Poets & Writers Theater

“I consider Delany not only one of the most important science fiction writers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style,” writes Umberto Eco. Samuel R. Delany discusses his novel Dhalgren, his childhood in Harlem, and the journey that led him to become the 2013 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master of science fiction in this clip from Open Road Media.

“There’s something in people that is naturally story-like. You’re taking all this unformed, chaotic stuff and making sense of it.” Award-winning novelist and poet Peter Straub speaks about creating characters and his love of writing horror stories in this 2012 Open Road Media interview. Straub, who received the 2008 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award for his generosity to the literary community, died at the age of seventy-nine on September 4, 2022.

“That was one of the freakiest experiences of my life. I was earning a living as a writer.” In this 2013 video for Open Road Media, screenwriter, playwright, and novelist William Goldman speaks about publishing his first novel, his experiences in the movie business, and his fame in dental offices. The author of the novels Marathon Man (Delacorte Press, 1974) and The Princess Bride (Harcourt Brace, 1973) died at the age of eighty-seven on November 16, 2018.

"National Novel Writing Month, I think, fits in beautifully with writing practice," says Natalie Goldberg in this video from Open Road Media. "Go for one month. Go mad." NaNoWriMo challenges writers to start a fifty-thousand-word novel in the month of November and has expanded to include programs for young writers.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the folks at Open Road Media put together this clip of some of their authors talking about "the suffragettes, poets, novelists, daughters, and grandmothers whose courage, talent, and dedication serve as daily inspiration in their work."

In honor of Black History Month, the folks at Open Road Media put together this collection of interviews in which authors such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., Virginia Hamilton, Alice Walker, and others discuss the significance of storytelling as part of African American culture.

In this video from Open Road Media, authors Samuel R. Delany and N. K. Jemisin and literary agent Merrilee Heifetz speak about the late Octavia E. Butler, who in 1995 became the first science fiction writer to win a “Genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. “Her stories really weren’t about aliens.... they were about people,” says Jemisin.

“Wait...did I just compare Ursula LeGuin to Lady Gaga?” In this video from Open Road Media, authors Eric Van Lustbader, Alan Jacobson, William Hjortsberg, and Sarah Zettel read mean book reviews from Amazon and Goodreads, and help edit one reviewer’s comments.

John Ashbery says of his poetry, "You have to wait until you've heard it to have heard it, and to know what it is." Open Road Media has just published seventeen volumes of Ashbery's poetry, now available in e-book format for the first time.

"The struggle for true openness and intimacy is a lifelong struggle for all of us, gay and straight alike," wrote Paul Monette in Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise. In 1992, three years before his death, Monette won the National Book Award in nonfiction for Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, an autobiography detailing his early life and his struggles with his sexuality. Authors David Groff and Carol Muske-Dukes speak about Monette's literary and cultural legacy in this clip from Open Road Media.

"I imagined that because everyone was telling me I was so very bright, there must be something there for me. But my skin was black," says Guyanese author, teacher, and diplomat E. R. Braithwaite, whose five nonfiction books and two novels, including To Sir, With Love (1959), are available as e-books from Open Road Integrated Media.

This video explores the various compelling reasons why—from professional etiquette concerns to hiding one’s tarnished identity—some notable authors chose to write under pseudonyms.

“Hubert Selby was the underdog and the voice for the...downtrodden, and was marginalized because he spoke up for the little guy,” says Henry Rollins. “But you see the great humanity and the warmth and richness that he brought to things.” The author of nine novels who died in 2004 is celebrated by two of his greatest champions, Rollins and Amiri Baraka, in this video from Open Road Media.

The author of thirteen books of essays, short stories, and nonfiction—winner of the National Book Award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and numerous other honors—talks about the landscape of his home in western Oregon and the art of storytelling in this video from Open Road Media.

Avery Corman, Michael Chabon, Patricia Bosworth, and others reflect on what fatherhood means to them in this video from Open Road Media. 

"Most fiction is a sort of collaboration between experience and imagination," explains Steve Erickson, the author of several novels, including Tours of the Black Clock, The Sea Came in at Midnight, and Zeroville, in this video from Open Road Media. "At some point, a novel starts making its own choices." 

May is Short Story Month, and in this video from Open Road Media, acclaimed short story writers such as James Jones, Susan Minot, Peter Cameron, David Corbett, Nicola Barker, Bradford Morrow, and Robert McCammon discuss the joys and challenges of the short form.

The third installment of Akashic's Drug Chronicles series, The Heroin Chronicles, edited by Jerry Stahl, includes stories by Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch, Nathan Larson, Ava Stander, and many others. In this video from Open Road Media, Stahl talks about William Burroughs, the difference between an alcoholic and a junkie, and how he selected the pieces for the anthology.

Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, N. K. Jemisin, Virginia Hamilton, and David Halberstam discuss the legacy and contributions of African American writers to the Western canon in this video from Open Road Media.

"I'm not a linear thinker," says Ishmael Reed in this video from Open Road Media. "That's one of the reasons I'm able to make different associations that people wouldn't ordinarily make." The author of ten novels, including Mumbo Jumbo (1972), as well as plays, essays, and poems, Reed talks about his unique style of telling stories, which draw upon different languages, religions, and other cultural influences.