Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2007 Talks at Google event, Aimee Bender, the author of the short story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (Doubleday, 1998) and Willful Creatures (Doubleday, 2005), reads from her work and discusses her writing regimen, favorite books, and her love of short stories.

“You don’t have to have an MFA to be a writer, you’re a writer by writing.” In this 2017 Talks at Google event, Grant Faulkner, author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo (Chronicle Books, 2017) and The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), discusses tips to boost creativity and endurance when writing fiction with author Anthony Francis. For more from Faulkner, read his essays on writing from our Craft Capsule series.

“Honestly I think that the reason his head was in my brain was because of that hair metal band Tesla...” Samantha Hunt reveals the inspiration behind her second novel, The Invention of Everything Else (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), which fictionalizes the last days of inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla’s life. Hunt’s first story collection, The Dark Dark (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The way her voice sounded in the morning air made her turn around.” Edan Lepucki reads from her debut novel, California (Back Bay Books, 2015). Her second novel, Woman No. 17 (Hogarth, 2017), is featured in Page One in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"The whole thing surprised me." Philip Glass reflects on his career and the people who have influenced his life while discussing his new memoir, Words Without Music (Liveright, 2015), in this recent installment of the Talks at Google series.