Poets & Writers Theater

“At the end of the day, we want them to say three words: I’m a reader.” Alvin Irby speaks about Barbershop Books, the literacy program he founded that creates child-friendly reading spaces in barbershops, and how reading can be empowering. For more on the program, read “Barbershop Books” from the July/August 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There’s something in the lyric moment that really ruptures the taken for granted-ness of the world.” Meena Alexander discusses her writing process, artistic collaborations, and the sensory experience of being a poet in this 2015 interview for CUNY TV. The author of five books of poetry, including most recently Atmospheric Embroidery (TriQuarterly Books, 2018), Alexander died at the age of sixty-seven on November 21, 2018.

“My small and eager darlings / what it must be like / to have the sound for love / and the sound for fear / be a matter of pitch...” Poet, essayist, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib reads his poem “For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on Sidewalks in Connecticut” and a poem inspired by a Radiohead song at Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City as part of the Mission Creek Live Series.

R. O. Kwon talks about her debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Kwon is featured in “First Fiction 2018” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“If I understood Marx, I thought, I could understand my mother.” At Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, Jordy Rosenberg reads from his essay “The Daddy Dialectic,” which was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Rosenberg speaks about his debut novel, Confessions of the Fox (One World, 2018), in “The Business of Relationships” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What isn’t twisted and dark? Look around! Twisted and dark means new and interesting.” Ottessa Moshfegh speaks with Vintage Books about dark comedy in writing, the difference between art and entertainment, and why she writes about the female body. Moshfegh is the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Penguin Press, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Anne Waldman reads from the “Endtime” section of her longer poetic text at the 2017 Alternative New Year’s Day Spoken Word Performance Extravaganza at Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City. Waldman’s poetry collection Trickster Feminism (Penguin Books, 2018) is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, / Part panic closet...” Terrance Hayes reads poems from his new collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018), and discusses the origin and inspiration for the book at the 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Hayes reads more poems from the collection in the twentieth episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast, and is interviewed by Hanif Abdurraqib for the cover profile in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In a craft talk at the Center for Fiction in New York City, A. M. Homes discusses the value of having a writing routine, how she approaches novels and short stories differently, and her fascination with Barbie. Homes is the author of Days of Awe (Viking, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I just hope that people get an updated version of what Native people are, and what we can be.” Tommy Orange discusses his debut novel, There There (Knopf, 2018), prologues, and tackling misperceptions of Native people in his writing on CTV’S Your Morning. Orange is featured in “First Fiction 2018” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book is very much about climate change…the collision between the human in nature, between internal and external, between domesticity and the wild.” Lauren Groff speaks about her short story collection Florida (Riverhead Books, 2018) with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. “Severe Weather in the Sunshine State,” a profile of Groff by Bethane Patrick, is in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Fatima Farheen Mirza speaks about the inspiration for her debut novel, A Place for Us, the first title to be published by Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint at Hogarth. Mirza is featured in “First Fiction 2018” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I wanted writing to be something that involved relationships with other people.” Rachel Cusk talks about her experience teaching creative writing at Kingston University in London. Cusk’s novel Kudos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Outline (Picador, 2016).

“Justin used to think the trees were God. But today, right here, he thinks the ocean might be God. All that power and weakness, spread out for us to see.” Silas House reads from his fifth novel, Southernmost (Algonquin Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m very fascinated by people on thresholds....” Dorthe Nors talks about her writing interests, short stories versus novels, and the differences between the Danish and English languages with Rosie Goldsmith at the 2016 European Literature Festival in London. Nors’s fourth novel, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Graywolf Press, 2018), translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra, is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Porochista Khakpour reads from her essay “How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay” and talks to Northwestern University professor Brian Edwards about her writing interests and the publishing industry. Khakpour’s debut memoir, Sick (Harper Perennial, 2018), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In an interview with Web of Stories, poet and memoirist Donald Hall recounts his first meeting with T. S. Eliot. Hall is the author of the memoir A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There are so many women who are not married, and don’t have children, out there; there are so many of us but it’s still a bit provocative to write about.” In this interview for BBC News, Dorthe Nors talks about Jane Austen, writing about women, and her novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Graywolf Press, 2018), with Helena Kelly, author of the biography Jane Austen, the Secret Radical (Knopf, 2017).

“I needed to pull readers in and every element mattered.” Poet Rupi Kaur speaks about her first book, Milk and Honey (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015), and why she turned to Instagram to share her work with readers. Her second book, The Sun and Her Flowers, also published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, was released in 2017. Kaur is featured in “Instapoets Prove Powerful in Print” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“A thick drizzle from the sky, like a curtain’s sudden sweeping,” begins Lauren Groff’s third novel, Fates and Furies (Riverhead Books, 2015), which was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award. In this video, Groff talks about the making of her novel at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington D.C.