Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Yr Dead by Sam Sax and Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami.
Tags:
Genre: Poetry
Ukrainian Children Turn to Poetry
The Odesa Poetry Studio is a free program that creates space for children to gather, write poems, and share their work with one another, validating their voices and feelings as they live through ongoing war.
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Tulsa NightWriters Craft of Writing Conference
The Tulsa NightWriters Craft of Writing Conference was held on October 19 and October 20 at Oklahoma State University’s Center for Poets and Writers in Tulsa. The conference featured panel discussions, presentations on the craft and business of writing, breakout sessions, and pitch sessions for poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers.
Type:
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?:
yes
Event Date:
March 28, 2026
Rolling Admissions:
yes
Application Deadline:
March 28, 2026
Financial Aid?:
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline:
March 28, 2026
Free Admission:
no
Contact Information:
Tulsa NightWriters Craft of Writing Conference, P.O. Box 702874, Tulsa, OK 74170. Ana Maddox, Director of Communications.
Ana Maddox
Director of Communications
Contact City:
Tulsa
Contact State:
OK
Contact Zip / Postal Code:
74170
Country:
US
Derricotte/Eady Chapbook Prize
Cave Canem Foundation
Entry Fee:
$0
Deadline:
November 3, 2025
A prize of $1,000; publication by O, Miami Books; and 10 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook by a Black poet.
Wonder Mountain Desert Cabin
The Wonder Mountain Desert Cabin offers two-week residencies year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators at the Wonder Mountain Open Source Center, 15 miles northeast of Joshua Tree National Park on the ancestral homelands of the Serrano, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, and Mohave (Mojave) Indigenous communities in California. Residents are provided with a private bedroom, desk, and patio in a newly renovated ranch-style house, as well as shared bathrooms.
Type:
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?:
yes
Event Date:
March 28, 2026
Rolling Admissions:
yes
Application Deadline:
March 28, 2026
Financial Aid?:
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline:
March 28, 2026
Free Admission:
no
Contact Information:
Wonder Mountain Desert Cabin, Wonder Mountain Open Source Space, 5268 Danby Road, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277. (206) 992-3932. Emily Baker, Founder and Director.
Emily Baker
Founder and Director
Contact City:
Twentynine Palms
Contact State:
CA
Contact Zip / Postal Code:
92277
Country:
US
Paterson
William Carlos Williams’s multi-volume, mid-twentieth-century poem Paterson is purportedly inspired by the works of his contemporaries: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Hart Crane’s The Bridge. Through his subject—the former mill town of Paterson, New Jersey—Williams provides a voice for American industrial communities. A launching pad for other artists’ work, the book inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 film Paterson, about a bus driver and poet named Paterson in the city of the same name, and Robert Fitterman’s book Creve Coeur (Winter Editions, 2024), set in the segregated suburbs of his eponymous Missouri hometown—an illustration of contemporary America that mirrors the structure of Williams’s postwar epic. Write a poem that draws on specific observations of your neighborhood to express a wider perspective on life in the twenty-first century. Incorporate street names, local landmarks, and history as well as tidbits of everyday conversation.
Visions of America With Kaoukab Chebaro
Caption:
In this installment of the Visions of America: All Stories, All People, All Places series hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and PBS Books, Kaoukab Chebaro, head of Global Studies at the Columbia University Libraries, discusses the importance of first-person storytelling and her work in preserving the individual history of Arabs across the globe.
Nikki Giovanni on James Baldwin
Caption:
“He was a very gentle person, and he was a great storyteller.” In this Penguin Classics video celebrating the hundredth birthday of James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni talks about her experiences meeting the late author and reading his works.
Growing a Garden
“In colonial times, gardens were utilitarian. A cross between a grocery store and a pharmacy. In the gilded age, they became an entrance to high society, a place of conspicuous display,” narrates the main character in Paul Schrader’s 2022 film Master Gardener, a man with a secret past who works as the horticulturalist of an estate owned by a wealthy dowager. This week write a poem about a garden, perhaps a large and well-known one visited by tourists, a seasonal garden tended by family members that you frequented as a child, or one you pass occasionally on a neighborhood walk. You might explore the functions of the garden; list colors, shapes, textures, and smells; or make conjectures about its guiding aesthetics. What can a garden reveal about its gardener and the space in which it resides?
Jason Koo: No Rest
Caption:
“The reason why I favor long poems—not just writing them but reading them—is that it just feels like a much truer picture of the self, or selves.” In this Books Are Magic event, Jason Koo reads from his latest poetry collection, No Rest (Diode Editions, 2024), and discusses the narrative opportunities of long poems in a conversation with Bessie Flores Zaldívar.
Genre:
Pages
