Poets & Writers Theater

“The lesson my mother taught me was, finish the job. When hers could not be finished, I forged myself into a prodigy.” In this short film, Azura Tyabji reads an excerpt from her chapbook, Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom (Button Poetry, 2021), cowritten by Jackson Neal.

“Genre writing is an amazing place to try new words out as long as you provide good context.” In this video, Stacey Abrams discusses her love of language and word choice, as well as the writing process for her latest novel, While Justice Sleeps (Doubleday, 2021), with Merriam-Webster editors Ammon Shea and Adam Maid.

“Writing can be beautiful, witty, and entertaining but it’s a serious commitment.” In this 2019 Louisiana Literature interview, Anne Waldman shares her advice to aspiring writers with emphasis on the importance of reading widely and respecting the act of writing.

In this Politics and Prose Live video, Tahmima Anam reads from her new novel, The Startup Wife (Scribner, 2021), and discusses writing about marriage and the start-up world with author and editor Megha Majumdar.

“To what and whom am I responsible when translating this text?” In this Center for Fiction virtual event, Brazilian literature translator Katrina Dodson offers ways to consider a practical philosophy of translation and speaks with translator Heather Cleary about questions and ways to approach the work. The Literary Translation Clinic is a monthly series of open sessions with a focus on literary translation as a profession hosted by members of the translator collective, Cedilla & Co.

In this Poets & Writers Live virtual event, Kristen Arnett walks through the revision process of select scenes from her latest novel, With Teeth (Riverhead Books, 2021), with Spencer Quong, the assistant editor of Poets & Writers Magazine. For more Arnett, read her contributions to our Craft Capsules series on writing humor in fiction.

“The biggest misconception that people have about the literary life is the romance of it.” In this 2011 Big Think interview, Walter Mosley talks about the influence of comic books and early reading on his writing, and his opinion of great literature.

“That is what poems are: / with mercy / for the greedy, / they are the tongue’s wrangle,/ the world’s pottage, the rat’s star,” reads Anne Sexton from her poem “With Mercy for the Greedy” in this 1973 episode of the Brockport Writers Forum with interviewers William Heyen and A. Poulin, Jr., in which she discusses her work, confessional poetry, and influences.

In this Poets & Writers Live virtual event, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021), with poet and novelist Destiny O. Birdsong. Smith is featured in a profile written by Birdsong in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

This Librairie Drawn & Quarterly virtual event celebrates the book launch of Lee Lai’s debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit (Fantagraphics, 2021), as the author speaks with Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch about editing, writing vignettes, and gay characters. Lai is featured in “First Fiction 2021” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To me, [revision] is about the majesty of failure,” says Kiese Laymon in this conversation about the newly revised edition of his debut novel, Long Division (Scribner, 2021), with Peter Ho Davies for the Center for Fiction.

“These poets really took me on a journey. Through each of their poems you got to essentially travel across L.A. into different neighborhoods, into different people’s spaces,” says director Carlos López Estrada about meeting the twenty-seven spoken word poets from the nonprofit Get Lit who cowrote and are featured in his new film, Summertime.

“It’s all about providing access, not only to education, not only to learning, but also to a free public space where people can actually come together and engage,” says copresident Andreas Dracopoulos of the newly renovated and transformed Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, a branch of the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan that reopened in June.

“I wrote this book for Black women who’ve been in those workspaces, but really anyone who’s been an other in these kind of spaces.” In this video, Zakiya Dalila Harris speaks about her debut novel, The Other Black Girl (Atria Books, 2021), and how her characters navigate through workplace politics with Robin Roberts for Good Morning America. Harris is featured in “First Fiction 2021” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore video, Eric Nguyen speaks about his debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water (Knopf, 2021). Nguyen is featured in “First Fiction 2021” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Sundays too my father got up early / and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,” reads Robert Hayden from his seminal poem “Those Winter Sundays” in this 1975 interview at the Brockport Writers Forum, in which he also discusses his faith, W. B. Yeats, and Frederick Douglass.

“Was it real? Or was it my imagination?” Lisey’s Story is an eight-part Apple TV Plus miniseries based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Stephen King. Directed by Pablo Larraín, the series stars Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

“Is it not enough to enter ending, one self in the halving road, and the fires in us blot the coasts that reject us...” In this short film by Lior Shamriz and Chloé Griffin, poet Canisia Lubrin reads from her collection The Dyzgraphxst (McClelland and Stewart, 2020), for which she won the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize.

“Writing for me came about because I wanted to write from a Black British woman’s perspective.” In this Vogue Visionaries class produced in partnership with YouTube, Bernardine Evaristo offers a five-chapter tutorial on writing fiction and explains why “rejection is really good for you.”

“A poem is an utterly free space for language,” says Kathleen Ossip in this 2017 lecture at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. “That is what makes it indispensable to me, and also what makes it political.” Ossip’s fourth poetry collection, July (Sarabande Books, 2021), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.