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In this video, the Root Slam, an open mic and poetry slam in Oakland, hosts an all-Black Latinx virtual reading featuring Elizabeth Acevedo, Jennifer Falú, John Murillo, Julian Randall, and Nicole Sealey to celebrate the publication of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books, 2020).
“Yes— / I am opening myself for the black-horned galaxies / where the soul hides...” In this Poets House Presents video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths reads a selection of poems from her latest collection, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020). For more Griffiths, read her installment of Ten Questions.
“We’ve become enamored with unreality, and I wanted a work to embody that confusion and also to cut through the noise,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar in this Little, Brown video introducing his forthcoming novel, Homeland Elegies. A Q&A with Akhtar by Amy Gall appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“When things shut down, I was immediately feeling like what I want to do is make stuff with other people,” says Ross Gay about life during the quarantine in this conversation with artist Arista Alanis for Vermont Studio Center’s Six Feet Apart video series. A Q&A with Aimee Nezhukumatathil by Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“The instructor is fairly intelligent and enthusiastic about the material but is unreceptive, even intolerant, of anything that is not a poem or a poem in prose form.” At the 2016 Creative Capital Retreat, Srikanth Reddy reads from his book-length poem Underworld Lit (Wave Books, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I was also writing a story that I wanted to see and that I felt in my own life.” In this Greenlight Bookstore video, Raven Leilani celebrates the launch of her debut novel, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and speaks about the journey to write the book in this conversation with Samantha Irby. Luster is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this video for the Black Lawrence Press Virtual Reading Series, Alan Chazaro discusses moving to Mexico to write, and reads from his chapbook, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), and his debut poetry collection, Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I want to say I was waiting but I don’t know what I was waiting for.” In this video, Barbara Jane Reyes reads from her poetry collection Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, 2020) for the Well-RED reading series, presented in partnership with Poetry Center San José at Works/San José community art and performance center. The collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“Every hand that once reached / for me still haunts me at the most unexpected times.” In this video, Aimee Nezhukumatathil reads a selection of poems covering her time as a high school mascot, bad reviews of the seven wonders of the world, and The Incredible Hulk for Poetry @ Tech in Atlanta. A Q&A with Nezhukumatathil by Ross Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“I can make worlds. That’s literally my job, is to make worlds,” says Awkaeke Emezi in this American Writers Museum video. “Instead of searching for other people to give me a place to belong, I just bent one into existence myself.” Emezi’s latest novel, The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead Books, 2020), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
