Poets & Writers Theater

In this Off Book video for the Richland Library in South Carolina, R. F. Kuang speaks about her research process, the importance of reading literature with diverse characters, and the first time she accidentally got caught for damaging a library book. “I freaked out. I thought I was going to be banned from libraries forever,” Kuang says.

In this Green Apple Books event, Muriel Leung reads from her debut novel, How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster (Norton, 2024), and discusses the possibilities of love and care in Chinese American families and communities in a conversation with K-Ming Chang.

In this episode of NPR’s Wild Card podcast hosted by Rachel Martin, author Zadie Smith reflects on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut novel, White Teeth (Random House, 2000), and talks about her forthcoming book of essays and her generation’s struggle with the notion of time. “I’ve always felt there wasn’t enough time. I would like to accept time and also love it,” she says.

Written and directed by Laura Piani, this French romantic comedy follows a bookseller at the legendary bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, who dreams of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel and becoming a writer. The film stars Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, and Annabelle Lengronne.

In this BBC News interview, Ann Patchett speaks about her journey as a writer, the shared themes in her novels, and the unexpected joy she found from owning a bookshop. “There are always going to be people who want to read,” she says. “I’m here to serve the people who still want to read a book.”

In this Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast episode hosted by Miwa Messer, author Laila Lalami talks about the quickly evolving nature of surveillance technology and how a conversation with her husband about data privacy led her to write her novel The Dream Hotel (Pantheon, 2025).

Watch the trailer for The Friend, a film adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award–winning novel of the same name. Written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the film stars Ann Dowd, Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, and Bing the Great Dane.

In this Green Apple Books event, Atlantic senior editor Jeremy Gordon reads from his debut novel, See Friendship (Harper Perennial, 2025), and talks about the decision to write a book of fiction amidst a career in journalism in a conversation with New Yorker staff writer and author Jay Caspian Kang.

In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses the process of writing Dream Count (Knopf, 2025), her first novel in ten years, and how turning to poetry and the memories of her mother inspired her. “I have always felt that poetry nurtures your language and I read it to remind me of the magic of language,” she says.

In this Knopf video, John Nathan speaks about his translation process, his personal relationship with Yukio Mishima, and the historical context of Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories (Vintage, 2025), a newly published collection of Mishima’s work with an introduction by Nathan, edited by Stephen Dodd.

In this Louisiana Channel interview, Mohsin Hamid talks about how his writing process has changed over the years with each novel he’s written, the importance of form and structure to a reader’s understanding of narrative, and the responsibility of writers to establish and shape reality. “We talk about reality as though it is real, but we are aware that we are creating it,” he says.

In this Poets & Writers event, Karen Russell reads from her new novel, The Antidote (Knopf, 2025), and joins frequent Poets & Writers Magazine contributor Brian Gresko for a discussion on the Dust Bowl research that went into the book and the competing histories of the so-called American Dream of westward expansion. A profile of Russell by Gresko appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Brookline Booksmith event, Shuba Sunder reads from her first novel, Optional Practical Training (Graywolf Press, 2025), and speaks about the process of writing her “immigrant novel” in a conversation with Neema Avashia. Optional Practical Training is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Nobel Foundation interview, Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in literature, talks about her writing process and how she draws inspiration from being present in everyday life. “Reading books, and especially reading literature, enables you to enter the depths of another human,” she says. “It’s a very direct way to enter the other’s heart or soul.”

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Caryl Phillips reads from his latest novel, Another Man in the Street (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and talks about his immigrant characters and how “the idea of the outsider is very much rooted in British life.”

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Eric Puchner talks about the yearslong process of writing his second novel, Dream State (Doubleday, 2025), and how he felt urged to write about the lives and landscapes of Montana and climate change.
 

In this 2024 Writers on Writing event hosted by the Newberry Library and StoryStudio Chicago, Hanif Abdurraqib and Eve L. Ewing discuss their literary careers, the craft of writing, and how they tackle the complexities of art and activism.

In this 2023 Louisiana Channel interview, acclaimed British author Tessa Hadley offers her “wicked” advice to writers and talks about how she learned to “write truthfully” in the process of writing her first novel, Accidents in the Home (Henry Holt, 2002).

In this Books Are Magic event, Ada Calhoun talks about the themes of love and identity in her debut novel, Crush (Viking, 2025), the expectations of marriage as a Gen Xer, and the current state of women’s literature in a conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

In this Georgetown University Qatar event, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Hisham Matar discusses the origins of his latest novel, My Friends (Random House, 2024), which follows three Libyan friends living in London as exiles, in a conversation with Kamila Shamsie.