Poets & Writers Theater

“I live in a hotel / with no rooms, just a lobby and lifts / leading to experiences.” In this video, Jon Sands reads Brenda Shaughnessy’s poem “Karaoke Realness at the Love Hotel” for the Ours Poetica series, sponsored by Complexly and the Poetry Foundation.

“Everything that we think is shining is actually burning.” In this Button Poetry video, Keyma Flight reads her poem “Cigarette Women” at the 2022 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam in Baltimore, Maryland.

In this 92NY virtual reading, Lynn Melnick speaks about how Dolly Parton’s songs helped shape the structure of her memoir, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (University of Texas Press, 2022), in a conversation with poet Deborah Paredez.

“Speak to me; speak into me, / the wind said, when I woke this morning, Let’s see what happens.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Carl Phillips reads a selection of poems from his Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022), and speaks to Jeffrey Brown about the intimacy and power of poetry. Phillips is the recipient of the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“My whole task in writing a book is to get closer; to hear what I’m hearing more clearly and to see what I’m seeing more clearly.” In this conversation for the Reading the Room podcast, Amina Cain speaks about her book A Horse at Night: On Writing (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2022) and her creative process with host Jaylen Lopez. 

National Book Award nominees Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Sabrina & Corina (One World, 2019), and Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021), discuss the convergences and divergences of rewriting shared memory across genres in this 2022 National Book Foundation event moderated by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.

“Tell the law nothin of substance / tell the people everything you can.” In this Button Poetry video, Darius Simpson reads his poem “The Role of the Artist,” which appears in his collection Never Catch Me (Button Poetry, 2022).

“All the books I’ve written in the past were books that I decided to write suddenly while I was writing something else.” In this London Review Bookshop conversation, French writer Édouard Louis speaks about his writing process and discovering the parts of his mother’s life he did not know for his new memoir, A Woman’s Battles and Transformations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), with translator and novelist Tash Aw.

In this New York Public Library event, Cullman Center fellow Hua Hsu reads from his debut memoir, Stay True (Doubleday, 2022), and speaks about writing through grief with Ken Chen. Hsu is the winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in memoir or autobiography.

Watch this virtual multilingual reading of poetry in translation presented by Words Without Borders in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Enjoy poetry in Arabic, French, Malay, Spanish, and English, with readings by poet Jeannette Clariond and translator Samantha Schnee, poet Zahid M. Naser and translator Pauline Fan, poet Samira Negrouche, and translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.

In this London Review Bookshop event, Fernanda Melchor reads from her novel Paradais (New Directions, 2022), translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes, and discusses her work and signature writing style with author Nicole Flattery.

“I think a theme in both The Idiot and Either/Or is sort of a disappointment with philosophy.” Elif Batuman speaks about the themes in both her novels and the real-life inspiration behind her second novel, Either/Or (Penguin Press, 2022), in this conversation with author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro filmed at Pioneer Works in New York City.

“This name— / branded on my family—rises out of / the ashes in the wind. I can trace each syllable / back to our cantón: Buena Vista.” Cynthia Guardado reads from her collection Cenizas (University of Arizona Press, 2022) and speaks about ancestry, names, and family stories in this Poetry.LA interview with poet Douglas Manuel.

In this Poetry of Resilience interview, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón reads from her collection The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions, 2022) and speaks about the emotions she writes from and the importance of poetry for healing with hosts and poets Danusha Laméris and James Crews.

In this 2022 virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment reading series, poets Samiya Bashir, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Adrian Matejka read from their works and discuss their leadership roles in publishing and within the literary community. A Q&A with Bashir by Jonathan Vatner is included in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Have I forgotten it – / wild conch-shell dialect, / black apostrophe curled / tight on my tongue?” In this video, Safiya Sinclair reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), as well as new poems for this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren.

“Nowadays, I lie down in the sunlight / To see my mama moting around / As sympathetic ash. / Yes, one morning whether misty or yellow / I’ll be soot with her.” In this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series, Kimiko Hahn reads her poem “A Dusting,” which appears in her collection Foreign Bodies (Norton, 2022), and speaks about the power of poetry to connect us with our loved ones.

In this video, Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Tin House, 2022), and Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust (Riverhead Books, 2022), speak about writing within off-kilter realities for this 2022 National Book Festival event moderated by Poets & Writers editor-in-chief Kevin Larimer.

“I try my hand at remembering. An origin story is what you make of it. It can be a culture, a treasured heirloom, or a history, reduced.” In this Center for Fiction event, Hafizah Augustus Geter reads from her book The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin (Random House, 2022) and speaks with New York Times Magazine staff writer and author J Wortham. For more from Geter, read “Twelve Ways to Create Space to Write No Matter Where You Are” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When you’re sick, the act of living is more act than living.” Meghan O’Rourke reads from her book The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022) and discusses how the book changed as her illness changed in this virtual event with Jonathan M. Adler for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Book Talks series.