Jump to navigation Skip to content
“The place was so deathly still and deserted that you might have thought the time long after midnight.” In this 2001 reading at the 92nd Street Y, the late W. G. Sebald reads from his novel Austerlitz (Random House, 2001), translated from the German by Anthea Bell, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Everyone can do a paragraph.” Emily Rapp Black speaks about working with a writing partner during the pandemic in this video for the Throw Us a Line series hosted by Lighthouse Writers Workshop program director Andrea Dupree. Black’s new memoir, Sanctuary (Random House, 2021), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“It follows the band’s ascent up the wobbly ladder of stardom and the Faustian pact with fame, the hidden costs of getting what they want and the way dreams are not quite the same when they come true.” In this Booktopia TV video, David Mitchell talks about the premise of his eighth novel, Utopia Avenue (Random House, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“For me, the library was an ultimate treat, it was a second home, and it was a place that I could lose myself if I had to, it was an escape.” In this 2019 video, Afia Atakor speaks about how the library inspired her writing career and introduces a crowd of librarians to her debut novel, Conjure Women (Random House, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I have an obligation to human beings, my characters, so that’s all I care about.” In this PEN International interview, Yiyun Li speaks about the expectation as a Chinese American writer to be a spokesperson for a particular experience, and how she enjoys exploring the interior struggles of her characters. Li won the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for her novel Where Reasons End (Random House, 2020).
“The book is really about how these people, while they have superpowers on their own, don’t truly become powerful until they’re together as a group.” Bob Proehl talks about his dystopian science fiction novel, The Nobody People (Del Rey, 2019), which follows a group of outcasts with supernatural abilities who band together against violent mobs and a discriminatory government.
“Olive is going through the late—very late—autumn of her life.” Elizabeth Strout talks about the title character and depictions of weather and seasons in her new novel, Olive, Again (Random House, 2019), the follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008). Olive, Again is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Washington Post book critic Ron Charles tries not to spoil the plot of Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland (Random House, 2019), in this humorous video for his Totally Hip Video Book Review series. Obreht is profiled by Amy Gall in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I can only hope that the criticism and reporting that you do write leaves little levers open psychologically for something good to happen.” Jia Tolentino speaks about the inner conflict of writing on pop culture in the current political climate in this conversation with fellow nonfiction writers Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Linda Holmes, and Emily Nussbaum. Tolentino’s debut essay collection, Trick Mirror (Random House, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“As a photographer my looking really changed, it really did become sacred....” In this Louisiana Channel video, Teju Cole talks about and reads from his book of photography and text, Blind Spot (Random House, 2017), which was inspired by a short period of blindness in one eye that transformed his perspective on looking and attentiveness. The book is comprised of over a hundred fifty photographs interspersed with short lyrical prose pieces.
