Poets & Writers Theater

“Staggering out of a black-red peony, / where you have been hiding all morning / from the frigid air, you regard me smearing / jam on dark toast.” Henri Cole reads his poem “Face of the Bee” and other selections from his latest poetry collection, Blizzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in this recent reading at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

“What I like about teaching is that it is always an experiment in unfolding a new language of value that isn’t a dominant value of the day, that needs to be developed to stay human,” says Ben Lerner, author of The Hatred of Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), about some of his approaches to mentoring and teaching poets in this interview with his Danish translator Tonny Vorm at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

“You can slash a book. There are different ways to measure depth, but not many readers measure a book’s depth with a knife, making a cut from the first page all the way down to the last.” Yiyun Li reads from her novel The Book of Goose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) in this Politics and Prose event with Maud Casey in Washington, D.C.

“To feel signs depends on how & why / the singer’s song puckers the mouth.” Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “A World of Daughters,” which appears in his collection Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), among other selections in this 2020 virtual reading for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series.

“As someone who is now a part of the next generation of Black queer writing, I pull a lot from what James Baldwin stood for,” says George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in this video for GLAAD’s NEON series. Johnson, whose book has been banned from school libraries, is the 2022 honorary chair of Banned Books Week.

“One of the necessary disciplines in my life has been to discipline myself not to fall into despair when I’m not writing,” says Geoff Dyer in this Louisiana Channel interview in which he discusses his writing process and how his new book, The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), came to be.

Watch Alexander MacLeod read from and discuss his latest short story collection, Animal Person (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), with Richard Ford in this virtual conversation hosted by Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. MacLeod’s story collection is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2021 National Book Festival virtual event, Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country (Avid Reader Press, 2021), and Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), speak about their books with Kevin Larimer, editor in chief of Poets & Writers.

“‘Sometimes it’s a relief,’ he said lugubriously, ‘to see a face you recognize in an unfamiliar place. Other times you think, oh no, not him again,’” reads Rachel Cusk from her novel Transit (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), the second volume in her Outline trilogy, in this 2017 reading at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

“She likes to lean her head against my neck. I had never wished she could speak, because we understand each other.” In this Square Books virtual event, Rivka Galchen reads from her second novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), and speaks with Alexandra Kleeman about research and process. The novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Discipline is a massive component of creating a body of work, and the further I get, the more I see that that really is true,” says Rachel Cusk in this 2019 interview with Tonny Vorm at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Cusk’s novel Second Place (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.” Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson reads Derek Walcott’s poem “Love After Love” from Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986) for a tribute to the poet and playwright. Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, passed away on March 17, 2017.

In this video for Poets House, Carl Phillips, whose most recent poetry collection, Pale Colors in a Tall Field, was published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, reflects on his process for putting a book together, as well as his journey as a poet, teacher, and mentor. 

“Unnatural cycles seemed to be / establishing themselves, without regard to our lives.” In this reading and conversation hosted by Green Apple Books, Henri Cole reads from his latest poetry collection, Blizzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and speaks to Pulitzer Prize–winning author Forrest Gander about inspiration and the writing process.

“I was also writing a story that I wanted to see and that I felt in my own life.” In this Greenlight Bookstore video, Raven Leilani celebrates the launch of her debut novel, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and speaks about the journey to write the book in this conversation with Samantha Irby. Luster is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We’d cut school like knives through butter, the three / Of us — Peter, Stephen and I — to play / Just about all the music we knew…” In this video, award–winning poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “Boys” from his second collection of poems, Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2016. 

“Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful.” In this book trailer, Andrés Neuman narrates a selection from his latest novel, Fracture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, a cross-cultural story set against the backdrop of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In this video, Marie-Helene Bertino celebrates the launch of her new novel, Parakeet (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), with Alexandra Kleeman and Angel Nafis for a virtual reading hosted by BOMB Magazine and Greenlight Bookstore. Parakeet is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“These are people who are basically pulled all over the world, and they have various antecedents that are a bit everywhere.” In an interview with Parul Sehgal at the 92nd Street Y, André Aciman, whose latest novel, Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), is a sequel to his 2007 novel, Call Me By Your Name, talks about how his cultural background has influenced the way his characters communicate and interact with one another.

In this Waterstones video, André Aciman introduces his latest novel, Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), the sequel to his 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name, and shares three books from the shelves of the bookstore that have influenced his writing.