Poets & Writers Theater

“I huff a tint, then flex / To hustle some hard trusts up. / I have to come with u once more.” In this 2017 Austin Public Library video, Logan Fry reads his poem “Apparatus” for National Poetry Month. Fry’s debut collection, Harpo Before the Opus, was published in October by Omnidawn.

“What is under the earth followed them home. / The branch broke. It broke by itself. It did break, James.” In this 2014 video, Alex Dimitrov reads his poem “Together and by Ourselves” at the Radar Reading Series in San Francisco. Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky’s Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac, an astrological guide that expands upon their popular Twitter feed, is out this week from Flatiron Books.

Mrs. Fletcher (Scribner, 2017) by Tom Perrotta—whose novels Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers have previously inspired screen adaptations—has been adapted into an HBO television series. The comedy series stars Kathryn Hahn as Eve Fletcher, a divorcée who has a midlife sexual awakening after her son leaves home for college.

In this video, Andrea Cohen reads a selection of her poetry at the 2017 Nantucket Book Festival. Cohen, whose sixth collection, Nightshade, is out now by Four Way Books, is featured in Literary MagNet in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I wanted to find a way to write about people that felt guided by a spirit of appreciation and empathy.” Leslie Jamison speaks about the ethical complexities involved in nonfiction writing at a 2017 talk at Claremont McKenna College. Jamison’s second essay collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Back home we are plagued by a politeness / so dense even the doctors cannot call things / what they are…” Safia Elhillo narrates her poem “To Make Use of Water” from her collection, The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), for this animated TED-Ed film directed by Jérémie Balais and Jeffig Le Bars.

“Still under construction, the kiss as thunderclouds in summer sky that sometimes means lightning, as the smell of after rain.” In this Poetry.LA video, Keegan Lester reads from his debut collection, this shouldn't be beautiful but it was & it was all i had so i drew it (Slope Editions, 2017), and speaks with Lisa Grove about nostalgia, Bob Dylan, and the themes and influences behind his work.

“I went through a Philip Glass phase, but I’m out of that now. Lately I write to silence, usually.” In this Vintage Books interview, Kayo Chingonyi answers questions about his literary and pop culture influences, daily routine, and books he thinks everyone should read. Chingonyi won the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize for his debut poetry collection, Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus, 2017).

“As a photographer my looking really changed, it really did become sacred....” In this Louisiana Channel video, Teju Cole talks about and reads from his book of photography and text, Blind Spot (Random House, 2017), which was inspired by a short period of blindness in one eye that transformed his perspective on looking and attentiveness. The book is comprised of over a hundred fifty photographs interspersed with short lyrical prose pieces.

“There is so much time in the world. How many ways can it be divided?” In this 2017 video, Camille T. Dungy reads “Conspiracy” and “Natural History” from her poetry collection Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) at Syncopated Rhythms: A Celebration of African American Poetry & Music in Washington, D.C. Dungy’s essay “Say Yes to Yourself: A Poet’s Guide to Living and Writing” appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Inside a novel, one has the opportunity to experience the ambiguous reality of a whole other consciousness. When you read, you are possessed by the voice of another.” In this 2017 Louisiana Channel interview, Siri Hustvedt talks about the transformative experience of reading novels. Hustvedt’s seventh novel, Memories of the Future (Simon & Schuster, 2019), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“In every single book of poems there are, to me, what feel like really explicit autobiographical moments and gestures.” Dawn Lundy Martin speaks about trying to find a language to express trauma, and the use of voice and narrative in her poetry in this interview with City of Asylum. Martin won the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her collection Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press, 2017).

“I come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses, lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last dribbling water...” This Motionpoems short film, directed by Daniel Daly and starring Khadija Shari, features Eve L. Ewing’s poem “I come from the fire city.” from her debut collection, Electric Arches (Haymarket Books, 2017). 

“I do hope one day to be free of this body’s dry wood...” In this Button Poetry video, Kaveh Akbar, author of the poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), reads a poem that was published in Tin House’s “The Rehab Issue” in 2017.

“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.

Dorianne Laux reads her poems “If It Weren’t for Bad Ideas, I’d Have No Ideas at All,” “Evening,” “This Close,” and “Savages” at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Laux’s new collection, Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We slid pride first into his car opening the new year / the way ungraceful fingers open a gift not meant for them.” William Evans reads “New Year’s Eve Party at Eric’s House and the Black Boys Have Had Enough” from his poetry collection Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair (Button Poetry, 2017) at Camp Bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

“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.

“The book is a kind of implosion, emotionally and intellectually, and you just wait for some kind of rhythm to form.... And then I will work all day, every day.” Nicola Barker, who won the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize for her novel H(a)ppy (William Heinemann, 2017), talks to Granta about her writing process and the difficulty of transitioning from writing on a digital screen to seeing the book in print form.

“I think there’s also in the book a sort of collective mind-set, which is seen as more important than the individual identity or autonomy.” Anna Burns talks about her third novel, Milkman (Faber & Faber, 2017), for which she won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, making her the award’s first Northern Irish honoree.