Poets & Writers Theater

“My process of writing is one of contemplation and one of constantly trying to be as authentic as possible in the emotions that I’m trying to express.” Cyril Wong speaks about the voices from his dreams and meditation practice that gave him the stories for his new novel, This Side of Heaven, out now from Epigram Books.

“You don’t write a book for a market, a publisher, or an agent; you write it because your heart calls you to write it.” Tayari Jones speaks about her “most personal” novel Silver Sparrow (Algonquin Books, 2011) and about what keeps her going as a writer in this Waterstones video.

“These are people who are basically pulled all over the world, and they have various antecedents that are a bit everywhere.” In an interview with Parul Sehgal at the 92nd Street Y, André Aciman, whose latest novel, Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), is a sequel to his 2007 novel, Call Me By Your Name, talks about how his cultural background has influenced the way his characters communicate and interact with one another.

“One of the reasons why I wrote Deacon King Kong is because I wanted to show a world where people actually got along.” In this video, James McBride, whose novel Deacon King Kong (Riverhead Books, 2020) is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the inspiration for the novel and shows CBS This Morning host Jeff Glor around the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn where he grew up.

“I have an obligation to human beings, my characters, so that’s all I care about.” In this PEN International interview, Yiyun Li speaks about the expectation as a Chinese American writer to be a spokesperson for a particular experience, and how she enjoys exploring the interior struggles of her characters. Li won the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for her novel Where Reasons End (Random House, 2020).

“I successfully avoided husbands and children and day jobs—those things can all really interfere with your productivity.” In an interview with Emma Watson, Rebecca Solnit discusses how she has managed to write so prolifically, the communication of information as a cultural phenomenon, and the themes in her first memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence (Viking, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 1981 Brockport Writers Forum interview, June Jordan reads “A Poem about Intelligence for my Brothers and Sisters,” and speaks about how she came to poetry and fell in love with “the possibility of language.”

“It’s a story that stands by itself, I just had to type it.” In this interview, Isabel Allende speaks about her new novel, A Long Petal of the Sea (Ballantine Books, 2020), and her history and friendship with Book Passage founder and president Elaine Petrocelli. A Long Petal of the Sea is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this PBS Books interview at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair, Keith S. Wilson speaks about his love of video games, Affrilachian poetry, and his debut collection, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Wilson is featured in “Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I hope that people can take away that these racial biases, these class biases, exist harmoniously within really kind gestures and authentic love for someone.” In this video, Kiley Reid talks about the characters in her debut novel, Such a Fun Age (Putnam, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We like to think about people and nature as two separate things,” says Richard Powers speaking about his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Overstory (Norton, 2018), in this PBS NewsHour interview. “This book is precisely a book that challenges that notion of human separatism.” For more Powers, read “A Talk in the Woods: Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers” from the November/December 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I got into the habit of writing very, very, very quickly,” says Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy and the essay collection, Coventry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), about taking long breaks from writing to live a normal life and the experience of being a mother to young children without the time to make notes. “I had to hold things and then find an opportunity to express them.”

“If we truly love a place and are tethered to a place, then it’s our job to get to know that place.” In this Good Morning America interview, Sarah M. Broom speaks about her debut memoir, The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019), which is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in nonfiction.

“It’s really hard to inhabit the mind of another,” says Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian (Grove Press, 2019), about the difficulties and joys of writing fiction in this Louisiana Channel interview. “You use your emotional experience, you use your literal experience, you use the experience of others you know to access imaginatively another subjectivity.”

“It’s a book about a rap group, but, more particularly, a book that is examining how fandom seeps into our lives.” In this PBS NewHour video, Hanif Abdurraqib speaks with Amna Nawaz about his memoir, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press, 2019), and the ways in which music intertwines with identity and the poignant moments in our lives.

“The only counsel that is acceptable is to work! To work very hard until you discover the kind of writer that you want to be.” Nobel Prize–winning Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa dispenses advice to young and emerging writers in this Louisiana Channel interview with Christian Lund at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

“I love To the Lighthouse, but they never get to the lighthouse.” In this episode of Cocktails With Bright Antenna, Benjamin Percy talks about the differences between literary fiction and genre fiction, how some writers are gardeners and some are architects, and reveals the origins of his phobias. Percy’s latest book, Suicide Woods (Graywolf Press, 2019), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The very act of reading is an empathetic act.” In this Aspen Institute video, Adrienne Brodeur talks about her writing process and reads from her debut memoir, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“How do you tell interesting stories? You puncture through reality and you let magic and weird stuff and ghosts bleed back through.” In this video, Carmen Maria Machado talks about the influence Gabriel García Márquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude had on her writing with Jared Arraes and Adriana Couto at the 2019 International Literary Festival of Paraty in Brazil. A profile of Machado by Jera Brown appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I sincerely believe this is a life-affirming book and it is a novel that celebrates diversity, inclusion…and friendships.” Elif Shafak speaks about her writing process and the inspiration behind her latest novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking, 2019), which is shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.