Poets & Writers Theater

“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.

“I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” This Motionpoems film directed by Mohammed Hammad features Natalie Diaz’s poem “American Arithmetic,” which appeared in the anthology Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (Penguin Books, 2017) edited by John Freeman.

“It was in the autumn—it felt like the perfect time to do this ritual, when everything’s changing to go to sleep for the winter....” In this interview at the 2018 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, CAConrad talks about how performing rituals after their boyfriend’s death gave rise to the poetry in their collection While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry.

The Hate U Give (Balzer + Bray, 2017), the best-selling debut novel by Angie Thomas about a Black high school student who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend by a police officer and is subsequently drawn into activism, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by George Tillman Jr., the film stars Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, and Amandla Stenberg.

“Catch whispers in libraries. / Greet strangers with acorns and grapefruit. / Remember eyes, ghosts, smoke. / Watch brothers as they disappear.” Maw Shein Win reads several poems, including “Flower Instructions,” from her debut collection, Invisible Gifts (Manic D Press, 2018), for the Radar Reading series at the San Francisco Public Library in 2017. Win is featured in “5 Over 50” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Just keep going.” In this video from the 2017 Bay Area Book Festival, Literary Hub senior editor Emily Temple speaks to authors, including Michael Chabon, Vanessa Hua, Katie Kitamura, Paul Murray, Hannah Tinti, Ayelet Waldman, and Esmé Weijun Wang, about the best writing advice they have ever received.

“It was sad. I would rather talk to my idea of a person, a fantasy ghost-person that existed only in my imagination, than talk with my own parents.” Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney’s, 2017) and a recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction, reads from her essay “My Abyss.”

Lesley Nneka Arimah speaks about investigating “the ways in which our past traumas inform our present selves” through her writing, and answers questions from readers about her debut story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Riverhead Books, 2017), for PBS NewsHour’s Now Read This book club, a partnership with the New York Times.

“Until I discovered poetry, I didn’t think I would ever be able to express my life.” In this Poetry.LA interview, Chiwan Choi, cofounder of Writ Large Press, reads poems from his collection The Yellow House (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017) and speaks about how his experiences as an immigrant have influenced his writing.

“Good luck implies the death of everyone who does not have it...” Jonathan Mendoza, author of the chapbook When the Crows Come (Pizza Pi Press, 2017), reads his poem “Confessions on Gratitude” in this video for Button Poetry.

“Fiction has the ability to expand people’s points of view, and also to have the contradictions...” In this video, Min Jin Lee answers questions from readers about her novel Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017) for PBS NewsHour’s Now Read This book club, a partnership with the New York Times.

“I don’t want to prescribe how I think people should feel about it, although secretly I do have a particular response that I prefer.” Sally Rooney, author of the debut novel, Conversations With Friends (Faber & Faber, 2017), talks about reactions to the ambiguity of the book’s ending. Rooney is the winner of the 2017 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for the novel, which was also shortlisted for the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize.

“Even if what you’re writing seems boring to you...you’re preparing yourself for the moment when life or something else broadsides you and you need to write.” John Freeman, editor of the essay anthology Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (Penguin Books, 2017), shares writing advice and what his favorite authors have in common.