Poets & Writers Theater

In this interview for the Otherppl With Brad Listi podcast, Leslie Jamison discusses important relationships throughout her life and how she sought to capture them in her memoir, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story (Little, Brown, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this live event at Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Curtis Chin reads from his debut memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant (Little, Brown, 2023), and speaks about growing up as a Chinese American son of restaurateurs in Detroit with author Dominic Lim. For more from Chin, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his new novel, Good Night, Irene (Little, Brown, 2023), in this Sewanee Writers’ Conference reading with playwright David Adjmi. A profile of Urrea by Bethanne Patrick appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“For me, poetry is the act of paying attention. It pushes me to pay attention to a moment, a feeling, an idea, an image.” Clint Smith speaks about what poetry means to him, the themes in his new collection, Above Ground (Little, Brown, 2023), and reads his poem “All at Once” in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

In this video, Sabrina Imbler speaks about their debut book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (Little, Brown, 2022), with journalist Heather Smith after an introduction by Rebecca Solnit for this event hosted by the Green Arcade in San Francisco. Imbler’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It is a new kind of survivor narrative, one that I wish that I had when I was growing up,” says Chantal V. Johnson about her debut novel, Post-traumatic (Little, Brown, 2022), in this reading and conversation with Torrey Peters at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn.

“It’s the nature of the segregation [in Bristol] that makes it so interesting to write,” says Moses McKenzie in this video about bringing the city of Bristol, England to life as a character in his debut novel, An Olive Grove in Ends (Little, Brown, 2022).

“In the summer of 1929, after completing his freshman year at Harvard, James Agee headed west to spend a few months working as a migrant farm hand,” reads Leslie Jamison from her essay collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019) in this 2019 Harvard University event with writer and critic James Wood.

In this Poets & Writers Live virtual event, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021), with poet and novelist Destiny O. Birdsong. Smith is featured in a profile written by Birdsong in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about the historic places he visited and writes about in his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021). A profile of Smith by Destiny O. Birdsong is featured in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We’ve become enamored with unreality, and I wanted a work to embody that confusion and also to cut through the noise,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar in this Little, Brown video introducing his forthcoming novel, Homeland Elegies. A Q&A with Akhtar by Amy Gall appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“She’s finally met the man of her dreams. There’s just one problem: He’s dead.” Watch the book trailer for Amy Bonnafonns’s first novel, The Regrets, which comes out next week from Little, Brown.

“A stranger is someone who we know in only one dimension.” Malcolm Gladwell talks to the Economist’s Anne McElvoy about his latest book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (Little, Brown, 2019), in which he examines how interactions between strangers often go wrong using high-profile cases such as the trial of Amanda Knox and the death of Sandra Bland as examples.

“I wanted to find a way to write about people that felt guided by a spirit of appreciation and empathy.” Leslie Jamison speaks about the ethical complexities involved in nonfiction writing at a 2017 talk at Claremont McKenna College. Jamison’s second essay collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

The Goldfinch, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Donna Tartt, follows a young man who turns to the world of art forgery after the loss of his mother. Directed by John Crowley, with a screenplay by Peter Straughan, the film stars Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, and Jeffrey Wright.

“There’s this kind of irresolvable trap that occurs when you’re too young to have any power but old enough to know that you want some.” Jenny Zhang reads from her essay “Blond Girls in Cheongsams,” which is included in the collection The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America (Little, Brown, 2019) edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman.

“My work is a tragic form of fiction that is both European and African at the same time.” In this interview for the Louisiana Channel, Chigozie Obioma speaks about how his early influences of Shakespeare and Igbo folklore led him to write his debut novel, The Fishermen (Little, Brown, 2015). Obioma is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Little, Brown, 2012), Maria Semple’s comedic novel narrated by a teenage girl searching for her agoraphobic architect mother who has gone missing, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Richard Linklater, the movie stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, Judy Greer, and Kristen Wiig.

This independent documentary film directed by Oscar Corral explores Tom Wolfe’s writing life and his fourth novel, Back to Blood (Little, Brown, 2012), which is set in Miami and focuses on the subject of immigration. Wolfe died at the age of eighty-seven on May 14, 2018.

Leslie Jamison reads her essay “The Broken Heart of James Agee” from The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press, 2014) for a reading series hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Jamison speaks about her new book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (Little, Brown, 2018), in “The Infinite World” by Michele Filgate in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.