Poets & Writers Theater

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.

In this Button Poetry video filmed at SubText Books in Saint Paul, Danez Smith reads their poem “Dede was the last person i came out to,” which appears in their fourth collection, Bluff (Graywolf Press, 2024).

In this video, Heid E. Erdrich reads from her collections Verb Animate: Poetry and Prompts From Collaborative Acts (Trio House Press, 2024) and Little Big Bully (Penguin Books, 2020), and answers questions about hope, memories, and revision for this Jensen Lecture Series event hosted by Western Oregon University.

“‘In a dark cave, I saw’ ‘an apparition:’ ‘almost real, almost there—’...” In this 2016 video, Alice Notley reads from her feminist epic The Descent of Alette (Penguin Books, 1996) for a two-day event at the Lab in San Francisco cosponsored by the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Notley died at the age of seventy-nine on May 20, 2025.

Marilyn Chin reads from her sixth poetry collection, Sage (Norton, 2023), and answers questions about the public role of the modern poet and her references to ancient traditions and pop culture in this 2023 virtual installment of the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers’ Series hosted by San Diego State University’s Creative Writing program.

In this Poetry Night Panel event at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., Brandel France de Bravo, author of Locomotive Cathedral (The Backwaters Press, 2025), and Julie Choffel, author of Dear Wallace (The Backwaters Press, 2024), read a selection of poems and join María Fernanda for a conversation about how literature helps one grapple with the challenges of life.

“Are those who don’t know history only doomed to resell it at a higher price?” In this short film directed by Jasmine Ogunjimi, award-winning slam poet Pages Matam reads their poem “Hope as Home.” The film was produced by Da Poetry Lounge Co. and executive produced by HOPE, Inc., an organization that provides support for those experiencing housing discrimination.

“Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity / we once were?” Marie Howe, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, reads her poem “Singularity” in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation for their Read By poetry film series.

In this Books Are Magic event, Cathy Linh Che reads from her second poetry collection, Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), and talks about how her parents’ experience as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now shaped her book in a conversation with poet Wo Chan.

In this Poets & Writers Live event introduced by Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González, Douglas Kearney reads from his new poetry collection, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always (Wave Books, 2025), and joins Poets & Writers Magazine contributing editor Destiny O. Birdsong for a conversation. A profile of Kearney by Birdsong appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The loneliest people have the earth to love / And not one friend their own age.” Jericho Brown reads his poem “Labor,” which appears in his second poetry collection, The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), in this video for the Dear Poet series, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

“If only the sky were kind enough to lend me his blue coat.” In this video, Yuki Tanaka reads an excerpt from the title poem of his debut collection, Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was doing nine years in prison, and poems became my way to see the world.” In this Common Read event hosted by the Sims Memorial Library at Southeastern Louisiana University, Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (Norton, 2020), answers questions from the audience and presents a lecture and reading introduced by Louisiana poet laureate Alison Pelegrin.

In this Villanova University Literary Festival event, Victoria Chang reads from her poetry collections Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and speaks about her ekphrastic poems and the power of writing in conversation with other artists and people in her life.

In this Lambda Literary video, Rob Macaisa Colgate reads “History of Display,” which appears in his debut poetry collection, Hardly Creatures (Tin House Books, 2025). The collection is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Poetry in the Park event in Milwaukee’s Juneau Park hosted by Juneau Park Friends and Woodland Pattern, poets Aleena Ahmed, Ajamou Butler, Steven Espada Dawson, and Margaret Rozga read a selection of poems. Dawson, author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025), is featured in Literary MagNet in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jennifer Acker, founder and editor in chief of the Common, answers questions about the journal’s mission, slush piles, and her editorial process in this virtual event with Becky Tuch for the Lit Mag News Roundup. An interview with Acker about the Common’s fifteenth anniversary is featured in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Jane Wong reads “To Love a Mosquito,” a chapter from her memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), and pieces of her mother’s diary, followed by a discussion about her approaches to poetry versus creative nonfiction.

“I knew I was a god / when you could not / agree on my name // & still, none you spoke / could force me to listen / closer.” In this video, Meg Day reads “Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]” as part of Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

In this episode of the Ehkili podcast, Sahar Mustafah talks to author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her anthology, Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press, 2024), and the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices.