Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis by Kelly Weber and Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West by Russell Brakefield.
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Genre: Poetry
Q&A: Cathy Linh Che of Kundiman
The executive director of Kundiman, a national nonprofit supporting Asian American authors, discusses the organization’s evolution over the past twenty years and shares her plans for working in solidarity with other communities of color.
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Performing the Future: Our Nineteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets
Ten debut poets who published in 2023, including Ina Cariño and Shaina Phenix, share the inspiration, advice, and writers block remedies that form their individual poetics.
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UCR Writers’ Week Festival
The 47th annual UCR Writers’ Week Festival, sponsored by the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), was held from February 10 to February 16 at the University of California campus in Riverside (UCR) and online. The festival’s programming features author readings and talks, panel discussions, book signings, Q&A sessions, and a Lifetime Achievement Award presentation for poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and translators.
Type:
FESTIVAL
Ignore Event Date Field?:
yes
Event Date:
December 27, 2025
Rolling Admissions:
ignore
Application Deadline:
December 27, 2025
Financial Aid?:
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline:
December 27, 2025
Free Admission:
yes
Contact Information:
UCR Writers’ Week Festival, University of California in Riverside, Department of Creative Writing, Interdisciplinary North Building 3012, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Director.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Director
Contact City:
Riverside
Contact State:
CA
Contact Zip / Postal Code:
92521
Country:
US
Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency
The Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency offers a six- to seven-month residency from April through October to a poet or prose writer, or pair of writers, at Dutch Henry Homestead in the Rogue River Canyon of southwest Oregon. Residents are provided with private lodging, including two small bedrooms, a sleeping loft, a living room with a kitchen, a bathroom, and a roof-deck, on 95 acres of forest and meadow. One hour of general homestead maintenance is required each day. Residents will also receive a stipend of $5,000.
Type:
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?:
no
Event Date:
April 1, 2027
Rolling Admissions:
no
Application Deadline:
March 15, 2026
Financial Aid?:
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline:
December 27, 2025
Free Admission:
no
Contact Information:
Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, 5015 52nd Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98144. Langdon Cook, Administrator.
Langdon Cook
Administrator
Contact City:
Grants Pass
Contact State:
OR
Contact Zip / Postal Code:
97526
Country:
US
5 Over 50: 2023 Virtual Reading
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In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers editor in chief Kevin Larimer introduces the 2023 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors, Alma García, author of All That Rises (University of Arizona Press, 2023); Bernardine “Dine” Watson, author of Transplant (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2023); Tommy Archuleta, author of Susto (Center for Literary Publishing, 2023); Chin-Sun Lee, author of Upcountry (Unnamed Press, 2023); and Donna Spruijt-Metz, author of General Release From the Beginning of the World (Parlor Press, 2023).
Love’s Thorns
Love poems have a long and storied literary history. “The Love Song for Shu-Sin,” composed in ancient Mesopotamia for use in fertility rituals, is considered by some to be the oldest love poem found in text form. “Song of Songs” from the Old Testament of the Bible celebrates the romantic and sexual love between two people. In more recent times, poets have been testing the limits of the love poem. Nate Marshall’s “palindrome” imagines an estranged lover’s life rewound like a film as the subject becomes “unpregnant” and the speaker “unlearn[s]” her name. In Sharon Olds’s “The Flurry,” two parents discuss how to tell their children they’re getting a divorce. Think of a relationship in your life that resists easy categorization and write a love poem that attempts to capture this complexity. Whether the subject is the distant love of a parental figure or the one who got away, resist the easy associations that come with the emotion and dive into love’s thorny contradictions.
Page as Stage
The author of fox woman get out! explores the connections between poetry and dance.
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Hard Hat Reading: Kwame Dawes
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In this video for the Poets House Hard Hat Reading series, poet and professor Kwame Dawes reads “Acceptance” by his mentor and father Neville Dawes, and his own poem “Sturge Town Redux,” which will appear in his collection Sturge Town, forthcoming from Norton.
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i’m no great pretender by erica lewis
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“if you can read this / you are alive.” erica lewis reads her poem “i’m no great pretender,” which appears in her collection mahogany (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), in this poetry film produced by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers with the author.
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