Poets & Writers Theater

For the “Seriously Celebrating the New Yorker’s 100th Anniversary: Fiction” event hosted by the House of SpeakEasy at Joe’s Pub in New York, Yiyun Li weaves together stories about connecting with hairdressers in salons over the years and how real-life stories can sometimes transform into different stories through fiction writing. “People tell us stories and our stories live in their memory. And hair grows, life goes on,” says Li.

In this 60 Minutes interview, Margaret Atwood speaks about her response to book banning, her new memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Doubleday, 2025), and why she says the popularity of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale is “not due to me or the excellence of the book. It’s partly the twists and turns of history.”

In this Books Are Magic event, Lana Lin reads from her book The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2025) and discusses how she uses both Gertrude Stein and Audre Lorde’s genre-bending approaches to autobiography in order to highlight Asian diasporic narratives in a conversation with Monique Truong.

In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Patti Smith offers advice to young artists and talks about her award-winning memoir, Just Kids, and her new memoir, Bread of Angels (Random House, 2025).

In this PBS NewsHour interview, director Raoul Peck speaks about his new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5, which examines the writings of George Orwell and interweaves clips, readings from the author’s diary, cinematic references, and modern-day footage to propose how prophetic his novels and work have become.

In this virtual reading and celebration, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the 2025 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love (Norton, 2025); Vishwas R. Gaitonde, author of On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Orison Books, 2025); Yael Valencia Aldana, author of Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025); Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025); and Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions, 2025).

In this event hosted by Prince George’s County Memorial Library System and the Office of Human Rights, Julian Brave NoiseCat talks about how his father’s experiences at a segregated boarding school in Canada inspired his debut book, We Survived the Night (Knopf, 2025), and about the importance of oral storytelling, family stories, and ancestral myths. NoiseCat is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Joy Harjo reflects on becoming a poet and artist in the turbulence of the seventies in America and talks about the process of writing her memoir Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age (Norton, 2025). Harjo’s book is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.