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A curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.
"The door closes slowly, I'm spinning way out of the city, out of my own body, out of his life forever." Eric Gamalinda's latest novel, The Descartes Highlands (Akashic Books, 2014), interweaves the stories of two men sold for adoption by their father.
NPR literary commentator and author Alan Cheuse speaks about the events and life experiences that influenced his fifth novel, Prayers for the Living (Fig Tree Books, 2015). Cheuse passed away on July 31 at the age of seventy-five.
"I finally reached this point where I feel confident that I'm going to keep doing the work, that I have enough discipline." Adam Wilson talks about negotiating happiness and priorities in his writing life for “Writerly States,” a new video series produced by Jen Werner featuring interviews with American poets and prose writers.
The film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's award-winning novel Room (Little, Brown, 2010) will be released this fall. The film is directed by Lenny Abrahamson with a screenplay by Donoghue.
"You have to give in and see where your characters are going, and follow them a bit." Miriam Toews, whose latest novel, All My Puny Sorrows, was released in paperback by McSweeney's this week, speaks about how her writing process has evolved over the last two decades.
"For me, translation is, in a way, the most intimate form of reading, the most concentrated form, and it's also vital to my process of creation." At the Academy of American Poets' 2014 Poets Forum, Arthur Sze speaks about how translation has influenced his work as a poet and reads from two Chinese poets—one classical and one contemporary.
This poem by Frank Stanford is featured in Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives, published by Third Man Books this month. The book is a collection of unpublished poems, drafts, photos, and correspondence between Stanford and fellow American poets Allen Ginsberg and Alan Dugan.
"To me, books came from another planet. I didn't know anyone who wrote them." J. Ryan Stradal recounts seeing an author read for the first time, and discusses the regional food and family relationships that informed his debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, released this week by Pamela Dorman Books.
“In the realm of the poem, we can feel our full feelings and it doesn't have to present as nonpartisan or distant in any way.” In this conversation moderated by Eric Liu, executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program, poets Elizabeth Alexander and Claudia Rankine discuss recent events and poetry's role in history.
"When you read it you realize that everything is constantly changing, and that that is, at least often, the key to a great story..." Ben Marcus, editor of the short fiction anthology New American Stories, published this week by Vintage, talks about one of his favorite things: Ovid's Metamorphoses.
