonathan Karp offers a behind-the-scenes look at how book cover art is selected through the lens of Julia May Jonas’s debut novel, Vladimir, forthcoming from Avid Reader Press in February.

“In Cloud Cuckoo Land, I try to tell the story of stewards, people who care deeply about something, and how their actions reverberated through the generations after them,” says Anthony Doerr in this video about the inspiration behind writing his new novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Simon & Schuster, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The story of this family is a common one. It’s the reality of so many people I know and love, yet it’s one I never saw depicted in any novel,” says Patricia Engel in this video about the inspiration behind her new novel, Infinite Country (Avid Reader Press, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

To All the Boys: Always and Forever is the final installment of the three-part Netflix film series based on the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before YA novel series by Jenny Han. The series follows high schooler Lara Jean Song Covey, played by Lana Condor, and her relationship with her former crush Peter Kavinsky, played by Noah Centineo.

“I am the blue chair island. I rock and the island rocks. I pull at a blue thread on the chair’s arm. I pull a hangnail from the third finger on my right hand.” In this Books Are Magic virtual event, Nadia Owusu reads from her debut memoir, Aftershocks (Simon & Schuster, 2021), and speaks with author Catherine E. McKinley.

“To me, it was really important to do justice to the complexity of the lives of queer and trans people in my community, and the lives of queer and trans people of color more broadly.” In this Simon & Schuster video, Zeyn Joukhadar speaks about the journey of the protagonist in his second novel, The Thirty Names of Night (Atria Books, 2020). For more Joukhadar, read his installment of Ten Questions.

Mary Beth Keane, author of the novel Ask Again, Yes (Scribner, 2020), gives a tour of the various bookshelves in her home as part of Simon & Schuster’s Bookshelf Tour video series in which authors provide a glimpse of the books they’ve accumulated on their shelves, share details about how their books are (or aren’t) organized, and talk about the independent bookstores they support.

“The book may be an act of imagination, it could be a work of fiction, but it’s based on something that absolutely happened, no matter how unbelievable it seems.” Paul Yoon talks about the shadow history of the United States’ secret war in Laos during the 1960s that inspired his second novel, Run Me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

“I wanted to encapsulate the experience I was having, and particularly the memories in terms of what they mean to me now, as someone who’s thirty-three years old.” At Unbound, a literary series copresented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore, Saeed Jones talks about the drive that compelled him to write his debut memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My experience at church was of community....most importantly I got to be part of this community where everyone was searching for the meaning of life in their relationship with each other.” Cara Wall talks about the inspiration behind her debut novel, The Dearly Beloved (Simon & Schuster, 2019), a story about two couples navigating faith and social change in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s.

“The ‘need’ is many things in the book...a child’s need for milk and then also the mother’s need for the child to relieve her of the milk and the mother’s need for her children, that love going two directions.” On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Helen Phillips talks about her second novel, The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019), different reactions to the book, her own experiences as a mother, and some of the inspiration for its themes. For more Phillips, read her answers to Ten Questions about her novel.

“The protagonist of my novel is forced to construct a persona because the persona that he inherits from his father and from society doesn’t match who he actually is.” Nigerian American author Tope Folarin, winner of the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing, talks about the theme of identity construction in his debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man (Simon & Schuster, 2019).

“I think desire is at once the thing we think most about and also our most slippery secret, and I wanted to explore the nuance of that intersection.” In this Simon & Schuster interview, Lisa Taddeo discusses the intimate research done for her first book, Three Women (Avid Reader Press, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’ve always wanted to meet Stephen King—he’s like the author of all my nightmares.” In this video, Kristen Roupenian reveals some of her favorite things, dreams, secrets, and excuses. Her debut short story collection, You Know You Want This (Gallery/Scout Press, 2019), includes “Cat Person,” which was published by the New Yorker in 2017 and went viral on the Internet.

“Inside a novel, one has the opportunity to experience the ambiguous reality of a whole other consciousness. When you read, you are possessed by the voice of another.” In this 2017 Louisiana Channel interview, Siri Hustvedt talks about the transformative experience of reading novels. Hustvedt’s seventh novel, Memories of the Future (Simon & Schuster, 2019), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s a novel of ideas, too—it’s concerned with the consequences of our societal obsession with celebrity, status, appearance, and wealth,” says Laura Sims about her debut novel, Looker (Scribner, 2019). In this video, Sims also talks about how libraries have played an important role throughout her life, and how she drew inspiration from the work of Elena Ferrante and Jenny Offill, and numerous science fiction, murder mystery, and horror novels.

“I kept notes about the interesting things I would find in people’s garbage. You can tell quite a bit about a person by what they throw away.” Jen Beagin, whose second novel, Vacuum in the Dark, will be published by Scribner in February, talks about how her experience cleaning homes in New Mexico inspired her to start writing fiction.

“This story is not just about an immigrant girl making her way through the world, but it’s a story of a girl who is fighting hard for her American dream.” In this video, Reyna Grande discusses her memoir A Dream Called Home (Atria Books, 2018), a sequel to her best-selling memoir The Distance Between Us, and the inspiration she hopes her books will bring to young readers.

“History hides. That’s its job. It hides behind other history.” Sam Lipsyte reads from his fourth novel, Hark (Simon & Schuster, 2019), at the University of San Francisco’s MFA Reading Series. Hark is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That’s always the surprise to me, that I find myself in the middle of a subject that I had never anticipated.” In this video, Susan Orlean speaks about what led her to write The Library Book (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which explores her love of libraries and reexamines the historic 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library. Orlean is profiled in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.