Poets & Writers Theater

In this Penguin Random House video, China Miéville and Keanu Reeves answer questions from readers about the writing process and inspiration for their collaborative novel, The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey, 2024), based on the comic book series BRZRKR.

“I hope that people find this a hopeful story, because that’s ultimately what I want it to be.” In this Penguin Random House video, Eve J. Chung discusses her debut novel, Daughters of Shandong (Berkley, 2024), and how it was inspired by her grandmother who lived through the Chinese Civil War.

“The book that I didn’t know I could do was the one I should be doing.” In this Penguin Random House video, author Colson Whitehead talks about the origins of his award-winning novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, and continuing the stories of his character Ray Carney through his two latest novels, Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto.

“The key to an amazing story is the heart of the story,” says novelist Daniel José Older in this segment of Penguin Random House’s Meet the Author series. “If you’re a writer, it’s your compass. It’s what’s going to guide you forward to finish the story.”

“Part of my purpose as a writer is to help make compassion the standard.” In this Penguin Random House video, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah talks about his research process, speculative fiction, and writing his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars (Pantheon, 2023).

In this Penguin Random House video, book designer Vi-An Nguyen narrates the progression of her cover options for The Prophets, Robert Jones Jr.’s debut novel about two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation who find refuge in each other.

Filmed at the Milwaukee Public Library, this video featuring local artists Genesis Renji, Klassik, and Marli Amor aims to raise awareness for Penguin Random House’s All Ways Black initiative, which is partnering with Little Free Libraries to build a number of free libraries with a curated selection of Black authors and classic stories. For every share of the video on social media, Penguin Random House has pledged to donate a book to the initiative.

“It took me a long time, a lot of books under my belt before I could finally sit down and say, I am now skilled enough and experienced enough and confident enough to write The Art of Prophecy.” In this video, Wesley Chu speaks about his love of fantasy and Wuxia, and combining these genres in his new novel, The Art of Prophecy (Del Rey, 2022), the book he’s always wanted to write.

“Knowing your true origins connects you to history, it tells you where you are in time, in the world,” says Carmen Rita Wong about discovering family secrets and facing the revelations as she wrote her memoir, Why Didn’t You Tell Me? (Crown, 2022), in this video for Penguin Random House’s Inside the Book series.

“Woman of Light is my heart song to my ancestors,” says Kali Fajardo-Anstine in this video in which she talks about her debut novel, out now from One World, and the research and stories of her Indigenous Chicano family that inspired her writing. A profile of Fajardo-Anstine by Rigoberto González is featured in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book is really a journey of these characters figuring out how to accept themselves and to find their place in the world as Chinese Americans,” says Grace D. Li about her debut novel, Portrait of a Thief (Tiny Reparations Books, 2022), in this video in which she discusses her love of heist movies and the true story that inspired her book.

In this National Centre for Writing video, Hannah Chukwu, assistant editor at Penguin Random House’s imprint Hamish Hamilton, speaks about receiving submissions from agents, pitching, and the editing process for the literary fiction and nonfiction authors she has worked with, including Bernardine Evaristo, Arundhati Roy, and Zadie Smith.

“My daily life was one of hunger and fear, but all around me I saw skyscrapers and lights and beauty.” In this video, Qian Julie Wang talks about growing up as an undocumented child in New York City and what she hopes readers will take away from her debut memoir, Beautiful Country (Doubleday, 2021).

“Roberto was brown and his people lived next door so of course I went over on weekends.” Listen to Bryan Washington read an excerpt from his debut story collection, Lot (Riverhead Books, 2019), for this Penguin Random House video series, which encourages listening to audiobooks before bed to help with sleep.

“This novel is about violence and loss, but it’s also about finding answers.” At a Penguin Random House event with librarians, Julia Phillips speaks about her debut novel, Disappearing Earth (Knopf, 2019), which is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in fiction.

“I wanna be / all the girls I’ve ever loved / mean girls, shy girls, loud girls, my girls, / all of us angry on our porches…” Olivia Gatwood reads poems from her debut collection, Life of the Party (Dial Press, 2019), at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

“It’s important to be a reader because it can help make you a better person.” Anissa Gray, author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (Berkley, 2019), talks about the importance of reading, offers advice to aspiring writers, and explains why she does not loan out books in this interview for Penguin Random House.

“In the days since her arrest, Mary Ripley has not slept—ironic, since sleeping is precisely what she was doing on the night her landlady was murdered.” In this short animation, Christina Dalcher narrates her seven-sentence story, “The Burden of Proof.” Dalcher is the author of the debut novel, Vox (Berkley, 2018), which takes place in a dystopian United States where women are only allowed to speak one hundred words per day.

What would a mashup book series by Lee Child look like? In this humorous video, Child, the author most recently of Past Tense (Delacorte Press, 2018), presents potential mashup titles featuring Jack Reacher, the protagonist of his crime thriller series.

In this behind-the-scenes video from Penguin Random House, the multistep process of publishing a book is presented as it moves from author to reader, from manuscript editing and book design to distribution and bookstore sale. The book shown in the journey is the debut short story collection, Back Talk (Penguin Books, 2018), by Danielle Lazarin, who is featured in Literary MagNet in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.