Poets & Writers Theater

In this Talking Volumes event with MPR News host Kerri Miller, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Louise Erdrich reads from her latest novel, The Mighty Red (Harper, 2024), and discusses how her upbringing in the Red River Valley in Minnesota shaped her writing.

“A book is much more than a transactional object. The words are flooding in, and ideas are filling you in emotion. It’s haunting in a good way.” In this PBS NewsHour interview, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Louise Erdrich speaks from her bookstore Birchbark Books & Native Arts in Minneapolis about her love of books and her new novel, The Sentence (Harper, 2021), a ghost story which explores the racial divides of her hometown.

“This book really is inspired by my grandfather, and a lot of it is actually true.” In this Politics and Prose video, Louise Erdrich talks about her most recent novel, The Night Watchman (Harper, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Authors and independent bookstore owners Louise Erdrich, owner of Birchbark Books & Native Arts, and Emma Straub, owner of Books Are Magic, offer their recommendations for summer reading including books by Natalie Diaz, Sarah Gerard, and Lesley Nneka Arimah.

“I love the physical book. I love the printed page.” Louise Erdrich, author of LaRose (Harper, 2016), talks about her love of books and her bookstore Birchbark Books & Native Arts located in Minneapolis. For more on Erdrich and her bookstore, read “Best-Selling Booksellers” by Lynn Rosen in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Robert, you've wasted so much of your life / Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you / Do that again? I would, a thousand times." In Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy, director Haydn Reiss tracks the evolution of the prolific, mystical poet and his impact on American poetry through interviews with Louise Erdrich, Edward Hirsch, Tracy K. Smith, and others.

“I just keep going.” In this clip, taken from a 2010 interview with Bill Moyers, author Louise Erdrich discusses motherhood, managing expectations, and how she always finds time to write.

In this clip from Prairie Public Broadcasting, author Louise Erdrich, who is profiled by contributing editor Kevin Nance in the current issue, talks about growing up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, and the challenges of running an independent bookstore, then reads from her new novel, The Round House.