Poets & Writers Theater

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers Magazine senior editor India Lena González introduces the five debut authors featured in “The New Nonfiction 2026” in the September/October 2026 issue: Nita Noveno, Phill Branch, Megan O’Grady, Joseph Trinidad, and Elena Dudum.

In this Green Apple Books event, Black Ocean, a nonprofit independent publisher based in Boston and Chicago, celebrates its twentieth anniversary with readings from authors Carrie Olivia Adams, Kristin George Bagdanov, Nathan Hoks, and Zachary Schomburg.

In this Politics and Prose event, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn reads from their second essay collection, I Have This Thing for Flowers: Essays on the Roots of Relationships (Flatiron Books, 2026), and discusses how researching and writing about flowers helped structure their personal experiences in a conversation with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes. Sawchyn’s book is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this live episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Ed Park reads from his hybrid memoir, Three Tenses: A Transmission From the Nineties (Random House, 2026), and reminisces about his time working as a literary editor at the Village Voice.

In this video, Joe Wilkins presents “Language, Memory, and Story” for the 2022 Wallace Stegner Lecture hosted by the Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. Wilkins, author of Every Sky at Home: Essays on Landscape and Family (Bison Books, 2026), is featured in “Literary MagNet” in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Haymarket Books event, Edna Bonhomme reflects on the impacts of colonialism and racial capitalism, and how her journeys to cities across the world informed the writing of her memoir, Tending to Our Wounds: A Diasporic Memoir (Haymarket Books, 2026), in a conversation with Edwidge Danticat. Bonhomme’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Vogue Australia video, Mindy Seu shares how authors, such as Annie Ernaux, Lucy Lippard, and Ursula K. Le Guin, shaped her creative practice and influenced the writing of her books Cyberfeminism Index (Inventory Press, 2023) and A Sexual History of the Internet (Dark Forest Collective, 2025).

In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Colm Tóibín talks about the importance of writing physical character details in stories, how books awards can sometimes feel like “a theater of cruelty,” and shares the backstory to his 2019 London Review of Books essay about his experience of diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer.

In this Spotlight PA video, Sara Nović discusses how writing letters to her sons inspired her new memoir, Mother Tongue (Random House, 2026), in a conversation with Alex Schneider, co-owner of the community bookstore A Novel Idea on Passyunk in Philadelphia.

In this World Literature Today virtual event, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, and Daniel Simon talk about the power and impact of literary translation and celebrate three new books, including Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2026) edited by Sze.

In this video, Krys Malcolm Belc talks about his memoir What I Made for Dinner (Catapult, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, for an event at Books Are Magic with Joseph Osmundson. “I used to dream of a better world and now I’m dreaming of projects, loaves of bread, layer cakes, laminated pastries.”

In this video, chaun webster reads his essay “This Occupation Is Strange but Familiar” for the Minnesota Writers Respond event presented in partnership with the Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Books. webster’s book Without Terminus (Graywolf Press, 2026) is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of the SlantCast podcast, Gregory Wolfe, founder of Slant Books, and Emily Kwilinski, the press’s managing editor, speak with author and industry insider Jim Hanas about the role of indie presses in the book business. Slant Books is featured in Small Press Points in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Green Apple Books event moderated by Brendan McHugh, Steven Pfau reads from his debut book, Say Nephew: On Boyhood, Unclehood, and Queer Mentorship (Catapult, 2026), and discusses his desire to write a book about his uncle in the style of “autotheory,” inspired by  Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies.

In this 2012 PBS NewsHour interview, Iranian French author Marjane Satrapi speaks about her autobiographical graphic novels and films Persepolis and Chicken With Plums, and why she feels comics are the best form for her writing. Satrapi died at the age of fifty-six on June 4, 2026.

“It’s the women in my life who have held a steady glow for me.” In this video, Minda Honey reads from her memoir, The Heartbreak Years (Little A, 2023), and speaks about cultural expectations of women and long-term relationships with co-hosts Christina Fisanick and Damian Dressick for this event from the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia. For more from Honey, read “The Joy of the Tortured Artist: Why We Write, Even When We Hate to Write” featured in the May/June 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Green Apple Books event, literary agent Alia Hanna Habib reads from her guidebook, Take It From Me: An Agent’s Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career From Scratch (Pantheon Books, 2026), and offers advice to aspiring writers in a conversation with Maia Ipp. Habib is featured in Agents & Editors in the May/June 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this trailer for PBS’s American Masters documentary Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined, the life and work of the acclaimed Dominican American poet and novelist is explored through interviews, photographs, and archives. A profile of Alvarez about her new poetry collection, Visitations (Knopf, 2026), appears in the May/June 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Until you have language or history or context, you are in the dark.” In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Hilton Als talks about discovering the power of art and language at an early age, how criticism should come from a place of “critical love,” and writing about Prince in his memoir My Pinup (New Directions, 2022).

In this ABC News segment, Joshua Bennett talks about how his parents nurtured his interest in African American history leading him to write his new book, The People Can Fly: American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time (Little, Brown, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the March/April 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.