Poets & Writers Theater

Watch the trailer for Washington Black, a Hulu series adaptation of the 2018 novel of the same name by Esi Edugyan. The series, which stars Eddie Karanja, Ernest Kingsley Jr., Tom Ellis, Iola Evans, and Sterling K. Brown, follows the life of an enslaved boy who flees the sugar plantation in Barbados where he was born.

“You might think I am just old but I have finally decided to make the decision to never grow up, and remain under my hood.” In this video, Fanny Howe reads from her poetry collection Second Childhood (Graywolf Press, 2014) at the 2014 National Book Awards ceremony. Howe died at the age of eighty-four on July 9, 2025.

In this episode of The Seeds podcast with Alana Hadid, poet aja monet reads from her second collection, Florida Water (Haymarket Books, 2025), and reflects on the role of faith in her artistry and activism, and the current state of movement organizing for Palestine. Florida Water is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Maggie Nelson reads from her book Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (Wave Books, 2025) and speaks about the norms around illness memoirs and her desire to confront pain head-on through writing in a conversation with Darcey Steinke. “The book ended up being about what’s beneath this kind of quest for care,” says Nelson.

For this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2025 Blaney Lecture, Kaveh Akbar reminisces on his childhood spent studying and reciting prayers in Arabic and discusses how sacred poetics and language allow us to sit in complexity and remain in awareness. “Such poetry is a potent antidote against a late capitalist empire that would use empty, vapid language to cudgel us into inaction,” Akbar says.

In this Foreword Reviews interview from their Petit Forward series, Sarah Yahm fields questions about the characters in her debut novel, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation (Dzanc Books, 2025). Yahm is featured in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Laura Pegram, Edwidge Danticat, and Princess Joy L. Perry discuss the making of the anthology Sing the Truth: The Kweli Journal Short Story Collection (Authors Equity, 2025) and talk about the importance of finding and nurturing emerging writers of color in this live episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer. Read more about the anthology in “The Anthologist” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Live From NYPL event, Stephanie Burt discusses the work of editing Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry After Stonewall (Belknap Press, 2025), an anthology of fifty-one poems with essays by Burt, in a conversation with David Groff, along with poets Marisa Crawford, Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, and Jee Leong Koh reading and discussing their poems. The anthology is featured in “The LGBTQ+ Literary Resistance” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Green Apple Books event, Irene Solà celebrates the English language release of her third novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2025), translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, with a reading and discussion with author Shruti Swamy. Solà’s novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Watch the trailer for Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel of the same name written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz, the film is set for release in November.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lydi Conklin celebrates the release of their debut novel, Songs of No Provenance (Catapult, 2025), with John Shakespear performing an original song, “Green Weeks,” based on the book and a conversation with Jenny Xie about music and writing.

In this Amanpour and Company interview, Palestinian American author Hala Alyan talks about how fragmentation influenced the form and subjects in her memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), and about the importance of preserving memory, culture, and identity. Alyan’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual City Lights Live event, Jon Hickey reads from and talks about his debut novel, Big Chief (Simon & Schuster, 2025), in a conversation with author Tomas Moniz. Hickey is featured in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Literature Translation Institute of Korea interview, Kyung-Ran Jo talks about how writing helps her preserve a sense of herself and shares her process of starting with a voice before subject matter. Jo’s novel Blowfish (Astra House, 2025), translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim, is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this AM Northwest interview with host Helen Raptis, author Melissa Febos speaks about her fourth memoir, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (Knopf, 2025), and what she learned from taking a step away from romantic relationships. Febos’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Carrie R. Moore, winner of the University of Texas at Austin’s 2021 Keene Prize for Literature, talks about how a Solange song inspired her short story “The Rest of the Morning.” Moore, author of Make Your Way Home (Tin House Books, 2025), is featured in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

At this Dominican University of California event, Isabel Allende talks about her latest novel, My Name Is Emilia del Valle (Ballantine Books, 2025), the importance of women characters who don’t compromise, and the class structure of Chile which informed her writing in a conversation with Matthew Félix.

In this Center for Fiction event, author and critic Andrea Long Chu reads from her essay collection Authority (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025) and talks about the inherent contradictions in the way people discuss and disagree about art, and traces the political and intellectual history of literary criticism in a conversation with Arielle Angel.

In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Lidia Yuknavitch reads from her memoir Reading the Waves (Riverhead Books, 2025) and speaks to Porochista Khakpour about the process of rearranging fragments of writing.

CD Eskilson celebrates the release of their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen (Acre Books, 2025), in this reading and conversation with poets Ashia Ajani and Preeti Vangani at Green Apple Books in San Francisco.