Poets & Writers Theater

“When we die, our souls leave our bodies, / take with them everything they loved.... In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed. / Nothing remains for the soul.” In this Busboys and Poets event, Mosab Abu Toha reads from his collection Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024), and discusses his recent experiences in Gaza in a conversation with Isra Chaker. An interview with Abu Toha by Destiny O. Birdsong appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Juliet Grames speaks about her new novel, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia (Knopf, 2024), which is set in an isolated Italian village in the 1960s.

In this event hosted by the Royal Society of Literature, Claire Messud, author most recently of This Strange Eventful History (Norton, 2024), and Anne Michaels, author most recently of Held (Knopf, 2024), speak about the shared themes of history and memory in their new novels in a conversation with novelist Elif Shafak.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Dinaw Mengestu discusses the complex characters with sometimes uncertain motivations in his latest novel, Someone Like Us (Knopf, 2024), the nature of diasporic communities in American cities, and the mainstream expectations placed upon immigrant stories.

In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Nicola Yoon talks about the rarity of writing fast, the experience of seeing adaptations of her books, and her new novel, One of Our Kind (Knopf, 2024).

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author KB Brookins speaks about gender identity, resiliency and joy in the face of adversity, nonlinear storytelling, and their debut memoir, Pretty (Knopf, 2024).

“I think the thing that you feel when you get to the right word is that you’ve found the answer to a question.” In this short video, author Gabrielle Zevin walks through parts of her novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf, 2022) and discusses her word choices with John Sabine, social director for Merriam-Webster.

In this event for Vancouver Writers Fest’s Incite reading series, Booker Prize–winning author Michael Ondaatje reads from his new poetry collection, A Year of Last Things (Knopf, 2024), and discusses why he returned to poetry after twenty years of writing novels in a conversation with Jenny Penberthy. “The voice was the most important thing to find, that I could speak almost casually in a poem, whereas a novel is more formal and planned.”

In this Books are Magic event with Isaac Fitzgerald, author Rachel Khong discusses the themes of race, family, and belonging in her second novel, Real Americans (Knopf, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “I think it’s both an American feeling and an immigrant feeling, that there’s not enough time and you need to make the most of it,” says Khong.

In this 2023 event co-presented by Bellevue Literary Review at the Center for Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips reads from her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Night Watch (Knopf, 2023), and discusses setting her story during the Civil War in West Virginia in a conversation with editor Danielle Ofri. “History gives us the facts, but literature tells us the story,” says Phillips. “The characters access the meaning of history for us.”

In this Politics and Prose event, Dylan Thomas Prize–winning author Nam Le reads from his debut poetry collection, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the choice to write poetry rather than prose, and the sometimes questionable authority of writing about trauma in a conversation with Natasha Sajé.

In this Politics and Prose event, award-winning author Tommy Orange reads from his second novel, Wandering Stars (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the musicality of language and the challenge of writing about trauma in a conversation with Kaveh Akbar. Wandering Stars is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Some people say fiction is all a lie. To me, fiction is one of the best ways we can learn truth.” In this Unban Coolies interview, Amy Tan talks about the importance of observation in her writing, identity and biodiversity, and how her interest in bird conversation inspired her new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024), which is featured in “The Written Image” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To make ancestors whole is to imagine, collectively, publicly, who they were and what their experiences were like.” In this New York Public Library event, former Cullman Center fellow and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gregory Pardlo discusses the themes within his latest poetry collection, Spectral Evidence (Knopf, 2024), and talks about interrogating the present-day erasure of Black history in a conversation with Imani Perry.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Kaveh Akbar speaks about writing his first novel, Martyr! (Knopf, 2024), and how pop culture as well as Persian and contemporary literature mix into the narrative in an interview with Jeffrey Brown. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this One Book, One Chicago event, Tommy Orange discusses the importance of Native American voices, the intricate plotlines of his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), and the historical roots of his forthcoming novel, Wandering Stars, in a conversation with Donna Seaman at the Chicago Public Library.

“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.

“I saw a writer who was quite new to the craft, but excited by it, and sort of experimental, and there’s a freshness to these stories that surprised me.” In this 2003 PBS NewsHour interview, renowned author and critic John Updike speaks about looking back on his early career and the stories included in his collection The Early Stories: 1953-1975 (Knopf, 2003) with correspondent Jeffrey Brown.

In this 2009 reading filmed at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Jane Hirshfield reads her poem “For What Binds Us,” which is included in her latest collection, The Asking: New and Selected Poems, forthcoming in September from Knopf. A profile of Hirshfield by Danusha Laméris is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this U.S. Embassy Berlin Literature Series event, Lorrie Moore reads from her novel I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home (Knopf, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and joins author Lauren Groff to speak about first drafts and techniques for establishing the interior voice in a novel.