Poets & Writers Theater

“I’m not consciously balancing humor and tragedy, but I know that they do exist side by side.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Lorrie Moore talks about the nature of jokes, the emotional and tonal range of her short stories, and reflects on the sense of repetition in her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (Knopf, 2023).

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with host Miwa Messer, New York Times Book Review critic at large A. O. Scott talks about his journey as a journalist and book critic, reflects on “instant classics” like Percival Everett’s novel James (Doubleday, 2024), and discusses how the experience of discovering books has changed because of the internet.

In this 2024 Asian American Literature Festival event, hosts Cathy Song and Misty-Lynn Sanico introduce a reading from Bamboo Ridge Press authors Donald Carreira Ching, Scott Kikkawa, Wing Tek Lum, and Tamara Wong-Morrison.

In this Green Apple Books event, Kinsale Drake reads from her debut poetry collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024), and discusses how Indigenous heritage, nature, pop culture, and other influences shaped many of her poems.
 

Watch the trailer for Nightbitch, a film adaptation of the 2021 novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder. Written and directed by Marielle Heller, the film stars Amy Adams as an artist who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mother and finds her maternal instincts beginning to manifest in canine form.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lili Anolik reads from her new biography, Didion and Babitz (Scribner, 2024), and discusses how the book originated from discovering a box of Eve Babitz’s unsent letters, which included a letter to Joan Didion, in a conversation with Emma Straub.

“Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.” In this Poetry Hour series reading from the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, actor Jeremy Irons reads “The Folly Of Being Comforted” by W. B. Yeats.

In this Library of Congress National Book Festival event, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and Tiya Miles, author of Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press, 2024), discuss their books in a conversation moderated by Martha S. Jones.

Patrick Rosal reads Paul Genega’s poem “Aliens” in this short film directed by Williams Rossa Cole and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.

In this virtual reading from the Well Versed series hosted by StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and Open Book, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads from his collection Feed the Beast (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and discusses the themes of place and nature within his poems. Ó Tuama’s fourth poetry collection, Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2022 Louisiana Channel interview, Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata talks about the imaginary worlds of her childhoood, her writing process involving character sketches, and the origin of her otherworldly stories. “My world of daydreams or the power of stories saved me, so I was able to survive. And this same strength is in my protagonists,” says Murata.

In this Center for Fiction event, author Mariana Enriquez talks about the supernatural themes and local Argentinian language and humor within her short story collection A Sunny Place for Shady People (Hogarth, 2024) with translator Megan McDowell in a conversation moderated by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

“It is the Glad Season / Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.” At the annual White House Christmas celebration in 2005, the late Maya Angelou reads a poem written for the holiday and in the spirit of peace.

In this 2015 Page Meets Stage event, Aziza Barnes reads “a good deed is done for no good reason,” which appears in their debut poetry collection, i be, but i ain’t (YesYes Books, 2016). “You allow yourself to become whatever these hands will make you,” writes Barnes. The award-winning poet and playwright died at the age of thirty-two on December 15, 2024.

In this OR Books Live on Avenue C event, Mosab Abu Toha reads “If I Must Die” by the late Refaat Alareer, which appears in his posthumously published collection of poetry and prose, If I Must Die (OR Books, 2024).

In this Grolier Poetry Book Shop reading, Darius Atefat-Peckham reads from his debut collection, Book of Kin (Autumn House Press, 2024), and Raisa Tolchinsky reads from her debut collection, Glass Jaw (Persea Books, 2024). Atefat-Peckham is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Brooklyn Book Festival virtual event, authors Hisham Matar, Rania Mamoun, and Omar Khalifah talk about the purpose and urgency of writing about history during times of crisis in a conversation moderated by writer and translator Yasmin Seale. Khalifah’s novel, Sand-Catcher (Coffee House Press, 2024), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this University of Arizona Poetry Center event, Saretta Morgan discusses the importance of writing amidst global crises and reads from her debut collection, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), after an introduction by Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis. Morgan is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Live From NYPL event at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, Emily Lee Luan reads from her collection, 回 / Return (Nightboat Books, 2023), and Jimin Seo reads from his debut collection, OSSIA (Changes Press, 2024), followed by a discussion on the poetics of grief and memory. Seo is featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual book launch event hosted by the Writer’s Center, Zahid Rafiq reads from his debut short story collection, The World With Its Mouth Open (Tin House, 2024), and discusses his experiences living in Kashmir in a conversation with Emily Fridlund. Rafiq’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.