"I think that in writing, we do try to fix moments so that somehow they're captured." Elizabeth Alexander speaks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about the loss of her husband and her experiences in writing her new memoir, The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing, 2015).

Mark Doty introduces and reads "A Display of Mackerel," from his poetry collection Atlantis (HarperCollins, 1995), on PBS NewsHour in 2011. Read Maya C. Popa's interview with Doty in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine—and listen to a conversation with the poet in the first episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.

"I always, always wanted to write a book and I had been carrying around little slivers, and this emotional moment allowed me to access everything." George Hodgman speaks with PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff about his memoir, Bettyville (Viking, 2015), which explores his experiences caring for his aging mother.

“We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.” The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, who died on February 14, 2015 at the age of eighty-seven, speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown in a 2010 interview about the need for working-class life to be represented in poetry.

"I feel like it's my personal mission to keep those stories as present as I am possibly able to keep them present." Claudia Rankine appeared on PBS NewsHour last week to discuss the recent upheaval involving unarmed black men and white police officers, and how these events influenced her book Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014). 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 3 Sections speaks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about how his experience as an immigrant influences the way he writes his poems. "If you're an immigrant, you're sort of on the fringe of society, you see society as a whole, you see panoramas...you can embrace all of it."

The Library of Congress announced today that Charles Wright is the new U.S. poet laureate. In this clip, Wright, the author of nearly two dozen poetry collections, most recently Caribou (FSG, 2014), reads his poem "Together" for PBS NewsHour.

"The power of the word is a doorway." MFA students from Anitoch University in Los Angeles have a unique requirement to do community service as part of their program to enhance the "writing life" of others. PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown takes a look.

Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, whose pen name as a crime novelist is Benjamin Black, recently appeared on PBS NewsHour to discuss his new Philip Marlowe crime novel, The Black-Eyed Blond, and the difference between writing literary fiction and crime fiction.

PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown recently talked with Carolyn Forché, whose new anthology, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English 1500-2001, published last month by W.W. Norton, contains the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. Forché calls the collection an "outcry of the soul."