Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2023 Bristol Ideas virtual event, Solmaz Sharif speaks with host Zoë Steadman-Milne about the nature of customs and interrogating those imposed within nation-states and literature, and reads from her poetry collection Customs, her first collection to be published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury.

“I’m not consciously balancing humor and tragedy, but I know that they do exist side by side.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Lorrie Moore talks about the nature of jokes, the emotional and tonal range of her short stories, and reflects on the sense of repetition in her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (Knopf, 2023).

In this 2022 Louisiana Channel interview, Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata talks about the imaginary worlds of her childhoood, her writing process involving character sketches, and the origin of her otherworldly stories. “My world of daydreams or the power of stories saved me, so I was able to survive. And this same strength is in my protagonists,” says Murata.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with host Jenna Seery, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard talks about how his novel The Morning Star (Penguin Press, 2021) unexpectedly became a longer series and how he wrote the many characters and perspectives in the third book of the series, The Third Realm (Penguin Press, 2024).

In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Percival Everett talks about how Mark Twain, among others, influenced the sense of irony in his writing and how a game of tennis impacted the premise of his novel James (Doubleday, 2024), for which he won the 2024 National Book Award in fiction.

In this Poetry.LA interview, host Luivette Resto speaks with poet Amy Shimshon-Santo about her new collection, Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (FlowerSong Press, 2024), and the themes within the book which deal with how to live in a time of great suffering and disorientation, and “somehow have the experience of finding your own light.”

In this 2016 New Yorker video, Robert Battle, former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, reminds all artists, whether dancers, musicians, poets, or writers, that “it’s important for us to, at this time, see beyond our circumstances.” Battle continues: “I think we can do that through the arts.”

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Abraham Chang talks about writing his debut novel, 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers (Flatiron Books, 2024), after working for years in the publishing industry, as well as how Eastern traditions, pop culture, and growing up in the borough of Queens in New York influenced his book.

“Your mind wants to move, and the best thing a work of art can do is take your mind with it, moving somewhere you never expected to move.” Anne Carson talks about the artists and philosophers who inspire her to create and think, and how boxing has helped her in the wake of her recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in a conversation with Norwegian author Linn Ullmann for this Louisiana Channel event.

“I wanted to write something that dealt with Brexit and our relation to Europe, but in a very oblique way.” In this Waterstones interview, English author Alan Hollinghurst talks about the challenges in developing the gay, biracial protagonist in his latest novel, Our Evenings (Random House, 2024), and reflects on Britain’s changing nature across the book’s half century of time.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with guest host Chris Gillespie, award-winning author Richard Powers discusses how the issues of environmental exploitation and artificial intelligence inspired his new novel, Playground (Norton, 2024), which is set on the island of Makatea in French Polynesia.

In this episode of the Open Book Broadcast, Suzette Mullen speaks about the publishing process for her debut memoir, The Only Way Through Is Out (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024), and why queer voices and stories matter in a conversation with host Ally Berthiaume. Mullen is featured in “5 Over 50: 2024” in the November/December issue in Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The book is, in many ways, about expectations and change.” In this Fane Productions event, Juli Min reads from her debut novel, Shanghailanders (Spiegel & Grau, 2024), and discusses her choice to begin the novel in the future in Shanghai and how the diverse and multifaceted city is its own character in a conversation with author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.

“I was building up a writing life alongside working on this project, and for many of those years, I didn’t even know that it would look like this.” In this interview for the Otherppl With Brad Listi podcast, Nina Sharma talks about her writing practices while working on her debut essay collection, The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown (Penguin Press, 2024).

“At the heart of it, it’s all about making things.” In this Ride Channel video, Bret Anthony Johnston, author most recently of the novel We Burn Daylight (Random House, 2024), talks about the link between skateboarding and writing, and how they are both “a way to escape yourself” and “give yourself over to something much bigger than you.” For more from Johnston, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Dinaw Mengestu discusses the complex characters with sometimes uncertain motivations in his latest novel, Someone Like Us (Knopf, 2024), the nature of diasporic communities in American cities, and the mainstream expectations placed upon immigrant stories.

In this interview, Ferdia Lennon talks about his Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize–winning novel, Glorious Exploits (Henry Holt, 2024), which opens in Sicily in 412 BCE with two characters hatching a plan to direct a production of Euripides’s Medea.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Julia Phillips talks about the ferocity of sister relationships, themes of isolation and survival, and her second novel, Bear (Hogarth, 2024). A profile of Phillips by Renée H. Shea appears in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this WREG News Channel 3 interview in Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow talks about how her work as an attorney informed her writing and discusses the poems in her first collection, Magic Enuff (Dial Press, 2024). For more from Stringfellow, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Nicola Yoon talks about the rarity of writing fast, the experience of seeing adaptations of her books, and her new novel, One of Our Kind (Knopf, 2024).