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Matthew Gavin Frank talks about one of his favorite characters from Pot Farm (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), a nonfiction account of his experience living on a marijuana farm in Northern California. Frank, whose most recent book, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America's Food, was published by Liveright in November, will be a panelist at Poets & Writers Live in Austin, Texas on January 9.
"You seem to have me figured out to be the next reincarnation of Charles Manson." On December 15, 1971, Gore Vidal, Janet Flanner, and Norman Mailer appeared on the Dick Cavett Show. Mailer, having recently been panned by Vidal in a review, was in a less than pleasant mood. What ensued is considered by many to be the greatest—and funniest—literary feud ever caught on film.
Imagine that you’ve been chosen to be the representative of your neighborhood and tasked to fill a time capsule that will be sealed and buried for one hundred years. Write a letter to future inhabitants who may unearth and open your time capsule. Describe the items you've included and explain their value and importance in the world today. Would you choose technological products, favorites books, or personal photographs or letters? What would you hope to offer the future through your selections?
Composer Luis Escareño's multimedia performance piece is based on Maggie Nelson's book Bluets (Wave Books, 2009) and was recorded live at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. Written as a series of vignettes, the performance features text and narrated monologue adapted from the book, images, and music performed by the Living Earth Show.
"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.
"We do what everyone says we can't. We write." Trumbo tells the story of legendary screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston, who was blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1940s after he was accused of being a Communist. The film is directed by Jay Roach with a screenplay by John McNamara.
"I was captured by the Facist Militia on December 13 1943." So begins Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, republished as If This Is a Man in the new three-volume collection, The Complete Works of Primo Levi (Liveright, 2015), edited by Ann Goldstein. Robert Weil, David Remnick, and John Turturro read selections from the edition at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
Think of a song that you would consider a lifelong favorite, even if your love for it now is attributed more to a strong sense of nostalgia than to your current musical tastes. Does hearing the song unexpectedly on the car radio or in a restaurant suddenly transport you to a different time or instantly change your mood? Write a personal essay about the memories you have associated with the song, and how the lyrics might have resonated with a certain significance in your past. How has your understanding and appreciation of the song evolved?
"She could taste with all of her skin, including her eyelids." Author and naturalist Sy Montgomery describes her first meeting with Athena, a giant Pacific octopus, at the New England Aquarium in Boston. This encounter spurred her to write The Soul of an Octopus (Atria Books, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
"Whether I was born this way or my personality was formed by circumstance, I don't think anyone would call me an easy person to deal with..." Photographer Sally Mann reads from her memoir, Hold Still (Little, Brown, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
