Poets & Writers Theater

“It’s very disconcerting to translate oneself, but it’s a kind of pure contact with the work you make.” In this event welcoming Jhumpa Lahiri as the new Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author reads from her new collection, Roman Stories (Knopf, 2023), translated from the Italian by the author and Todd Portnowitz, and joins Brandon Taylor for a conversation about her work.

At the Waterstones bookshop in London, Brandon Taylor talks about three books by authors he admires that inspired the writing of his latest novel, The Late Americans, published in June in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape. “The Late Americans is full of strange, difficult relationships and fraught dynamics with respect to sex and class, and to my mind, nobody does that better than Mary Gaitskill,” says Taylor.

“It started with me seeing this weird article in the Lancet, which is a medical journal, about a particular femur that had been discovered in a Roman necropolis on the island of Isola Sacra.” In this virtual event hosted by the Strand Book Store, Mark Prins talks about the research process for his debut novel, The Latinist (Norton, 2022), in a conversation with author Brandon Taylor.

Watch the “first, the greatest, and possibly the last” Riverhead Variety Show hosted by Traci Thomas and starring Kristen Arnett, Katie Kitamura, Chang-rae Lee, Brandon Taylor, and Joanne Tompkins, as they speak about their new books and invite viewers into their refrigerators and closets.

“As a writer, the idea of readers coming to your work is what it’s all about,” says Brandon Taylor, whose debut novel, Real Life, is shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. In this watch party video announcing the six finalists for the prize, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation Gaby Wood introduces the 2020 judges and the nominated authors offer their reactions.

“It’s full of bold writing, fresh writing, accomplished writing, from points of view that aren’t always expected.” Judges Margaret Busby, Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson talk about the thirteen novels longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, which includes This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel, The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Real Life by Brandon Taylor, and How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang.