Poets & Writers Theater

“I think Jane Austen, in general, writes about young people and young love very accurately,” says Leo Suter, who costars with Theo James and Rose Williams in the PBS Masterpiece adaptation of Jane Austen’s final unfinished novel, Sanditon, written and executive produced by Andrew Davies. Originally titled The Brothers, the manuscript was left unfinished in 1817 with only the first eleven chapters written, and has since been adapted and completed in various versions.

Curtis Sittenfeld speaks with PBS NewHour's Jeffrey Brown about her latest novel, Eligible (Random House, 2016), a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice set in twenty-first-century Cincinnati. Sittenfeld is a participant of the Austen Project, in which six contemporary authors have been asked to reimagine Austen's six complete works.

There is a new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic, comic novel Emma, which follows the “handsome, clever, and rich” Emma Woodhouse as she attempts to be the town matchmaker. Directed by Autumn de Wilde and written by Eleanor Catton, the film stars Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, and Anya Taylor-Joy.

“There are so many women who are not married, and don’t have children, out there; there are so many of us but it’s still a bit provocative to write about.” In this interview for BBC News, Dorthe Nors talks about Jane Austen, writing about women, and her novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Graywolf Press, 2018), with Helena Kelly, author of the biography Jane Austen, the Secret Radical (Knopf, 2017).