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“If the only thing we can give to each other is ourselves, we better do it. Now.” In this inaugural Speak Now series event hosted by Columbia University School of the Arts, Claudia Rankine reads from her work-in-progress “Triage” and discusses political censorship in higher education and the importance of literature in crises in a conversation with Sarah Cole.
“Now, though, years have passed, and I do have more peace about my past and my process. From afar, I can finally see what I was doing, and why.” —Jay Baron Nicorvo, author of Best Copy Available: A True Crime Memoir
In this NBC News video, New York Times Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz talks about assembling the newspaper’s recently released list of top 100 books of the twenty-first century with the help of a panel of novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and book lovers.
“It’s not, I don’t think, hyperbolic to say that books can and have changed people’s lives, and how we find books matters a great deal.” In this conversation with Politics and Prose Bookstore co-owner Bradley Graham, author Evan Friss talks about his book The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (Viking, 2024) and how bookstores serve as important spaces that foster community and culture in America.
“The writing comes not with the then and then and then of narrative time driven by the hierarchy of information that plot demands, but with the and and and and and of parataxis. Everything is equal all together and all at once,” writes Jennifer Kabat in her debut memoir, The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which combines the author’s musings on her relocation to the rural Catskills in New York with historical documents and research about the Anti-Rent War between tenant farmers and landowners that took place in the region in the early nineteenth century. Take a deep dive into a historical event that took place where you live and write an essay that attempts to bridge your own experiences and memories of your locale with the past. Inspired by Kabat, experiment with alternating back and forth through different time periods, point of view, and verb tense for a sense of simultaneity.
“Don’t forget to have a good time. Stay loose. Enjoy the labor. Follow through.” —Elisa Albert, author of The Snarling Girl
In this NGC Bocas Lit Fest event, Edwidge Danticat speaks about the roots of her work and reads excerpts from her works of fiction and nonfiction, including the preface from her new essay collection, We’re Alone (Graywolf Press, 2024), in a conversation with Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw. A profile of Danticat by Renée H. Shea appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I wanted to look at trauma now, not as an individual thing but as a structural thing, as a collective thing, and as an ongoing thing.” In this virtual event hosted by The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal discusses the origins of her essay collection, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders (Tiny Reparations Books, 2024), trauma in contemporary writing, and returning to fantasy and surrealism during a time of a crisis in a conversation with Angela María Spring.
How do best pals become worst enemies? In the television fantasy drama series House of the Dragon, created by Ryan Condal and George R. R. Martin, childhood best friends Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower become mortal enemies, each at the head of a household vying for the power to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Compose a personal essay that ruminates on a complicated friendship or relationship you’ve had that has transformed significantly over time. Was there one catalyzing incident or many gradual shifts that caused your relationship to change direction? Consider the ways in which the relationship changed in parallel, or in contradiction, to how each of you have evolved as individuals.
“I was building up a writing life alongside working on this project, and for many of those years, I didn’t even know that it would look like this.” In this interview for the Otherppl With Brad Listi podcast, Nina Sharma talks about her writing practices while working on her debut essay collection, The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown (Penguin Press, 2024).
