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“The longest relationship I have ever been in has been with the public transportation system.” In this Button Poetry video, Ariana Brown reads her poem “Ode to the City Bus” from her debut chapbook, Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020), at the 2020 AWP Conference & Book Fair in San Antonio, Texas.
“I wonder if, you know, all of us poets are actually starting from that place—where elegy is the starting point for everything that we do,” says Rick Barot about the inspiration for his latest poetry collection, The Galleons (Milkweed Editions, 2020), in this conversation with Jane Wong, author of Overpour (Action Books, 2016), for Seattle Arts & Lectures. The Galleons was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in poetry.
“Restless, I want to return and stand at the mouth where wild fig trees grow,” reads Anne Marie Macari in this installment of the P.O.P. series, shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Macari’s poetry collection Heaven Beneath (Persea Books, 2020) is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this Barnes & Noble Book Club virtual event, Brit Bennett speaks about the themes and writing inspiration behind her latest novel, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead Books, 2020), with Kiley Reid, and answers questions from readers. The novel was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.
“I am unearthing yesterday, ungathering this bouquet of quiet, reappearing / in inches.” In this 2017 video, Omar Sakr reads his poem “Ghosting the Ghetto” at the Melbourne Spoken Word festival. Sakr won the 2020 poetry prize for Australia’s Prime Minister’s Literary award for his collection The Lost Arabs (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020).
“The road I’m walking on now is howling and full of moon, / hopefully it’ll lead to myself, / hopefully they’ll take me home.” In this installment of Poets House Presents, Tyree Daye reads a selection of poems from his second poetry collection, Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“If a white girl tries to tell you what your brown skin can and cannot wear for makeup, just remember the smile of an axolotl.” In this video for Milkweed Editions, Aimee Nezhukumatathil discusses and reads from her debut essay collection, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, which was named the 2020 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year. For more, read a Q&A with Nezhukumatathil by Ross Gay from the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“The sky is our common home, the place we all live. / There we are in the world together.” In this video, Alberto Ríos reads “We Are of a Tribe” from his latest poetry collection, Not Go Away Is My Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2020).
“To me, it was really important to do justice to the complexity of the lives of queer and trans people in my community, and the lives of queer and trans people of color more broadly.” In this Simon & Schuster video, Zeyn Joukhadar speaks about the journey of the protagonist in his second novel, The Thirty Names of Night (Atria Books, 2020). For more Joukhadar, read his installment of Ten Questions.
“I would sneak out of recess, stay in the library to listen to tapes of famous speeches, and one of them was Martin Luther King,” recounts Ocean Vuong about his childhood in this interview with Michel Martin for Amanpour and Company. “You could hear the static when he was giving the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and I thought...who is this man talking about dreams in a snowstorm?” Vuong was awarded the 2020 Brooklyn Public Library Fiction & Poetry Prize for his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019).
