Poets & Writers Theater

“I like questions, my imagination likes them too.” In this A Word on Word series video, Alexander Chee speaks about his essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (Mariner Books, 2018), and his writing process which involves engaging in conversation with his fictional characters.

“Every conversation between us then had a way of spiraling into the same abyss. Real men were impossible to understand. Real men suffered. Real men were broken.” Jaed Coffin reads from his second memoir, Roughhouse Friday (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and talks about his experiences barroom boxing in Alaska with Kathryn Miles for Portland Public Library’s Literary Lunch series.

“I believe literature should always start from zero. So, I write stories in both languages on purpose.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Yoko Tawada speaks in German, English, and Japanese about thinking and writing in two different languages and about her novel Memoirs of a Polar Bear (New Directions, 2016), translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.

“My favorite form is the long short story or the novella because I think it allows you a little bit more breadth and scope in terms of what you can do.” Brian Evenson, whose eighth story collection, Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from his work and talks about teaching, writing habits, and spirituality in this video from the 2014 Mission Creek Festival.

Emilie Pine talks about fear of failure, connecting to readers, being open about grief and loss, and the power of storytelling with Ireland Unfiltered’s Dion Fanning. Pine’s debut essay collection, Notes to Self (Dial Press, 2019), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m very skeptical of the way in which books are marketed as commodities, almost like accessories which people can fill their homes with,” says Sally Rooney in this interview at the 2018 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark. Rooney’s second novel, Normal People (Hogarth, 2019), was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and will be adapted into a television series.

“I start with a physical feeling. I start with a visual image.” On Late Night With Seth Meyers, Ann Beattie speaks about her writing process, the differences between writing a novel and a short story, and how she came up with the title for her most recent novel, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck (Viking, 2019).

In this interview, Susan Choi talks to Paul Peppis at the University of Oregon about her fifth novel, Trust Exercise (Henry Holt, 2019), her previous four novels, which include A Person of Interest (Viking, 2008) and My Education (Viking, 2013), writing Asian American characters, and her nonfiction work.

“When I was writing, I was trying hard not to sensationalize it,” Claire Adam says of Trinidad, where she grew up and set her debut novel, Golden Child (SJP for Hogarth, 2019). On Late Night With Seth Meyers, Adam also talks about the important role education played in her life and why she wouldn’t let her siblings read the book until it was completed.

“What are the ethics around documenting political crises? How much do you become a parasite of people’s suffering? What good do you do to a situation by documenting it or fictionalizing it? These are all questions that are in the novel.” Valeria Luiselli discusses the unique challenges of writing about the ongoing migrant crisis at the U.S. southern border in her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive (Knopf, 2019), with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown. An interview with Luiselli by Lauren LeBlanc appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I would read out loud and tried to check in my own breath, in my own body how the sentence was feeling and what kind of experience it was giving me as the first reader.” Marci Vogel reads from her books At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody (Howling Bird Press, 2015) and Death and Other Holidays (Melville House, 2018) and discusses her writing process both with poetry and prose in this Poetry.LA interview with Mariano Zaro.

“Inside a novel, one has the opportunity to experience the ambiguous reality of a whole other consciousness. When you read, you are possessed by the voice of another.” In this 2017 Louisiana Channel interview, Siri Hustvedt talks about the transformative experience of reading novels. Hustvedt’s seventh novel, Memories of the Future (Simon & Schuster, 2019), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“In every single book of poems there are, to me, what feel like really explicit autobiographical moments and gestures.” Dawn Lundy Martin speaks about trying to find a language to express trauma, and the use of voice and narrative in her poetry in this interview with City of Asylum. Martin won the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her collection Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press, 2017).

“I started with one word and I never stopped.” Jimmy Santiago Baca talks with Megan Kamerick on New Mexico in Focus about reading the dictionary, writing poetry while incarcerated, and his experiences learning and educating others about the power of language. Baca’s poetry collection When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother’s Quest for Freedom (Beacon Press, 2019) is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Khaled Khalifa talks with Renée Ragin at Duke University about questions of Arab and Syrian identity, the relationship between his writing and war, and themes of death and difficult journeys in his fifth novel, Death Is Hard Work (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). The novel, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price, is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“In a lot of African storytelling, unlike storytelling in the West, it’s the trickster who is telling the story, so you already know you can’t quite believe it.” On Late Night With Seth Meyers, Marlon James speaks about the influences behind his new novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Riverhead Books, 2019), the first title of his Dark Star Trilogy, ranging from the television series The Affair and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. A profile of James by Kima Jones appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My work is a tragic form of fiction that is both European and African at the same time.” In this interview for the Louisiana Channel, Chigozie Obioma speaks about how his early influences of Shakespeare and Igbo folklore led him to write his debut novel, The Fishermen (Little, Brown, 2015). Obioma is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find not a room of her own, but a house of her own.” Sandra Cisneros speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about her essay collection, A House of My Own: Stories From My Life (Knopf, 2015), her path to writing, and what home means to her. Cisneros was recently named the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

“I like to have a story be just the essential.” Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black (Mariner Books, 2018), talks about why he enjoys the short story form, writing Black characters, and his connection with his students in this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview. 

“Not only did To the Lighthouse help me to understand my own story, but my own story helped me to better understand To the Lighthouse—there’s sort of a beautiful reciprocity there.” Katharine Smyth talks with Michelle Dunton Cronauer about how Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel led to writing her debut memoir, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf (Crown, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.