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In this video, Book Riot offers six recommendations for books that feature refugees including Girl at War (Random House, 2015) by Sara Nović, Inside Out and Back Again (Harper, 2011) by Thanhha Lai, and Exit West (Riverhead Books, 2017) by Mohsin Hamid.
In this Louisiana Channel interview, Imbolo Mbue speaks about her love of New York City and the challenges of being black and working-class in America, which she explores in her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016). Mbue is one of the debut authors featured in “First Fiction 2016” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this New Yorker video, Teju Cole, author of Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016), reflects on his American citizenship and Nigerian upbringing from his home in Brooklyn. Cole is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I didn’t understand that I had to be ruthless. I didn’t understand that my job as a writer wasn’t to coddle my characters and create these fairy tales for them to live.” At Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Jesmyn Ward and Edwidge Danticat discuss writing about their homes and the power of place.
“I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light...” This animated video by Milos features Billy Collins narrating his poem “Introduction to Poetry” fromThe Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1996). Collins’s new poetry collection, The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Teju Cole reads from his novel Open City (Random House, 2012) while accepting the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction. Cole speaks about his collection of essays, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016), in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“To be a stranger is to be looked at, but to be black is to be looked at especially.” Listen to writer, photographer, and art historian Teju Cole read “Black Body” from his new essay collection, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016). Cole is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine in “Love and Witness” by Kevin Nance.
"I wanted to write about that moment where everything is at such a high pitch...that you could make one bad decision that could change your life forever." Emma Cline speaks about her debut novel, The Girls (Random House, 2016), which is longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize.
"It's from 'A Prayer for My Daughter' and the lines are 'It's certain that fine women eat / A crazy salad with their meat,' and I thought it was a nice title for a book about women." In this 1975 interview with Studs Terkel, the late Nora Ephron recounts lines by Yeats, the poetic inspiration for the title of her book of essays Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (Random House, 1975), and talks about her experiences as a journalist and feminist. Animated by Pat Smith, this video is part of PBS Digital Studio's Blank on Blank series.
“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave. / I rise / I rise / I rise.” In a BBC video montage, Wimbledon champion Serena Williams reads empowering lines from Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” from her collection And Still I Rise (Random House, 1978).
