Poets & Writers Theater

“It is a blessing to feel like what I write actually matters in the world. It gives me meaning and purpose.” In this Daily Show interview with host Jon Stewart, author Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about how his recent travels to Senegal and Palestine informed his understanding of power and oppression, and inspired his new book, The Message (One World, 2024).

“For most of American history, African American authors have not had the purchase on the American conscience that they have right now,” says Ta-Nehisi Coates about the rise of banning books with themes about race including his own memoir, Between the World and Me (One World, 2015), as well as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be Antiracist (One World, 2019) and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (One World, 2021) by Nikole Hannah-Jones in this 2021 CBS Mornings interview. “This is really about white children now being exposed to ideas that I think were previously segregated.”

“I wanted to center the emotions and the feelings of the actual enslaved people.” Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about what inspired him to write his debut novel, The Water Dancer (One World, 2019), as he walks through Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, with Gayle King for CBS This Morning.

“I just felt this deep need to express myself.... I had a strong desire to understand and to express that understanding.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the purpose of his writing and how the music of Marvin Gaye influences the language in his work. Coates’s debut novel, The Water Dancer (One World, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I report, that is my profession. I report, as a loud noise testifies to a gun.” Upon the posthumous publication of Doctorow: Collected Stories (Random House, 2017), Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jennifer Egan read from E. L. Doctorow’s short stories in celebration of his life and work at the 92nd Street Y.

One BookTuber offers his view on 2015's book lists from the New York Times to Publishers Weekly, Amazon to Goodreads. Paula Hawkins's debut novel, The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), James Hannaham's Delicious Foods (Little, Brown, 2015), and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) are books that top the lists. 

"Within that economy of words, you choose words that have certain angles, that have certain edges, that effect people in a certain way." Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose memoir Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, speaks with Khalil Gibran Muhammad about what he learned as a poet and how those skills continue to influence his writing.

"I strongly believe that writing is an act of courage—it's almost an act of physical courage." Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the personal strength necessary for writing, and reflects on his experience with breakthroughs. Coates's memoir Between the World and Me, published by Spiegel & Grau this week, is an exploration of racial history in the United States.