Poets & Writers Theater

“For a long time, I worked day jobs that were different from the one I have now.” In this Books Are Magic recorded event, Jami Attenberg reads from her memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (Ecco, 2022), and speaks about her writing process with author Kristen Arnett. For more Attenberg, read “1000 Words of Summer: How an Accountability Project Opened Up My Writing Life” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about my mom losing her hair, or my mom losing weight, I was thinking about us in Korea eating patbingsu,” says Michelle Zauner in this CBS Sunday Morning interview about her best-selling memoir, Crying in H Mart (Knopf, 2021), and finding comfort in the Korean-owned supermarket chain after losing her mother to cancer.

“A lot of my life has been unconventional, but it has led to this point and I wouldn’t have reached this point if I’d given up.” In this Penguin Books UK video, Booker Prize–winning author Bernardine Evaristo speaks with her longtime editor Simon Prosser about her writing career and books, including her new memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Grove Press, 2022).

In this excerpt from a short film directed by Griffin Dunne, Joan Didion reads from the second chapter of her memoir Blue Nights (Knopf, 2011). Be sure to read Kevin Nance’s moving profile of Didion from the November/December 2011 issue and listen to Kimberly Farr read a passage of the audio book.

“The opening and closing of windows really meant a thin line between life and death,” says Farah Bashir, author of Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir (HarperCollins India, 2021), in this reading and conversation with Madhuri Vijay for Champaca Books.

“Here is another reason to write a memoir: to utter what must not be erased.” In this 2017 PBS NewsHour video, Richard Ford speaks about his reasons for writing, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (Ecco, 2017), a memoir about his parents. “I wrote about my parents because, decades after their deaths and when I was no longer young, I realized that I plainly missed them.”

“It wasn’t until I was assigned the family tree project at the age of nine, the same age as my mother when she became a refugee, that I began to understand that she had survived a war.” In this Greenlight Bookstore virtual event, Grace M. Cho reads from her memoir, Tastes Like War (Feminist Press, 2021), which is shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award in nonfiction, and speaks with Sun Yung Shin about breaking the conventions of writing genres.

“My daily life was one of hunger and fear, but all around me I saw skyscrapers and lights and beauty.” In this video, Qian Julie Wang talks about growing up as an undocumented child in New York City and what she hopes readers will take away from her debut memoir, Beautiful Country (Doubleday, 2021).

Flag Day is a film adaptation of Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life, directed by Sean Penn with a screenplay by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. Penn stars in the film along with his daughter Dylan Penn, Josh Brolin, Regina King, James Russo, and Katheryn Winnick.

Charm City Books bookseller Brandon Rashad Butts hosts this episode of Between Two Succulents with poet and screenwriter Brian Broome who speaks about his debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books, 2021). Broome is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2021” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

James Tate Hill discusses the themes of disability and self-acceptance in his debut memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff (Norton, 2021), and speaks about process and the author-agent relationship in this Writing Workshops Dallas conversation with agent and author Eric Smith. Hill’s memoir is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“Over time, pets become like their owners. Over time, I had become more like the fox.” In this book trailer for Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship (Spiegel & Grau, 2021), Catherine Raven reads an excerpt from her memoir, which is featured Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event celebrating the book launch of Ashley C. Ford’s debut memoir, Somebody’s Daughter (Flatiron Books, 2021), she talks to Jason Reynolds, who tries not to drop any spoilers. The memoir is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The most important thing for me when I was writing this book was to invite the reader along with me…it was an adventure for me.” In this episode of Shelf Analysis, host Rick O’Shea interviews Doireann Ní Ghríofa about her debut memoir, A Ghost in the Throat (Biblioasis, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“It’s a book about being present to the world and accepting the complexity of the world.” In this virtual event hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Larissa Pham speaks about her new book, Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy (Catapult, 2021), and the subjects addressed in her essays, including relationships and the differences of expression through visual art and writing, in a conversation with R. O. Kwon.

“There’s nothing more riveting on the page than somebody willing to honestly tell what that life is,” says Joyce Maynard, author of the memoirs At Home in the World (Picador, 1998) and The Best of Us (Bloomsbury, 2017), about the roots of writing a memoir in this CreativeLive video.

“I am the blue chair island. I rock and the island rocks. I pull at a blue thread on the chair’s arm. I pull a hangnail from the third finger on my right hand.” In this Books Are Magic virtual event, Nadia Owusu reads from her debut memoir, Aftershocks (Simon & Schuster, 2021), and speaks with author Catherine E. McKinley.

Joanna Rakoff’s memoir My Salinger Year (Knopf, 2014) has been adapted into a feature film directed by Philippe Falardeau and starring Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver. Set in 1995, an aspiring writer and poet takes a job at a literary agency in New York City that represents the notoriously reclusive J. D. Salinger and handles his fan mail.

“In Spanish, our stories are slow, then fast, and we cackle constantly, even when we talk about the dead.” In this 2016 Radar Reading Series video, Ingrid Rojas Contreras reads from her memoir-in-progress about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia, and how she and her mother both experienced amnesia.

“What are these memoirs? What are these journals? They’re always a list of cool stuff.” In this Saturday Night Live video, actor and writer Aidy Bryant rediscovers journals from her childhood revealing her innermost thoughts and love for such things as turtles and Rosie O’Donnell.