Poets & Writers Theater

“I started with one word and I never stopped.” Jimmy Santiago Baca talks with Megan Kamerick on New Mexico in Focus about reading the dictionary, writing poetry while incarcerated, and his experiences learning and educating others about the power of language. Baca’s poetry collection When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother’s Quest for Freedom (Beacon Press, 2019) is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Khaled Khalifa talks with Renée Ragin at Duke University about questions of Arab and Syrian identity, the relationship between his writing and war, and themes of death and difficult journeys in his fifth novel, Death Is Hard Work (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). The novel, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price, 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.

“In a lot of African storytelling, unlike storytelling in the West, it’s the trickster who is telling the story, so you already know you can’t quite believe it.” On Late Night With Seth Meyers, Marlon James speaks about the influences behind his new novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Riverhead Books, 2019), the first title of his Dark Star Trilogy, ranging from the television series The Affair and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. A profile of James by Kima Jones appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Let us bridge the generations and remind all who will listen that it only takes one woman sitting on a bus to inspire hundreds…” Amy Uyematsu, the author most recently of Basic Vocabulary (Red Hen Press, 2016), reads her poem “As American As” at the third annual Writers Resist Los Angeles reading at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California.

“It’s a novel of ideas, too—it’s concerned with the consequences of our societal obsession with celebrity, status, appearance, and wealth,” says Laura Sims about her debut novel, Looker (Scribner, 2019). In this video, Sims also talks about how libraries have played an important role throughout her life, and how she drew inspiration from the work of Elena Ferrante and Jenny Offill, and numerous science fiction, murder mystery, and horror novels.

“I kept notes about the interesting things I would find in people’s garbage. You can tell quite a bit about a person by what they throw away.” Jen Beagin, whose second novel, Vacuum in the Dark, will be published by Scribner in February, talks about how her experience cleaning homes in New Mexico inspired her to start writing fiction.

“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.

Sophie Mackintosh reads from her debut novel, The Water Cure (Doubleday, 2019), at Waterstones bookstore and talks about being influenced by Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth, Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the recent sociopolitical climate.

“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.

“You’ve got to do two very contradictory things as a writer: you’ve got to enjoy spending a lot of time alone—and a lot of people don’t—and you’ve also got to go out and see about the world and immerse yourself in that world....” Irvine Welsh, whose latest novel, Dead Men’s Trousers, is forthcoming from Melville House in February, contemplates the words of wisdom and advice he would offer to young writers in this interview with Christian Lund for Louisiana Channel.

In this video for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series, Franny Choi reads her poem “Introduction to Quantum Theory” and discusses the importance of asking unanswerable questions and imagining alternate realities. Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and Soft Science, which is forthcoming from Alice James Books in April.

“I want to write about tiny miracles: I woke up this morning. I woke up this morning.” George Abraham, author of the chapbook The Specimen’s Apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), reads his poem “Against Consolidation” at the 2017 VOX POP Poetry Slam Tournament in Manchester, New Hampshire.

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.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Little, Brown, 2012), Maria Semple’s comedic novel narrated by a teenage girl searching for her agoraphobic architect mother who has gone missing, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Richard Linklater, the movie stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, Judy Greer, and Kristen Wiig.

“Carson McCullers is probably the author I feel the strongest connection to, in the way of empathy and seeing the world.” Benedict Wells, whose fourth novel, The End of Loneliness (Penguin Books, 2019), translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about his writing process, how he began as a writer, and some of the authors who have inspired him.

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.

“History hides. That’s its job. It hides behind other history.” Sam Lipsyte reads from his fourth novel, Hark (Simon & Schuster, 2019), at the University of San Francisco’s MFA Reading Series. Hark is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.