Poets & Writers Theater

“I look back, just with a little wonder. Wonder that I stuck with this thing.” In this 2004 interview with Jeffrey Brown for PBS NewsHour, Philip Roth reflects on his writing career and the role of a writer. Roth died at the age of eighty-five on May 22, 2018.

The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), Philip Roth’s alternative history novel in which Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election and fascist anti-Semitism is on the rise, has been adapted into an HBO television miniseries. The series, directed by Minkie Spiro and adapted by David Simon, stars Ben Cole, Winona Ryder, Morgan Spector, John Turturro, and Zoe Kazan.

Based on Philip Roth's 1997 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, American Pastoral, this film adaptation stars Jennifer Connelly and Ewan McGregor, making his directorial debut. With a screenplay by John Romano, the film revolves around a family caught up in the social and political milieu of the 1960s.

"What is it you think you did?" Watch the trailer for the film adaptation of Indignation (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), one of Philip Roth's last books before his retirement as a novelist. The film is directed by James Schamus who also wrote the screenplay.

The PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award, which "honors a writer whose critically acclaimed work has drawn a wide audience and helps us to understand the human condition in original and powerful ways," was recently given to Philip Roth. Watch his speech at the awards ceremony, held at New York City's American Museum of Natural History.

Philip Roth recently granted a relatively rare interview to CBS on the occasion of the publication earlier this month of Nemesis, his thirty-first book.