Poets & Writers Theater

In this episode of The Write Reasons podcast, Susan Orlean talks about how her first memoir, Joyride (Avid Reader Press, 2025), originated from her reflections of her 1992 Esquire essay, “The American Male at Age Ten,” in a conversation with Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp. Orlean’s memoir is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video from the Sage-sponsored “Banned Books From the Big Chair” booth at the American Library Association’s 2025 annual conference, authors and attendees respond to the dangers of book banning and the importance of supporting public libraries and the freedom to read.

In this video, George Takei, honorary chair of Banned Books Week 2025, talks about how “access to books and knowledge is essential to democracy” and how reading provides a way to see ourselves reflected in stories and to discover the stories of others. To learn more, visit the Banned Books Week website.

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the five debut authors featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue: Sarah Aziza, Erika J. Simpson, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Amanda Hess, and Samina Najmi.

“Communication is so important.” In this 2013 TEDx Talk, Rachel Kolb speaks about the value of communication and language, and the misconceptions about deafness. Kolb’s debut memoir, Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice (Ecco Press, 2025), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of The Interview, a podcast from the New York Times, Arundhati Roy speaks with host Lulu Garcia-Navarro about government censorship and political repression, the role of the artist amidst crisis, and the challenges of writing about her mother in her new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Scribner, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Translate literature and it will teach you how to write.” In this American Library in Paris event, Jhumpa Lahiri reads from her essay collection Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University Press, 2022) and talks about her latest book, Bone Into Stone (Sylph Editions, 2024), which details her experiences translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the Latin in partnership with the classicist Yelena Baraz.

In this PBS NewsHour interview, Nicholas Boggs speaks about his new book, Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), a biography which looks at the ways James Baldwin’s personal relationships shaped his life and work.

In this Books Are Magic video, Amanda Hess reads from her debut memoir, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), and speaks with Wesley Morris about her experiences using the internet for information and support during her pregnancy. Hess is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Chloé Caldwell reads from her second memoir, Trying (Graywolf Press, 2025), in this Green Apple Books event with Ariel Gore and Mia Arias Tsang in which they speak about the meaning of failure, the nuances of writing about relationships, and the process of representing queerness on the page. Caldwell’s book is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this TEDx Talk, Aimee McNee, author of We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something (Penguin Life, 2025), argues that creativity is not a luxury but a vital, radical act that can heal us.

In this Poets House event, Garrett Hongo reads from his fourth poetry collection, Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025), and Edward Hirsch reads from his new memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (Knopf, 2025), followed by a conversation between the authors about their friendship and humor.

Directed by Ebs Burnough, this documentary explores the influence that Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel, On the Road, has had on writers, actors, storytellers and artists, and follows the lives of Americans who set off on their own journeys in the footsteps of the famous author, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.

In this video from the keynote of A Writing Room’s 2022 retreat, best-selling author Anne Lamott speaks about the discipline needed to write and reflects on writing as a spiritual and moral practice grounded in truth telling.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, and Maureen Corrigan, professor and book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, offer recommendations for summer reading, including The Satisfaction Café (Scribner, 2025) by Kathy Wang, King of Ashes (Flatiron Books, 2025) by S. A. Cosby, and A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (Riverhead Books, 2025) by Sophie Elmhirst.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers discusses the themes of Blackness, intersectionality, and diaspora in her essay collection, Misbehaving at the Crossroads (Harper, 2025), and how it serves as a companion piece to her novel, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (Harper, 2021).

“In a lot of ways, this popular culture is the water that I swim in. I can’t escape it.” In this Magers & Quinn Booksellers event, Alice Bolin reads an essay about Star Trek from her latest collection, Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse (Mariner Books, 2025), and discusses technology, cults, and feminism with author Sally Franson.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda reads from her English translation of Yoko Tawada’s essay collection Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions, 2025) and discusses Tawada’s defamiliarization of the Japanese and German languages in a conversation with fellow translator Susan Bernofsky.

In this event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dana A. Williams delivers a keynote address on Toni Morrison’s career and influence as an editor at Random House and joins Howard Rambsy II for a conversation about Morrison’s pivotal role in shaping and contributing to modern Black literature. An excerpt of Williams’s book Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025) is featured 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.