Video: The Paris Review launches video interview series

The Paris Review is launching a new series of video interviews with authors about their work.

Since its first issue in 1953, the Paris Review has interviewed authors about the craft of writing. These long interviews, in question-and-answer format, appear in the magazine. Subjects have including William Faulkner (in 1956), Jorge Luis Borges (in 1967), Anne Sexton (in 1971), James Baldwin (in 1984), Mario Vargas Llosa (in 1990) and Haruki Murakami (in 2004). These conversations with Nobel Prize winners, literary innovators and future greats have also been anthologized in a series of books.

The video series builds on that tradition without replicating it. Called “My First Time,” it features interviews with authors about their first ... books.

I know, it’s a bit of a tease.

In the preview, MacArthur “genius” fellow Donald Antrim, provocateur Tao Lin, novelist and poet Ben Lerner, writer and collaborator Sheila Heti and author and teacher J. Robert Lennon talk about working on and publishing their first books. Others who appear include Christine Schutt, Akhil Sharma, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Gabrielle Bell.

This series is created for the Paris Review by filmmakers Tom Bean, Casey Brooks and Luke Poling.

Book news and more; I’m @paperhaus on Twitter