Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2014 Louisiana Channel interview from his home in Brooklyn, Paul Auster talks about how a chance meeting with legendary baseball player Willie Mays led him to become a writer and what he has learned about writing. “The essence of being an artist is to confront the things you’re trying to do, to tackle it head on, and if it’s good, it will have its own beauty.” Auster died at the age of seventy-seven on April 30, 2024.

“I work on the paragraph as if it’s a little poem, as if it’s a musical composition...” In this interview with Louisiana Channel, Paul Auster talks about his writing habits, aging, creative obsession, his recent and upcoming projects, and the one-on-one intimacy that makes books different from other art forms.

“The world doesn’t owe you anything and nobody is asking you to do it.” In this video, Paul Auster discusses the challenges faced by novice writers, the importance of reading accomplished authors, and why the writing life isn’t for everyone.

Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster returns to the memoir form with Winter Journal, one of the twelve titles included in this issue's Page One. In this video, Auster reads from the first chapter of the memoir, published this month by Henry Holt.

Paul Auster reads from his sixteenth novel, Sunset Park, published earlier this month by Henry Holt.