Poets & Writers Theater

Poet, memoirist, and teacher Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his experience as a teen in prison and how poetry gave him a new identity. Betts is the author of Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015) and Felon, forthcoming from Norton in October, and is a recipient of the 2019 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.

“There is nothing one man will not do to another.” Carolyn Forché reads “The Visitor” and “The Colonel” from her second poetry collection, The Country Between Us (Copper Canyon Press, 1981), which bore witness to her travels in El Salvador in the late 1970s. Forché’s debut memoir, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019), documents that same period of time and is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Poses no significant litter problem. / Ranks as ‘not particularly outstanding,’ according to the Forest Service.” At the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, Forrest Gander reads from the opening of Casting Deep Shade (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), C. D. Wright’s posthumously published collection. The multigenre, three-panel, hardcover book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find not a room of her own, but a house of her own.” Sandra Cisneros speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about her essay collection, A House of My Own: Stories From My Life (Knopf, 2015), her path to writing, and what home means to her. Cisneros was recently named the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

“Not only did To the Lighthouse help me to understand my own story, but my own story helped me to better understand To the Lighthouse—there’s sort of a beautiful reciprocity there.” Katharine Smyth talks with Michelle Dunton Cronauer about how Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel led to writing her debut memoir, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf (Crown, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This story is not just about an immigrant girl making her way through the world, but it’s a story of a girl who is fighting hard for her American dream.” In this video, Reyna Grande discusses her memoir A Dream Called Home (Atria Books, 2018), a sequel to her best-selling memoir The Distance Between Us, and the inspiration she hopes her books will bring to young readers.

“What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self.” Yiyun Li reads from her debut memoir, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life (Random House, 2017), in this video produced by the Office of Communications at Princeton University. Li, whose novel Where Reasons End is forthcoming from Random House in February, is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Esmé Weijun Wang, a 2018 Whiting Award winner, reads from her essay “On the Ward” from The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf Press, 2019). Wang is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That’s the moon—it’s the ghost of the sun wandering the sky at night,” says Daniel Kehlmann. In this video from Louisiana Channel, Kehlmann and fellow writers CAConrad, Georgi Gospodinov, Guadalupe Nettel, Delphine de Vigan, and Yoko Tawada discuss the moon’s mysterious presence and why writers are drawn to it as we watch visuals of the moon captured by NASA paired with Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

“This is a great one to give—it’s the sort of thing you can keep in the loo at Christmas when you’ve eaten too much food.” Jeanette Winterson reveals some of her favorite books for the holiday season, including The Trouble With Women (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016) by cartoonist Jacky Fleming, Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir (Random House, 2018), and her own collection of winter tales and festive recipes, Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days (Grove Press, 2016).

Ross Gay reads from his forthcoming essay collection, The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Gay is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“If you’re on Twitter and Facebook and sharing there, there’s no pressure of concealment, and I think good memoir comes out of that place.” Dani Shapiro, whose fifth memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love (Knopf, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks with Literary Hub’s Emily Temple about how social media could have an adverse effect on writing and storytelling.

In this video from the New York Public Library, 2018 National Book Awards finalists, including Rebecca Makkai, Hanne Ørstavik, and Jeffrey C. Stewart, sit down to answer questions about their favorite books and which fictional character they’d want to hang out with.

“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.

“I do come back to poets from the Caribbean especially, who gave me permission to be a writer.” In this interview with City of Asylum, Kwame Dawes talks about the writers whose work he revisits, his writing routine, and why he doesn’t use the word “inspiration.” Dawes is the editor in chief of Prairie Schooner and is featured in “Telling a Different Story: How to Cultivate Inclusivity at Literary Magazines” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“A good bookstore is your friend.” Ross Gay reads his essay about his love for independent bookstores and how they are a “laboratory for our coming together” at one of his favorite places, the Book Corner in Bloomington, Indiana. Gay’s essay collection, The Book of Delights, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in February.

Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl, speaks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about the beginnings of her book club and organization, and the anthology Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves (Ballantine, 2018), which is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I have always been interested in borders, physical and metaphysical borders, frontiers that we create...” Anna Badkhen speaks with Sarah Beth Childers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa about the inspiration for her latest book, Fisherman Blues: A West African Community at Sea (Riverhead, 2018), and the blending of mythology and history. Badkhen was awarded the second Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship.

In this film adaptation of Lee Israel’s memoir of the same name, Melissa McCarthy plays Israel who has made a living as a celebrity biographer but turns to forgery when her career takes a downturn. Directed by Marielle Heller, the film also stars Jane Curtin, Richard E. Grant, and Dolly Wells.

Kiese Laymon talks to Clemonce Heard about his debut memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), growing up in Mississippi, the influence of music on his writing, and reckoning with weight in all its different forms. Heavy is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.