Carmen Maria Machado at the Kelly Writers House

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“You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved.” In this reading at the Kelly Writers House in 2020, Carmen Maria Machado reads from her debut memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019).

Pages Matam on Spoken Word

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“I no longer want to do this thing of speaking for the voiceless, it’s about passing the microphone and allowing those people to finally speak for themselves.” In this video produced by the Guardian Labs, author and spoken word artist Pages Matam talks about the power of poetry and creating spaces where shared experiences can act as both inspiration and a catalyst for change.

Lunch Poems With Yusef Komunyakaa

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“To feel signs depends on how & why / the singer’s song puckers the mouth.” Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “A World of Daughters,” which appears in his collection Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), among other selections in this 2020 virtual reading for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series.

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Morgan Parker and Nicole Sealey at Scripps College

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“Scientists say the average human/ life gets three months longer every year. / By this math, death will be optional,” reads Nicole Sealey from her poem “The First Person Who Will Live to Be One Hundred and Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born,” which appears in her collection Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017), in this reading with Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro (Tin House Books, 2019), at Scripps College.

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George M. Johnson on James Baldwin’s Legacy

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“As someone who is now a part of the next generation of Black queer writing, I pull a lot from what James Baldwin stood for,” says George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in this video for GLAAD’s NEON series. Johnson, whose book has been banned from school libraries, is the 2022 honorary chair of Banned Books Week.

Poetry.LA Interview With torrin a. greathouse

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“Instead begin with the body—itself a kind / of ending.” In this Poetry.LA video, torrin a. greathouse reads from their debut collection, Wound From the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020), and speaks to Mariano Zaro about writing through multiple identities and connecting trauma, disability, and transness.

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TIME100: Cathy Park Hong

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“It was important for me to write a book in which I could try to change this country’s consciousness.” Cathy Park Hong speaks about her award-winning essay collection, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World, 2020), and the urgency to write from a personal perspective in this 2021 video for TIME Magazine’s annual 100 most influential people in the world issue.

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