Poets & Writers Theater

“It is a new kind of survivor narrative, one that I wish that I had when I was growing up,” says Chantal V. Johnson about her debut novel, Post-traumatic (Little, Brown, 2022), in this reading and conversation with Torrey Peters at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn.

“I had wanted to write a book about freedom,” reads Maggie Nelson from her latest essay collection, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Graywolf Press, 2021), in this 2021 virtual reading and conversation with author Hari Kunzru for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

“What does it mean when we say books unite us? It means that books can be the tethers, that books can connect human beings.” In this video, Jason Reynolds, honorary chair of Banned Books Week 2021, talks about the importance of reading a range of narratives and stories that make up this “tapestry of life” and the danger of censoring that knowledge. “To censor a book is to damage the framework in which we live,” says Reynolds.

In this virtual event for the Vocarium reading series sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room, CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021), and Diane Seuss, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), read from their work following an introduction by poet Ariana Reines.

“At one time, / I asked for everything,” reads Sandra Lim from her poem “The Protagonists” included in her collection The Curious Thing (Norton, 2021) for this virtual reading hosted by UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren.

“Read the books they don’t want you to. That’s where the good stuff is,” says LeVar Burton in this video from The Daily Show With Trevor Noah on some of the latest banned children’s books which include themes on race and racism, and LGBTQIA+ characters.

“I learned young to be the smallest bullseye.” Arhm Choi Wild, author of Cut to Bloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2020), reads torrin a. greathouse’s poem “All I Ever Wanted to Be Was Nothing at All” in this Ours Poetica video, sponsored by Complexly and the Poetry Foundation.

“To love a body not because it’s perfect but because it shelters you.” Watch this series of microfilms directed by Melissa Crespo featuring poems from Love Poems in Quarantine by Sarah Ruhl (Copper Canyon Press, 2022).

“In the last year of her life, my mother Asako spoke more openly of the trauma of the war years and her incarceration at Topaz,” reads Karen Tei Yamashita for this event celebrating her work, hosted by the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Yamashita was awarded the 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

“For a long time, I worked day jobs that were different from the one I have now.” In this Books Are Magic recorded event, Jami Attenberg reads from her memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (Ecco, 2022), and speaks about her writing process with author Kristen Arnett. For more Attenberg, read “1000 Words of Summer: How an Accountability Project Opened Up My Writing Life” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’m just a series of words on pieces of paper.” In this interview with John Yau for the New York Foundation for the Arts, the poet and art critic speaks about his family, art, and cooking, which have all influenced his writing. Yau is the recipient of the 2018 Jackson Poetry Prize.

This reading hosted by the University of Arizona Poetry Center presents the work of Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author most recently of Children of the Land (Harper, 2020), and Marwal Helal, author most recently of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Hope Wabuke celebrates the book launch for her debut poetry collection, The Body Family (Haymarket Books, 2022), with special guests Safia Elhillo and Ladan Osman in this virtual reading and conversation moderated by Aricka Foreman. Wabuke is featured in Literary MagNet in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I should share with you that I did not intend to be a fiction writer, I did not intend to write a historical novel…I did intend to always, however, tell the truth,” says Min Jin Lee about writing her novel Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017), which has been adapted into a television series, in this 2018 reading and conversation with Claire Messud at Harvard University.

“It’s a story that traces three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her legacy.” In this video, Tara M. Stringfellow talks about her debut novel, Memphis (Dial Press, 2022), and her writing process, which involves listening to opera and jazz music. Memphis is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s not as though I want to change the past. It’s really trying to understand how these things come together to bring you where you are.” Amy Tan speaks about her creative process in this video from PBS and American Masters previewing her documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir directed by James Redford.

“When Henry started this walk at age thirty-two in 1849, he wore a broad-brimmed hat designed with a miniature shelf to hold the flowers he found,” reads Ben Shattuck from his essay “Three Walks,” first published in the Common and included in his book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House, April 2022). For more on the book, read “The Written Image: Ben Shattuck” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We in the fields, the watchers from the burnt slope, / Facing the west, facing the bright sky, hopelessly longing / to know the red beauty…” In this 2011 PBS NewsHour video, Jeffrey Yang reads William Everson’s poem “We in the Fields” along with other poems published in Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems From New Directions, an anthology edited by the poet celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of New Directions. Yang’s new poetry collection, Line and Light (Graywolf Press, 2022), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The face of Chinatown returns its color, / plucked from July’s industrial steamer,” reads Jenny Xie from her poem “Chinatown Diptych,” published in her collection Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), in this video directed by Jean Coleman and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation for their Read By poetry film series.

Watch Alexander MacLeod read from and discuss his latest short story collection, Animal Person (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), with Richard Ford in this virtual conversation hosted by Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. MacLeod’s story collection is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.