Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Kat Tang reads from her debut novel, Five-Star Stranger (Scribner, 2024), and describes her experience revisiting a novel manuscript years after finishing her MFA in a conversation with author Jinwoo Chong.

“You really have to write as though this will be it, that there won’t be another chance with this, as though paper is scarce.” For this LIVE From NYPL event, award-winning author Colm Tóibín reads from his newest novel, Long Island (Scribner, 2024), and discusses the challenges of writing about extended families in a conversation with Caoilinn Hughes.

In this Green Apple Books event, Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures (Scribner, 2024), and Cindy Juyoung Ok, author of Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024), read from their poetry collections and join Aracelis Girmay for a conversation. Ok is featured in an installation of our Ten Questions series and Nguyen’s Root Fractures is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What surprised me was that I discovered I enjoyed it sometimes: writing prose.” In this Books Are Magic event, Shane McCrae speaks with Patricia Smith and reads from his debut memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Simon & Schuster Books video, Sidik Fofana reads from his debut story collection, Stories From the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this interview with Simon & Schuster president and CEO Jonathan Karp, Jennifer Egan speaks about the pros and cons of technology and choosing the right title for her new novel, The Candy House, which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What does it mean to dream of better places in this book?” Anthony Doerr talks about exploring utopian questions while writing his latest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner, 2021), in this interview for Late Night With Seth Meyers. A Q&A with Doerr by Joshua Mohr appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Flag Day is a film adaptation of Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life, directed by Sean Penn with a screenplay by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. Penn stars in the film along with his daughter Dylan Penn, Josh Brolin, Regina King, James Russo, and Katheryn Winnick.

“When she caught me staring at her, she said, ‘What can I get for you?’ She said it nicely and briskly, as though she didn’t care that I’d been staring.” Melissa Broder reads from her new novel, Milk Fed (Scribner, 2021), and answers questions about the book in this virtual event for Books & Books in Florida, in partnership with the Miami Book Fair.

“I remembered something that Raymond Chandler said, ‘When you don’t know what do to next, bring on the man with the gun,’” says Stephen King in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, in which he discusses experiencing writer’s block and shares the top five favorites stories he’s written.

In this Politics and Prose Live video, Tahmima Anam reads from her new novel, The Startup Wife (Scribner, 2021), and discusses writing about marriage and the start-up world with author and editor Megha Majumdar.

“To me, [revision] is about the majesty of failure,” says Kiese Laymon in this conversation about the newly revised edition of his debut novel, Long Division (Scribner, 2021), with Peter Ho Davies for the Center for Fiction.

“The police will tell her anyone might have missed these things, and she has no reason to feel responsible. She does, nevertheless.” From his home, Stephen King reads from the title novella of his new collection, If It Bleeds (Scribner, 2020).

Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep (Scribner, 2013), the sequel to his 1977 classic The Shining, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Mike Flanagan. The movie picks up the story several decades later as a grown-up Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, meets a young girl with psychic powers similar to his own that he tries to protect from a supernatural cult of murderous nomads.

“It’s a novel of ideas, too—it’s concerned with the consequences of our societal obsession with celebrity, status, appearance, and wealth,” says Laura Sims about her debut novel, Looker (Scribner, 2019). In this video, Sims also talks about how libraries have played an important role throughout her life, and how she drew inspiration from the work of Elena Ferrante and Jenny Offill, and numerous science fiction, murder mystery, and horror novels.

“I kept notes about the interesting things I would find in people’s garbage. You can tell quite a bit about a person by what they throw away.” Jen Beagin, whose second novel, Vacuum in the Dark, will be published by Scribner in February, talks about how her experience cleaning homes in New Mexico inspired her to start writing fiction.

Kiese Laymon talks to Clemonce Heard about his debut memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), growing up in Mississippi, the influence of music on his writing, and reckoning with weight in all its different forms. Heavy is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

The Wife (Scribner, 2003), Meg Wolitzer’s novel about a devoted wife looking back on life choices and sacrifices as her husband is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Björn Runge, the film stars Glenn Close, Max Irons, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, and Christian Slater.

“It’s going to be the first thing someone lays their eyes on before they read it.” Jaya Miceli, art director at Scribner, discusses her love of books covers and how the jacket designs were created for several popular novels, such as Rachel Lyon’s Self-Portrait With Boy and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied Sing.

Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach (Scribner, 2017), and Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017), speak backstage at the Free Library of Philadelphia about the greatest pleasures of writing fiction.