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In this Books Are Magic event, Lana Lin reads from her book The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2025) and discusses how she uses both Gertrude Stein and Audre Lorde’s genre-bending approaches to autobiography in order to highlight Asian diasporic narratives in a conversation with Monique Truong.
In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Patti Smith offers advice to young artists and talks about her award-winning memoir, Just Kids, and her new memoir, Bread of Angels (Random House, 2025).
Is hate ever the answer? In her new book, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion (Verso Books, 2025), translated from the German by Jackie de Pont, journalist and author Seyda Kurt reimagines hatred and proposes the use of something she calls “strategic hate” that can be deployed to fight against systems of oppression for a more just and equitable society. This week consider your own relationship to hatred—whether as a fleeting emotion or a simmering state of mind—and write a two-part personal essay. In the first section, describe a time in your life, or a specific situation, in which you felt hatred or a desire for vengeance. Then, write about your perspective on the possibility of channeling that hatred into a more positive direction. How can this corrosive emotion be pointed toward the purposes of more tenderness and care?
In this PBS NewsHour interview, director Raoul Peck speaks about his new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5, which examines the writings of George Orwell and interweaves clips, readings from the author’s diary, cinematic references, and modern-day footage to propose how prophetic his novels and work have become.
In this virtual reading and celebration, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the 2025 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love (Norton, 2025); Vishwas R. Gaitonde, author of On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Orison Books, 2025); Yael Valencia Aldana, author of Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025); Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025); and Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions, 2025).
In this event hosted by Prince George’s County Memorial Library System and the Office of Human Rights, Julian Brave NoiseCat talks about how his father’s experiences at a segregated boarding school in Canada inspired his debut book, We Survived the Night (Knopf, 2025), and about the importance of oral storytelling, family stories, and ancestral myths. NoiseCat is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
What ever happened to opening a bar tab? A New York Times article from earlier this year reported on a trend of Gen Z bargoers opting to pay for each drink separately instead of opening a tab even if they’re ordering multiple drinks throughout the night, a phenomenon that can result in higher credit card fees paid by the bar, wasted time on a busy night of cocktail concocting, and a diminished sense of camaraderie when friends each pay for a drink separately instead of taking turns buying rounds. Write a personal essay that examines a social behavior that has dissolved over the years and reflect on the wider ripple effects. Consider how you’ve participated in or avoided certain types of etiquette and why you may have followed the trend in the past.
In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Joy Harjo reflects on becoming a poet and artist in the turbulence of the seventies in America and talks about the process of writing her memoir Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age (Norton, 2025). Harjo’s book is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Take a pivotal moment from your own life and reimagine it through the lens of a specific genre or style. You might frame it as a ghost story, a myth, a detective case, or even a surreal fairy tale. Pay attention to how the conventions of that genre shape the reader’s perception of your experience and the ways that tension, suspense, and exaggeration can illuminate truth in unexpected ways. Consider what the shift in perspective reveals about how you remember this moment, the trajectory of your emotions, and the narrative you tell yourself about what occurred.
In this episode of The Write Reasons podcast, Susan Orlean talks about how her first memoir, Joyride (Avid Reader Press, 2025), originated from her reflections of her 1992 Esquire essay, “The American Male at Age Ten,” in a conversation with Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp. Orlean’s memoir is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
