Ten Questions for Ashley M. Jones
“I wish all writers the audiences they desire and the acclaim they deserve.” —Ashley M. Jones, author of Lullaby for the Grieving
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Arthur Sze on His Life and Work
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“When the time of your life is a time of earthquakes.” In this PBS NewsHour interview, Arthur Sze reads from his latest collection, Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), and talks about his life and work, including his discoveries while translating literature. Sze has been named the twenty-fifth poet laureate of the United States.
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Arthur Sze Named U.S. Poet Laureate
During his term as poet laureate, Sze plans to have a special focus on poetry in translation.
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2024 Jackson Poetry Prize Reading: Fady Joudah
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In this Poets & Writers event, 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize winner Fady Joudah reads a selection of poems, including from his National Book Award–nominated collection, [...] (Milkweed Editions, 2024), and joins Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation about his work and life as a poet. RSVP for this year’s Jackson Poetry Prize reading celebrating Cyrus Cassells taking place on Tuesday, September 30.
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Get the Word Out: 2025 Poetry Reading
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In this video, Ricardo Hernandez, assistant director of Programs & Partnerships at Poets & Writers, hosts a celebratory reading by the 2025 poetry cohort of Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator for early career authors. Readers include Adedayo Agarau, Genevieve DeGuzman, Isabella DeSendi, Alison Lubar, Nick Martino, Yamini Pathak, mick powell, Maya Salameh, Kelsey L. Smoot, and Bernardo Wade. DeSendi’s debut collection, Someone Else’s Hunger (Four Way Books, 2025), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Broken Down
Write an essay about something in your daily life that has quietly broken down but remains in use. Perhaps it’s a favorite chair with a wobbling leg, a jacket with a missing button, or a smartphone with a cracked screen. Begin with the object itself, describing its flaws in detail, then follow the thread outward: What does your continued reliance on it reveal about your habits, your history with broken things, and your relationship to loss? Consider how the imperfect object serves as a stand-in for resilience, denial, or attachment. Let the essay move between the object’s material reality and the emotional truths it props up.
The Interview: Arundhati Roy
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In this episode of The Interview, a podcast from the New York Times, Arundhati Roy speaks with host Lulu Garcia-Navarro about government censorship and political repression, the role of the artist amidst crisis, and the challenges of writing about her mother in her new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Scribner, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Earth and Water
In her 1955 book The Edge of the Sea, marine biologist Rachel Carson explores the ecology of the Atlantic seashore. “When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself,” she writes, “the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflict and eternal change.” Write a short story that uses a shoreline as its setting. Consider the ways in which this meeting place of earth and water is a place where one might encounter change, conflict, and compromise. What sorts of sights specific to this merging of earth and water are observed, and how can you connect them to the major and minor conflicts in your narrative? Does your story conclude with the implication of further “eternal change,” or do you lead your characters to a seeming point of resolution?
Shabnam Banerjee-McFarland of Odom Media Management
“We desperately need principled writers with radical imaginations that work in service of collective liberation.
If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit
First published in 1938, Brenda Ueland’s classic book is a guide for writers at all levels offering insight to the writing process and the artist’s identity. Ueland encourages all to find their creative center and provides spirited advice on how to channel creativity during happy, idle time spent ruminating and imagining. “Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic, striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time,” she writes. Each chapter speaks directly to the reader reminding them that, as the first chapter is titled, “Everybody Is Talented, Original, and Has Something Important to Say.”
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