Poets & Writers Theater

“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.

“I wanted to center the emotions and the feelings of the actual enslaved people.” Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about what inspired him to write his debut novel, The Water Dancer (One World, 2019), as he walks through Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, with Gayle King for CBS This Morning.

“A stranger is someone who we know in only one dimension.” Malcolm Gladwell talks to the Economist’s Anne McElvoy about his latest book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (Little, Brown, 2019), in which he examines how interactions between strangers often go wrong using high-profile cases such as the trial of Amanda Knox and the death of Sandra Bland as examples.

“I was looking for the story the whole time,” says CJ Hauser about spending time with field scientists for the research that went into her second novel, Family of Origin (Doubleday, 2019), in this interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“My heart had recently cracked // Open. Fear had departed me.” Ariana Reines reads “To the Reader” from her poetry collection, A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019), and talks about the origins of the book, her writing background, and the power of poetry to reach the deepest levels of human experience in this Louisiana Channel interview.

“I just felt this deep need to express myself.... I had a strong desire to understand and to express that understanding.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the purpose of his writing and how the music of Marvin Gaye influences the language in his work. Coates’s debut novel, The Water Dancer (One World, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There’s a long history, and many families and stories that just haven’t been told.” Tommy Orange talks about the need for more Native American stories in literature and the origins of his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), in this interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” The life of Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison is remembered through this 2004 interview for CBS Sunday Morning highlighting what was most important to her: being a mother and a writer. Morrison died at the age of eighty-eight on August 5, 2019.

“The ‘need’ is many things in the book...a child’s need for milk and then also the mother’s need for the child to relieve her of the milk and the mother’s need for her children, that love going two directions.” On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Helen Phillips talks about her second novel, The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019), different reactions to the book, her own experiences as a mother, and some of the inspiration for its themes. For more Phillips, read her answers to Ten Questions about her novel.

“You pick the right tool for the job, and sometimes fantasy is a way to open up a story and convey a universal truth, and sometimes realism.” Colson Whitehead speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his writing process and the true story that inspired his latest novel, The Nickel Boys, which was published this week by Doubleday.

“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.