Poets & Writers Theater

In this video, Raymond Antrobus discusses and reads his poem “Plantation Paint,” which appears in his collection All the Names Given (Tin House/Picador, 2021), for which he was shortlisted for the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize.

The Earthquake Bird (Picador, 2001), the debut mystery novel by British author Susanna Jones, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Wash Westmoreland. The psychological thriller follows a young expat in 1989 Tokyo who is accused of murder when her friend goes missing and stars Riley Keough, Naoki Kobayashi, Kenichi Masuda, Kiki Sukezane, and Alicia Vikander.

“I wanted writing to be something that involved relationships with other people.” Rachel Cusk talks about her experience teaching creative writing at Kingston University in London. Cusk’s novel Kudos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Outline (Picador, 2016).

Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels, which were published between 1992 and 2011 by Picador and follow the saga of a dysfunctional upper-class English family, have been adapted into a five-part television miniseries with each episode based on a different novel in the series. Directed by Edward Berger, the series stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Holliday Grainger, and Jessica Raine.

“That’s the beauty of fiction...you can tell a really specific story and it has a way of connecting with people. And they can continue telling that story to other people.” Editor and author Rakesh Satyal speaks about his writing process and new novel, No One Can Pronounce My Name (Picador, 2017), on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“I wrote the poems that I wanted to read and I wrote about the experiences that I wanted to find.” Jackie Kay, Scotland's first black national poet, speaks about her memoir, Red Dust Road (Picador, 2010), which chronicles the search for her birth parents, and what she hopes to share through her poetry.

At the New Craftsmen in London, Olivia Laing reads from Ernest Hemingway's short story "Now I Lay Me," and then from her second book, The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking (Picador, 2013), which chronicles the alcoholism of six writers. Laing's new book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador, 2016), examines loneliness and contemporary interpersonal relations.

"I ain't afraid to die anymore. I done it already." The Revenant, based on Michael Punke's 2002 novel of the same name, follows one man's journey across the frozen American West to avenge the murder of his son. Directed by Academy Award-winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the film will be released in December 2015.

Kathleen Jamie reads "The Whale-watcher" from her poetry collection The Tree House (Picador, 2004). Jamie's poetry was published in Issue 131 of Granta, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

​In this humorous take on an author interview, Zach Galifianakis talks with John Wray, author of the novel Lowboy (Picador, 2010). Wray's newest novel, The Lost Time Accidents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), follows three generations of a family through multiple time periods and geographical locations.

"I used to read a lot in terms of just the backs of toothpaste. I spent a lot of time reading ingredients and things like that, so there was probably also a fascination wit​h words." Sunjeev Sahota talks about reading as a child and working on his second novel, The Year of the Runaways (Picador, 2015), which is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

“Do what you want to do, and don’t worry if it's a little odd or doesn’t fit the market.” Lydia Davis, whose latest collection of stories, Can't and Won't, was released in paperback by Picador in March, offers practical and reassuring advice for writers.

Clive James speaks with BBC News about living with a terminal illness and reads from his new poetry collection, Sentenced to Life (Picador, 2015). An essay collection by James, Latest Readings, will be published by Yale University Press in June.

Novelist, memoirist, and essayist Siri Hustvedt, whose most recent book is the essay collection Living, Thinking, Looking (Picador, 2012), talks here about "between space...the zone of action between people through which a third entity is created. Something like a third presence in the room."

"Having been much criticized for lots of things I've talked about actually is a very liberating thing," says Joyce Maynard in this clip from Open Road Media. Maynard is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, in which she revealed her relationship with J. D. Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.

This week Picador is publishing a tenth-anniversary edition of Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This clip, from the 2007 documentary The American Ruling Class, features Ehrenreich and former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham.

In the latest installment of Picador's Big Ideas/Small Books series of paperbacks, poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum takes readers on a tour of humiliating circumstances in history, literature, art, current events, music, film, and his own life.

As part of the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival, novelist Siri Hustvedt, who is profiled in the current issue of the magazine, read an excerpt from The Summer Without Men, published this month by Picador.