Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Lili Anolik reads from her new biography, Didion and Babitz (Scribner, 2024), and discusses how the book originated from discovering a box of Eve Babitz’s unsent letters, which included a letter to Joan Didion, in a conversation with Emma Straub.

In this Books Are Magic event, Ada Calhoun reads from her memoir Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me (Grove Press, 2022) and discusses her writing process, New York City, and parenting with Emma Straub.

Authors and independent bookstore owners Louise Erdrich, owner of Birchbark Books & Native Arts, and Emma Straub, owner of Books Are Magic, offer their recommendations for summer reading including books by Natalie Diaz, Sarah Gerard, and Lesley Nneka Arimah.

In this video, writers and book lovers—including Rumaan Alam, Ann Patchett, Jacqueline Woodson, Neil Gaiman, Mira Jacob, Benjamin Percy, and Peter Straub—help celebrate Independent Bookstore Day and the opening of Books Are Magic. The new bookstore is run by novelist Emma Straub and her husband Michael Fusco-Straub in Brooklyn. 

"A few years ago, God gave me a birthday present. Joey McIntyre was coming to Madison, Wisconsin, four days before my twenty-seventh birthday." Listen to Emma Straub read her essay "Teenage Dream" for the Franklin Park Reading Series. Her new novel, Modern Lovers (Riverhead Books, 2016), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Writing can be so lonely," says Emma Straub, who is profiled in the current issue of the magazine, "that it's nice to have another warm body nearby, snuggling up next to you." Listen to the author of Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures reflect on the bond between artists and animals in this video from the Morgan Library & Museum and read Eryn Loeb's new profile, "Emma Straub's Life in Letters (So Far)."