Poets & Writers Theater

“Now that your life nears its end / when you turn back what you see / is ruin.” Frank Bidart reads a selection of poems from his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Megan Stielstra shares her journey as a writer and reads from her essay “Channel B,” which was included in Best American Essays and in her collection Once I Was Cool (Curbside Splendor, 2013). Her second essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life (Harper Perennial, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jo Nesbø describes how awkward Tinder dates and vampirism inspired his new novel, The Thirst (Knopf, 2017), the latest in his Harry Hole thriller series.

“This joke that I heard in Arabic hurts just as much in English, and French, and in any other dialect.” In this video, Emi Mahmoud reads her poem “How to Translate a Joke” for Button Poetry Live at Camp Bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota. 

“Almost every great novelist has got a comedian in him, in her, somewhere or other.” Man Booker Prize–winning author Howard Jacobson speaks about the necessity of failure and comedy in literature, and what makes a novel funny.

“We are human. We know this because we can look down on almost anything.” In this video animated by Andrés Fernández Cordón, Meghann Plunkett reads her poem “Human.” The video was one of the featured submissions for the inaugural Button Poetry Video Contest.

Megan Abbott speaks about her interest in prodigies, her novel You Will Know Me (Little, Brown, 2016), and her thoughts on the superficiality of genre distinctions for Nashville Public Television’s A Word on Words.

Middlemarch: The Series is a web series adaptation of George Eliot’s 1871 novel Middlemarch, written and directed by Rebecca Shoptaw, an undergraduate film student at Yale. Spanning seventy short episodes, the series is set in a contemporary fictional college in Connecticut and incorporates LGBTQ themes.

“It’s a notebook, it’s not a collection of poems, it’s not exactly a novel, no fiction, what is this? Nobody knows.” In this video, Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa talks about being influenced by Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Agualusa won the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion (Vintage, 2016) with Daniel Hahn, who translated the book from the Portuguese. 

“Language is tough. Using the right words is so important to me.” Paul Beatty, author of the Man Booker Prize–winning novel, The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), speaks about the labor of writing and his advice to students on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

In this film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 supernatural horror novel, It, seven children are terrorized by a shape-shifting being that appears in the form of an evil clown. Directed by Andrés Muschietti, the film stars Chosen Jacobs, Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, and Finn Wolfhard.

“Usually it’s the worst thing you can admit about yourself that most people can relate to.” David Sedaris, whose latest book, Theft by Finding: Diaries (1922–2002) (Little, Brown, 2017), is an edited compilation of his diary entries, expresses his thoughts on working on drafts and combining laughter with sorrow. 

“I had a million wishes too, but more than that, regrets...” Debora Kuan reads her poem “Fertile” from her collection Lunch Portraits (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016) for the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series.

“Most of my works, I’m delving deeper into the stories of women because we’re so used to being silenced.” Nicole Dennis-Benn, who won the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction for her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun (Liveright, 2016), speaks about exploring dynamics of race, money, class, culture, and gender in Jamaica in her writing.

“So much of my writing is supposed to fend off the autobiographical that I’ve managed to fend it off within myself as a personal practice.” Joshua Cohen, author of the novel Moving Kings (Random House, 2017) and one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017, talks about playing with the autobiographical impulse and writing as an existential practice.

Will is a television drama about the imagined life of William Shakespeare in his early twenties in London as he struggles to get his plays onto the stage. Created by Craig Pearce, the series stars Laurie Davidson as Shakespeare and Jamie Campbell Bower as his rival Christopher Marlowe.

“It’s okay to be in flux and figure it out, and take your time to figure it out.” Follow iO Tillett Wright through the streets of New York City to Joshua Tree in California leading up to the launch of his debut memoir, Darling Days (Ecco, 2016).

“I was thinking what would happen if someone was as much of a recluse as I am, maybe more, but is not a writer?” Rabih Alameddine talks about writer and artist Bruno Schultz, the idea of a necessary person, and the inspiration behind his novel An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press, 2013). Alameddine won the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for his novel The Angel of History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016).

“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” In this moving video series, filmmaker Jennifer Crandall travels throughout Alabama to capture local residents reading the verses of Walt Whitman’s iconic 1855 poem “Song of Myself.”

“The systemic structure built to keep me in place is the stage I dance on. Black, and woman.” This short film featuring principal ballerina Misty Copeland is paired with a poem by Saul Williams for Under Armour’s online ad campaign, “Unlike Any,” which highlights women athletes performing to poems.