Poets & Writers Theater

Sophie Mackintosh reads from her debut novel, The Water Cure (Doubleday, 2019), at Waterstones bookstore and talks about being influenced by Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth, Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the recent sociopolitical climate.

“A story or a character should change. The events that happen change us.” George R. R. Martin, whose book Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (Bantam, 2018) is a history of the Targaryen family from his fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, talks to John Hodgman about how the realness in Stan Lee’s comic books influenced him as a writer.

Josh Malerman talks about writing novels while touring with his band, incorporating performance and radio play elements into his book readings, and the inspiration behind his debut novel, Bird Box (Ecco, 2014), in this video from the 2015 Midwest Literary Walk. The novel has been adapted into a feature film directed by Susanne Bier and starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, and Trevante Rhodes.

“You’ve got to do two very contradictory things as a writer: you’ve got to enjoy spending a lot of time alone—and a lot of people don’t—and you’ve also got to go out and see about the world and immerse yourself in that world....” Irvine Welsh, whose latest novel, Dead Men’s Trousers, is forthcoming from Melville House in February, contemplates the words of wisdom and advice he would offer to young writers in this interview with Christian Lund for Louisiana Channel.

“Carson McCullers is probably the author I feel the strongest connection to, in the way of empathy and seeing the world.” Benedict Wells, whose fourth novel, The End of Loneliness (Penguin Books, 2019), translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about his writing process, how he began as a writer, and some of the authors who have inspired him.

“If you’re on Twitter and Facebook and sharing there, there’s no pressure of concealment, and I think good memoir comes out of that place.” Dani Shapiro, whose fifth memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love (Knopf, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks with Literary Hub’s Emily Temple about how social media could have an adverse effect on writing and storytelling.

“I do come back to poets from the Caribbean especially, who gave me permission to be a writer.” In this interview with City of Asylum, Kwame Dawes talks about the writers whose work he revisits, his writing routine, and why he doesn’t use the word “inspiration.” Dawes is the editor in chief of Prairie Schooner and is featured in “Telling a Different Story: How to Cultivate Inclusivity at Literary Magazines” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m hoping that it makes the reader scared in their own particular way.” Sarah Perry talks with Will Rycroft at Waterstones about her third novel, Melmoth (Custom House, 2018), and its connections to fear, politics, and Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

“I have always been interested in borders, physical and metaphysical borders, frontiers that we create...” Anna Badkhen speaks with Sarah Beth Childers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa about the inspiration for her latest book, Fisherman Blues: A West African Community at Sea (Riverhead, 2018), and the blending of mythology and history. Badkhen was awarded the second Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship.

“I was a happy young woman and I just happened to write poetry…” Ntozake Shange speaks about her surprise at the impact of her poetry and the film adaptation of her choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” in this interview with Reelblack at the Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia in 2010. The poet, novelist, and playwright died on October 27, 2018 at the age of seventy.

“It was in the autumn—it felt like the perfect time to do this ritual, when everything’s changing to go to sleep for the winter....” In this interview at the 2018 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, CAConrad talks about how performing rituals after their boyfriend’s death gave rise to the poetry in their collection While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry.

In this 2002 interview, Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé talks with Ann Armstrong Scarboro, who wrote the afterword to Condé’s novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (University of Virginia Press, 2009), translated from the French by Richard Philcox, about uncovering truth in her writing. Condé is the winner of the inaugural New Academy Prize in Literature, which was established this year as an alternative to the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Kiese Laymon talks to Clemonce Heard about his debut memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), growing up in Mississippi, the influence of music on his writing, and reckoning with weight in all its different forms. Heavy is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It takes facility, it takes brilliance, it takes verve!” Marilyn Chin talks to Joseph Ross about what it takes to write poetry and reads poems from her fifth collection, A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I love the intimacy of a novel and how it lets you get to know people.” Meg Wolitzer speaks about her writing process, the recognition of women writers, and her latest novel, The Female Persuasion (Riverhead Books, 2018), with PBS Newshour’s Jeffrey Brown. The rights for the novel were recently acquired by Amazon Studios and Nicole Kidman’s production company.

“I consider myself essentially a storyteller who’s chosen the genre of poetry.” Lynne Thompson, author of Start With a Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013) and Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007), speaks about family stories and how she came to poetry after a career in law with Mariano Zaro for the Poetry.LA interview series.

“I grew up reading a gigantic compendium of all the Grimm’s fairy tales, and also fairy tales originating from other parts of the world....” Singaporean author Sharlene Teo talks with Manchester Literature Festival’s Naomi Frisby about the inspiration behind her debut novel, Ponti (Simon & Schuster, 2018), the work of writers Guy Gunaratne and Nikesh Shukla, and her fascination with ideas of beauty, superficiality, and artifice.

Jenna Lê talks to Paul Rogalus about her writing habits and reads her poems “Please Don’t Tell Me How This Story Ends” and “Venus Frigida.” Lê, who is featured in “Outsiders on the Inside” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, is the author of A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018).

“Writing memoir is the ultimate control of my story.” Sandra Gail Lambert talks to author Michele Leavitt about her own motivations for writing memoir, and the challenges that accompany it. Lambert, author of the debut memoir, A Certain Loneliness (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), is featured in “Outsiders on the Inside” by Michele Sharpe in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Until I discovered poetry, I didn’t think I would ever be able to express my life.” In this Poetry.LA interview, Chiwan Choi, cofounder of Writ Large Press, reads poems from his collection The Yellow House (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017) and speaks about how his experiences as an immigrant have influenced his writing.