Poets & Writers Theater

“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 novelist Mario Vargas Llosa dispenses advice to emerging writers in this Louisiana Channel interview with Christian Lund. Vargas Llosa died at the age of eighty-nine on April 13, 2025.

In this interview for The Thread documentary series, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen talks about his childhood experiences as a refugee and overcoming trauma, his parents’ complicated reaction to his writing career, and how storytelling and writing changed his life from an early age. Read about Nguyen’s essay collection To Save and Destroy: Writing as an Other (Belknap Press, 2025) in our Best Books series.

In this episode of the Ehkili podcast, Sahar Mustafah talks to author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her anthology, Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press, 2024), and the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices.

In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Roxane Gay talks about how the word feminism has been defined through the centuries, the work included in her new anthology, The Portable Feminist Reader (Penguin Classics, 2025), and writing a romance novel with Channing Tatum.

In this Off Book video for the Richland Library in South Carolina, R. F. Kuang speaks about her research process, the importance of reading literature with diverse characters, and the first time she accidentally got caught for damaging a library book. “I freaked out. I thought I was going to be banned from libraries forever,” Kuang says.

In this episode of NPR’s Wild Card podcast hosted by Rachel Martin, author Zadie Smith reflects on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut novel, White Teeth (Random House, 2000), and talks about her forthcoming book of essays and her generation’s struggle with the notion of time. “I’ve always felt there wasn’t enough time. I would like to accept time and also love it,” she says.

In this BBC News interview, Ann Patchett speaks about her journey as a writer, the shared themes in her novels, and the unexpected joy she found from owning a bookshop. “There are always going to be people who want to read,” she says. “I’m here to serve the people who still want to read a book.”

In this Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast episode hosted by Miwa Messer, author Laila Lalami talks about the quickly evolving nature of surveillance technology and how a conversation with her husband about data privacy led her to write her novel The Dream Hotel (Pantheon, 2025).

In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses the process of writing Dream Count (Knopf, 2025), her first novel in ten years, and how turning to poetry and the memories of her mother inspired her. “I have always felt that poetry nurtures your language and I read it to remind me of the magic of language,” she says.

In this Knopf video, John Nathan speaks about his translation process, his personal relationship with Yukio Mishima, and the historical context of Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories (Vintage, 2025), a newly published collection of Mishima’s work with an introduction by Nathan, edited by Stephen Dodd.

In this Louisiana Channel interview, Mohsin Hamid talks about how his writing process has changed over the years with each novel he’s written, the importance of form and structure to a reader’s understanding of narrative, and the responsibility of writers to establish and shape reality. “We talk about reality as though it is real, but we are aware that we are creating it,” he says.

In this Nobel Foundation interview, Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in literature, talks about her writing process and how she draws inspiration from being present in everyday life. “Reading books, and especially reading literature, enables you to enter the depths of another human,” she says. “It’s a very direct way to enter the other’s heart or soul.”

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Eric Puchner talks about the yearslong process of writing his second novel, Dream State (Doubleday, 2025), and how he felt urged to write about the lives and landscapes of Montana and climate change.
 

In this 2023 Louisiana Channel interview, acclaimed British author Tessa Hadley offers her “wicked” advice to writers and talks about how she learned to “write truthfully” in the process of writing her first novel, Accidents in the Home (Henry Holt, 2002).

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, book critic and editor Sarah Chihaya talks about her debut memoir, Bibliophobia (Random House, 2025), and the concept of “life ruiner” books that “not only make you want to keep reading, but make you read the world around you differently.”

In this episode of Tightwires with host Hiba Tahir, poet Patrycja Humienik talks about navigating grad school and writing, identity, and her debut collection, We Contain Landscapes (Tin House, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2024 Vogue Singapore video, Amanda Lee Koe talks about some of her favorite books, exploring identity through her work, and the themes of sisterhood and autonomy in her second novel, Sister Snake (Ecco, 2024).

In this BookTrib interview, Maggie Su speaks about how her debut novel, Blob: A Love Story (Harper, 2025), began as a short story and then a play, and her interests in surreal and speculative stories.

In this 2024 LBC Full Disclosure podcast interview with James O’Brien, author and playwright Hanif Kureishi talks about the life-changing fall which led him to write his memoir, Shattered (Ecco, 2025), a mix of dispatches from his hospital bed and his reassembled new life.

In this Waterstones interview, Asako Yuzuki discusses the process of writing and publishing her novel Butter (4th Estate, 2024), translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, and shares her thoughts on the book’s themes of food and desire. Yuzuki’s novel was selected as the Waterstones Book of the Year for 2024.