Poets & Writers Theater

“I do think that everything you see or do or experience does become part of the material that you create with, ultimately.” In this Books Are Magic event, Gina Chung reads from her short story collection, Green Frog (Vintage, 2024), and discusses the cultural importance of mythological creatures in a conversation with Jimin Han. For more from Chung, read her installment of our Writers Recommend series.

“A book can change your life, and I know because I had that happen to me.” Award-winning author Tobias Wolff talks about his childhood, education, writing life, and his novel Old School (Vintage, 2003) in this short film directed by Lawrence Bridges for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” initiative. For more from Wolff, read this profile by Joe Woodward published in the March/April 2008 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Samantha Irby reads from her new essay collection, Quietly Hostile (Vintage, 2023), and speaks with writer and editor Jazmine Hughes for this Books Are Magic event held at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, New York. Quietly Hostile is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I knew I wanted to write about climate change and engage with this issue, and it felt like the near future was a way to think ahead, to kind of see where we’re heading,” says Allegra Hyde about the inspiration behind her debut novel, Eleutheria (Vintage, 2022), in this Late Night With Seth Myers interview. 

Watch the book trailer for Jane Pek’s debut novel, The Verifiers (Vintage, 2022), a modern murder mystery about online dating algorithms, family dynamics, and identity.

“It’s about memory, and love, and friendship,” says Sandra Cisneros in this short video introducing her first work of fiction in nearly a decade, Martita, I Remember You (Vintage, 2021), a novel about three women who travel to Paris to fulfill their dreams. The book comes in a dual-language edition with a Spanish translation by Liliana Valenzuela.

Lauren Hough speaks about her debut essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing (Vintage, 2021), with Ashley C. Ford, author of the memoir, Somebody’s Daughter (Flatiron Books, 2021), in this Town Hall Seattle video. Hough and Ford are featured in “The New Nonfiction 2021” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When she checked her boarding pass, she was in the middle of the row. There was a man in a blue suit on the aisle, who gave her a big bleached-white smile as he stood to let her past.” In this first installment of Vintage Books’ weekly Storytime series, Booker Prize–winning author Anne Enright reads her short story “The Weight” from her home.

“In those brown albums, our family at times looks like a family and at other times not.” Porochista Khakpour reads from her new book, Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity (Vintage, 2020), and talks to author Tania James in this virtual Politics and Prose Bookstore event video. 

“Years ago, right after I moved into my last apartment in Chicago, the one I expected to die alone in to the soundtrack of an NCIS marathon, I thought I had a ghost.” In this Loft Literary Center video, one of their recent online events from their annual Wordplay festival (held entirely virtually this year through May 9) features a reading by Samantha Irby from her fourth essay collection, Wow, No Thank You (Vintage, 2020), backdropped with video footage of rabbits.

“We, too, are inventing a life form of our own—not out of body parts but out of the zeros and ones of code.” In this Vintage Books video, Jeanette Winterson talks about reimagining Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for her most recent novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story (Jonathan Cape, 2019), which was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

In this behind-the-scenes video, copies of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Testaments (Nan A. Talese, 2019), a sequel to her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, journey through the printing process.

“I went through a Philip Glass phase, but I’m out of that now. Lately I write to silence, usually.” In this Vintage Books interview, Kayo Chingonyi answers questions about his literary and pop culture influences, daily routine, and books he thinks everyone should read. Chingonyi won the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize for his debut poetry collection, Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus, 2017).

“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.

“It’s a notebook, it’s not a collection of poems, it’s not exactly a novel, no fiction, what is this? Nobody knows.” In this video, Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa talks about being influenced by Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Agualusa won the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion (Vintage, 2016) with Daniel Hahn, who translated the book from the Portuguese. 

"We moved around a lot and I think that's part of what inspired me to become a writer...it's very hard for people like me to answer the question 'Where are you from?' in a very short sentence." Mia Alvar talks about the inspiration behind her story collection, In the Country (Knopf, 2015), for which she received the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

"When you read it you realize that everything is constantly changing, and that that is, at least often, the key to a great story..." Ben Marcus, editor of the short fiction anthology New American Stories, published this week by Vintage, talks about one of his favorite things: Ovid's Metamorphoses.

"With first drafts, the best feeling, and sort of the rarest, is when I also don't know what's going to happen.... It's a wonderful pleasure, you're writing the way a reader reads." In this video from the Chicago Humanities Festival, Karen Russell speaks with Time Out Chicago's Laura Pearson about her process. Russell shares how she found her agent Denise Shannon in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Irony just brushes past a question and leaves you with a thought about it," says Martin Amis. "Satire is meant to be much more vigorous and vehement, the suggestion being that you actually want to change reality—you're agitating for change." A paperback edition of the British novelist's satiric novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England, was published by Vintage last month.

The author of three novels, including The World Without You, which was just released in paperback by Vintage, talks about the importance of reading (books you love and even those you don't) in your life as a writer.