Poets & Writers Theater

In this event hosted by the Royal Society of Literature, Claire Messud, author most recently of This Strange Eventful History (Norton, 2024), and Anne Michaels, author most recently of Held (Knopf, 2024), speak about the shared themes of history and memory in their new novels in a conversation with novelist Elif Shafak.

In this virtual discussion, poet, novelist, and playwright Fred D’Aguiar speaks with Daljit Nagra, chair of the Royal Society of Literature, about their shared experience of breaking ground in the poetry landscape and their favorite poets, as well as D’Aguiar’s book Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 (Harper, 2021).

“As with all great works of literature, each time we go back to it, we learn something new, we notice something new,” says Paul Muldoon in this video speaking about one of his favorite writers Robert Louis Stevenson for the Literature Matters: Reading Together series created by the Royal Society of Literature.

“We are cheating death, all the time, passing one overcrowded town, then another, and another.” This short animated film offers a preview of Tishani Doshi’s novel Small Days and Nights (Bloomsbury Circus, 2019), which is shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2020.

“Almost every great novelist has got a comedian in him, in her, somewhere or other.” Man Booker Prize–winning author Howard Jacobson speaks about the necessity of failure and comedy in literature, and what makes a novel funny.