Poets & Writers Theater

On New Day Northwest, Jonathan Evison discusses how he approaches writing about class, what it’s like to have his novels adapted into films, and what inspired his new novel, Lawn Boy (Algonquin Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Ramón García, author of the poetry collections The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015) and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), reads his poems and speaks with Mariano Zaro for the Poetry.LA series about how his suburban childhood in Modesto, California has influenced his writing.

“I think physicists and poets are not as different as we like to think. The same unconscious processes are at work in both.” In this interview from the 2017 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, Siri Hustvedt talks about her background in neuroscience, the experiences of writing both nonfiction and fiction, and the value of approaching questions from different interdisciplinary perspectives.

“I didn’t begin with the dog—I wrote that book the way I’ve written all my books which is I start at the beginning and I move on and create the story as I go along.” Sigrid Nunez talks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about her latest novel, The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018), at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.

Bianca Stone talks to Vermont poet laureate Chard deNiord for Poets Speak about her poetry, life with her family in Vermont, and her work restoring the house of her late grandmother, poet Ruth Stone. Bianca Stone’s third poetry collection, The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House Books, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That was really one of my goals when I wrote the book, to create a human experience rather than the so-called North Korean experience for readers.” Author and translator Krys Lee speaks about her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean (Viking, 2016), and what she hopes to accomplish through her writing.

“I became a writer once I realized no one liked my stuff. I just had no choice but to keep going and start a new novel.” In an interview for Louisiana Channel, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Colson Whitehead talks about how rejections of his first manuscript pushed him forward to pursue writing and why he enjoys exploring different genres.

“Empathy, organization, and good cursive.” Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018), talks about the useful skills she learned from a recent job and recounts her beginnings as a writer.

“I don’t have any heroes in fiction but I have been influenced by fictional heroes many, many times.” In this video, Karl Ove Knausgaard responds to the Proust Questionnaire for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona’s Kosmopolis Continuous Programme series. His most recent novel, Winter (Penguin Press, 2018), translated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey, is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I write with prose, but I write as a failed poet.” André Aciman speaks about the origins of his writing, working with editors, and teaching Proust with Dennis Glauque and Bing Yang for the Classic Talk series. Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) has been adapted into a feature film directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet.

“I work on the paragraph as if it’s a little poem, as if it’s a musical composition...” In this interview with Louisiana Channel, Paul Auster talks about his writing habits, aging, creative obsession, his recent and upcoming projects, and the one-on-one intimacy that makes books different from other art forms.

“One of the things that the novel comes out of is this sense that reality itself is under attack, that the idea of truth itself is under attack. And it actually changed the way I wrote.” Salman Rushdie talks about politics, alternative news, free speech, and his most recent novel, The Golden House (Random House, 2017), on Boston’s WBGH News. “Epic: An Interview With Salman Rushdie” by Porochista Khakpour is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I don’t think of myself as brilliant—I think of myself as a hard worker.” Jesmyn Ward reads from and talks about her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner, 2017), on Yahdon Israel’s web interview series, LIT.

Celeste Ng talks with Amazon senior editor Chris Schluep about becoming a mother while writing her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You (Penguin Press, 2014), elements of story inspiration, and the setting of her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (Penguin Press, 2017). Ng’s second novel is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s a notebook, it’s not a collection of poems, it’s not exactly a novel, no fiction, what is this? Nobody knows.” In this video, Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa talks about being influenced by Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Agualusa won the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion (Vintage, 2016) with Daniel Hahn, who translated the book from the Portuguese. 

“So much of my writing is supposed to fend off the autobiographical that I’ve managed to fend it off within myself as a personal practice.” Joshua Cohen, author of the novel Moving Kings (Random House, 2017) and one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017, talks about playing with the autobiographical impulse and writing as an existential practice.

“What makes life and fiction important and interesting and meaningful is for it to be examined...” Dina Nayeri talks to Bill Kenower of Author Magazine about researching her first book, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead Books, 2013), and her beliefs about imagination and the writing process. Nayeri’s second novel, Refuge (Riverhead Books, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Challis Popkey speaks with author Sarah Gerard about her novel, Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio, 2015), and her first essay collection, Sunshine State (Harper Perennial, 2017). Gerard’s debut essay collection is featured in Page One of the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The things I say in my poems are things that I absolutely have to say.” Jive Poetic reads an original poem and shares his writing process for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series. 

Yan Lianke talks about his writing life and issues around the censorship of literature in China. Yan’s novel The Explosion Chronicles (Chatto & Windus, 2017), translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas, is longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.