Poets & Writers Theater

In this Politics and Prose event, Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo reads from her debut novel, The Tiny Things Are Heavier (Bloomsbury, 2025), and talks about how writing a coming-of-age story helped her understand her own experiences in migrating to the United States from Nigeria in a conversation with Gbenga Adesina.

In this CBS Mornings segment with cohost Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey announces her latest book club pick, A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf, 2025), and speaks with author Megha Majumbar about the themes of her novel and how becoming a parent changed how she viewed her characters. Read Majumbar’s installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this CBS Boston interview, R. F. Kuang talks about her latest novel, Katabasis (Harper Voyager, 2025), and its forthcoming television series adaptation, her connection to Sylvia Plath and the city of Boston, and the importance of buying from independent bookstores.

“I knew I was going to write about tech, but I did think of it first as a novel about labor.” Elaine Castillo talks about exploring the intersection of virtual reality and the Filipino American diaspora for her second novel, Moderation (Viking, 2025), and how Jane Austen’s novels, including Pride and Prejudice, informed her process in this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer.

In this 7 Stories Up event at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, Jeremy Tiang talks about the impact of his award-winning debut novel, State of Emergency (Epigram Books, 2017), and how his diverse modes of playwriting, translation, and fiction writing offer him fluidity and freedom in a conversation with Reuben Gelley Newman.

In this Writers Speak event hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, Patricia Lockwood speaks about her second novel, Will There Ever Be Another You (Riverhead Books, 2025), and shares her experiences writing about health and illness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in a conversation with Tara K. Menon.

Written and directed by Bill Condon, this movie musical is based on the Tony Award–winning musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, and is the second film adaptation of the 1976 novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig. The film stars Jennifer Lopez in the titular role, alongside Diego Luna and Tonatiuh.

“If writing has rules, they are exactly the same as the rules of living.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Rachel Cusk reads from her latest novel, Parade (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and talks about her approach to writing, which includes focusing on the interplay of instinct, discipline, and authenticity.

In this Creative Writing Series event at the University of Notre Dame, Kristen Arnett reads from her novel Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One (Riverhead Books, 2025) and talks about how she played with form by using different typefaces for “funny” and “not funny,” and her process to ensure that each joke lands.

Watch the trailer for Washington Black, a Hulu series adaptation of the 2018 novel of the same name by Esi Edugyan. The series, which stars Eddie Karanja, Ernest Kingsley Jr., Tom Ellis, Iola Evans, and Sterling K. Brown, follows the life of an enslaved boy who flees the sugar plantation in Barbados where he was born.

In this Green Apple Books event, Irene Solà celebrates the English language release of her third novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2025), translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, with a reading and discussion with author Shruti Swamy. Solà’s novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lydi Conklin celebrates the release of their debut novel, Songs of No Provenance (Catapult, 2025), with John Shakespear performing an original song, “Green Weeks,” based on the book and a conversation with Jenny Xie about music and writing.

In this Literature Translation Institute of Korea interview, Kyung-Ran Jo talks about how writing helps her preserve a sense of herself and shares her process of starting with a voice before subject matter. Jo’s novel Blowfish (Astra House, 2025), translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim, is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

At this Dominican University of California event, Isabel Allende talks about her latest novel, My Name Is Emilia del Valle (Ballantine Books, 2025), the importance of women characters who don’t compromise, and the class structure of Chile which informed her writing in a conversation with Matthew Félix.

In this Jaipur Literature Festival event moderated by Nadini Nair, novelists David Nicholls, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Geetanjali Shree, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Andrew O’Hagan discuss their respective writing processes, as well as how the novel voice can be used to interrogate the histories established by colonial powers.

In this Politics and Prose bookstore event, Christina Li, author of The Manor of Dreams (Avid Reader Press, 2025), talks about her decision to write a family saga with gothic sensibilities and how the Mandarin and Cantonese languages affected her writing process in a conversation with Martha Anne Toll.

Watch the trailer for A Pale View of Hills, a film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1982 novel of the same name. Directed by Kei Ishikawa, the film stars Suzu Hirose, Fumi Nikaido, and Yoh Yoshida, and explores a widow’s memories spanning post-war Nagasaki in the 1950s and England during the 1980s Cold War era.

“I think each project requires its own form, and the story itself demands the form.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Lauren Groff talks about how her novel Matrix (Riverhead Books, 2021) began as a thought experiment around toxic masculinity, and reflects on the ways fiction can challenge patriarchal storytelling traditions.

“Being a writer, creating stories, is my way of saying that I’m not marked by my history.” In this PBS NewsHour interview, Ocean Vuong talks about the power of writing and the working-class community of Hartford that shaped his second novel, The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press, 2025). For more from Vuong, read “Theater of Memories: A Conversation With Ocean Vuong” by Divya Mehrish.

In this event hosted by Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in Maryland, Kevin Nguyen talks about how his experiences in journalism, and the histories of Japanese American incarceration and the Vietnam War, shaped his second novel, Mỹ Documents (One World, 2025), and the ways in which he sees this book as “an imagination of policy” rather than speculative fiction.