Poets & Writers Theater

“I never know what to say after someone says ‘that’s beautiful’ except to agree with them. For me, beauty is an end of conversation.” In this 2011 video for the Cortland Review, as a part of the documentary series Poets in Person, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn speaks about his writing practice from his home. Dunn died at the age of eighty-two on June 24, 2021.

“To what and whom am I responsible when translating this text?” In this Center for Fiction virtual event, Brazilian literature translator Katrina Dodson offers ways to consider a practical philosophy of translation and speaks with translator Heather Cleary about questions and ways to approach the work. The Literary Translation Clinic is a monthly series of open sessions with a focus on literary translation as a profession hosted by members of the translator collective, Cedilla & Co.

“There comes a point where you’ve gotten so deep into the novel that the words don’t really make sense anymore,” says Laura Lippman as she describes the need for a tactile writing process involving visual and colorful outlines. Lippman’s latest novel, Lady in the Lake (William Morrow, 2019), is set in 1960s Baltimore and follows a housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

“I adopted the six days for creation and a seventh for rest model. I figured, if it worked for building this world, it should work for fictional ones as well.” Novelist Nathan Englander, author of kaddish.com (Knopf, 2019), shares how his religious upbringing has influenced his writing rituals in this PBS NewsHour video.

"National Novel Writing Month, I think, fits in beautifully with writing practice," says Natalie Goldberg in this video from Open Road Media. "Go for one month. Go mad." NaNoWriMo challenges writers to start a fifty-thousand-word novel in the month of November and has expanded to include programs for young writers.