Poets & Writers Theater

“I find myself on my feet with fifteen leaves. / Everything carries its own light on the walls.” In this Poetry Society of America video, poet and translator Ricardo Alberto Maldonado reads his poem “Os doy mi corazón / I Give You My Heart” at Governor’s Island in New York. Maldonado’s debut poetry collection, The Life Assignment, is forthcoming in 2020 from Four Way Books.

“I was writing just about the experience of grief and life amidst dying...then I wanted to tell stories that made my parents alive, that brought them back to life and made it clear why this was such a loss.” In this A Word on Words interview, Margaret Renkl talks about her debut essay collection, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which is featured in “5 Over 50” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Beauty’s just a bite / away from want. / I’ve seen Fox chew / off her own limb / for one more taste / of freedom.” In this 2012 video, Tiffany Midge reads from her collection The Woman Who Married a Bear (University of New Mexico Press, 2016) at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Midge’s debut memoir, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jojo Rabbit is a film adaptation of Christine Leunens’s novel Caging Skies (Overlook Press, 2019), a dark comic story set in 1940s Vienna about a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth who discovers that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Directed by Taika Waititi, who also costars as an imaginary Adolf Hitler, the satire stars Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Rebel Wilson.

“Olive is going through the late—very late—autumn of her life.” Elizabeth Strout talks about the title character and depictions of weather and seasons in her new novel, Olive, Again (Random House, 2019), the follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008). Olive, Again is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Waterstones video, Bernadine Evaristo introduces her novel Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton, 2019), which she describes as “fusion fiction” and a “celebration of Black womanhood,” and the books that influenced her as a young writer. Evaristo won the 2019 Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, sharing the prize with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments (Chatto & Windus, 2019).

In this Brainwaves video anthology installment, Reginald Dwayne Betts reads “Essay on Reentry” from his third poetry collection, Felon, out in October from Norton. A profile of Betts by Mahogany L. Browne appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“the long, drunk room a darkened sanctuary. / windows blocked opaque to make day insignificant / light impaired.” In this short film, Kevin Coval reads “Ode to the Dive Bar” from his poetry collection Everything Must Go (Haymarket Books, 2019), illustrated by Langston Allston, which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“How do you tell interesting stories? You puncture through reality and you let magic and weird stuff and ghosts bleed back through.” In this video, Carmen Maria Machado talks about the influence Gabriel García Márquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude had on her writing with Jared Arraes and Adriana Couto at the 2019 International Literary Festival of Paraty in Brazil. A profile of Machado by Jera Brown appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I sincerely believe this is a life-affirming book and it is a novel that celebrates diversity, inclusion…and friendships.” Elif Shafak speaks about her writing process and the inspiration behind her latest novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking, 2019), which is shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

“I wanted to center the emotions and the feelings of the actual enslaved people.” Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about what inspired him to write his debut novel, The Water Dancer (One World, 2019), as he walks through Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, with Gayle King for CBS This Morning.

“My work often deals with dislocation, belonging, migration, of course, and I tend to create characters that are unnamed and not quite easy to place.” Valeria Luiselli, a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” fellowship recipient, talks about how she combines fiction and nonfiction to challenge conventional notions of authorship, and the ways in which the lives of others are documented.

“Even a baby is / a paper cut theater, / a necklace of incisions strung together / into a country.” In this Poetry.LA video, Kenji C. Liu reads poems from his collections Map of an Onion (Inlandia Institute, 2016) and Monsters I Have Been (Alice James Books, 2019) at the Writers for Migrant Justice reading in Los Angeles.

Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep (Scribner, 2013), the sequel to his 1977 classic The Shining, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Mike Flanagan. The movie picks up the story several decades later as a grown-up Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, meets a young girl with psychic powers similar to his own that he tries to protect from a supernatural cult of murderous nomads.

“A green like no other green / in the dale, indelicate green or / green indecent, surpassing / the fern and sprout and April’s / optimistic leaflet some stop / to admire in nature...” In this 2017 video, Timothy Donnelly reads “Diet Mountain Dew” at the Gavagai music and reading series in New York City. Donnelly’s third poetry collection, The Problem of the Many, is out today from Wave Books.

In this video, Andrea Cohen reads a selection of her poetry at the 2017 Nantucket Book Festival. Cohen, whose sixth collection, Nightshade, is out now by Four Way Books, is featured in Literary MagNet in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown, which takes place in her hometown of Tulsa.

“My experience at church was of community....most importantly I got to be part of this community where everyone was searching for the meaning of life in their relationship with each other.” Cara Wall talks about the inspiration behind her debut novel, The Dearly Beloved (Simon & Schuster, 2019), a story about two couples navigating faith and social change in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s.

Julian Randall reads “On the Night I Consider Coming Out to My Parents” from his debut poetry collection, Refuse (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), in this Ours Poetica video produced by the Poetry Foundation in collaboration with Complexly. Randall is featured in “My MFA Experience” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Dickinson is the first web television series from Apple TV Plus, a period piece about Emily Dickinson with a modern and comedic twist starring Hailee Steinfeld. Created by Alena Smith, the cast includes Jane Krakowski as Mrs. Dickinson, Zosia Mamet as Louisa May Alcott, John Mulaney as Henry David Thoreau, and Wiz Khalifa as Death.