Focus Area Description:  Gain insights and inspiration through compelling one-on-one interviews with authors in a wide variety of genres writing about a wide variety of subjects.

Our current library of 222 videos in this Focus Area are available in the subareas listed to the right; to view them click a thumbnail and become a member of Educate.Today.

To see sample videos in this area of the collection, click any of the titles below:

New April 2023! Talking with Authors: Javier Zamora, Solito

Other Samples:
New March 2023! Talking with Authors: Buzz Bissinger, The Mosquito Bowl
New February 2023! Talking with Authors: Arundhati Roy Discusses Her Work
Talking with Authors: Ekemini Uwan, Christina Edmondson, and Michelle Higgins, Truth’s Table
Talking with Authors: Louisa Treger, Mad Woman
Talking with Authors: Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones
Talking with Authors: Dustin Thao, You’ve Reached Sam

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Quick Ideas for Using our Talking with Authors Videos:

• Provide the videos for students to view independently to gain insights into the writing process, to better understand writing in a specific genre or form, to learn more about a particular book, or to satisfy their own curiosity/interest in a particular author.
• Use the videos with author-based research projects to have students learn about a specific writer’s background, style, writing process, etc. and present their learning in a report, presentation, video, etc.
• Use the videos with lesson plans you create asking students to compare how fiction and non-fiction works are created across genres or in specific different genres.
• Use the videos in a speech, communication, and/or journalism class to have students evaluate the interview process.
• As part of their study, have students conduct interviews with each other about writing, speeches, and other presentations they are doing in class. Prior to conducting their own interviews, have students watch a video to help plan how they might want to conduct their interview.
• Have students use the videos to gain background knowledge on how to conduct, film, and edit an interview into a finished video and then create their own video interview with a local author in your community (independent writers, college professors, newspaper writers, etc.) or virtually with authors living elsewhere.
• Contact one of the authors interviewed to have them talk to your class virtually. Have students view the video with that author prior to the classroom experience to provide background and help them develop questions for the author.
• Have students include insights gained through the videos as part of projects, papers, and presentations focused on topics of your class of your or their choosing and/or on cross curricular projects, papers, and presentations incorporating topics explored in another class, perhaps in coordination/collaboration with another teacher:
  • interpreting and/or summarizing what they saw and learned in the video.
  • citing quotations from the expert in the video.