A curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.

Naming Things

"On the quiet days, the view out my window pops a hip." Angelique Palmer reads her poem "Naming Things" at the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam Finals in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Writing Memory

"I think in old age, memory is extraordinarily interesting because there's an awful lot of it by now." Booker Prize-winning novelist Penelope Lively speaks about her fascination with the use of memory and evidence as tools to develop characters.

Mind Your Head

"I meet another Henry. And he's nothing like me. Why are we both called Henry when there's no commonality?" This short film, produced by Naresh Ramchandani and directed by Chris Dada, features seven poems by Henry Ponder, a British poet who tweets daily poems.

Fatima Asghar

"Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. / ​My bad. Your graph said I was supposed / ​to make a nice little loop around the sun." ​Fatima Asghar reads her poem "Pluto Shits on the Universe," which was published in April in Poetry magazine, at the 2015 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in Rockford, Illinois.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

"I strongly believe that writing is an act of courage—it's almost an act of physical courage." Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the personal strength necessary for writing, and reflects on his experience with breakthroughs. Coates's memoir Between the World and Me, published by Spiegel & Grau this week, is an exploration of racial history in the United States.

Fight Club for Kids

In this video for Mashable, Chuck Palahniuk reads an imagined kid-friendly version of his novel Fight Club (Norton, 1996). Palahniuk's debut short story collection, Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread, was published in May by Doubleday.

Written by Himself

"I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet / whispering my name." Gregory Pardlo reads a poem from his collection Digest (Four Way Books, 2014) which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Lydia Davis

“Do what you want to do, and don’t worry if it's a little odd or doesn’t fit the market.” Lydia Davis, whose latest collection of stories, Can't and Won't, was released in paperback by Picador in March, offers practical and reassuring advice for writers.

Harper Lee: Hey, Boo

An updated version of director Mary McDonagh Murphy's documentary Harper Lee: Hey, Boo airs tonight on PBS. Harper Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchman, will be released by HarperCollins on July 14, fifty-five years after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird (Lippincott, 1960).

James Tate

"One night I thought I saw a llama cross the road." James Tate reads "Llamas" at an event with poets Marilyn Hacker and Paul Muldoon for Bryant Park Reading Room's Word for Word Poetry reading series in 2010.

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