Poets & Writers Theater

Written and directed by Bill Condon, this movie musical is based on the Tony Award–winning musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, and is the second film adaptation of the 1976 novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig. The film stars Jennifer Lopez in the titular role, alongside Diego Luna and Tonatiuh.

The History of Sound is a historical romantic drama film written by Ben Shattuck and based on his short story of the same name. Directed by Oliver Hermanus, the film stars Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as Lionel and David who travel together recording folk songs after the end of World War I.

In this Poetry.LA video, Altadena co-poets laureate Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar read a selection of their poems and speak about how the Eaton Fire has affected their lives and community. Lennon and Sarwar were recently awarded a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to launch their poetry project “After the Fires: Healing from Histories.”

In this TEDx Talk, Aimee McNee, author of We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something (Penguin Life, 2025), argues that creativity is not a luxury but a vital, radical act that can heal us.

Watch the trailer for My Oxford Year, a film adaptation of the debut novel of the same name by Julia Whelan. The film stars Sofia Carson as Anna, an ambitious American student with a keen interest in poetry who sets off for Oxford University and meets Jamie, played by Corey Mylchreest, a charming local who alters her plans.

In this Poets House event, Garrett Hongo reads from his fourth poetry collection, Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025), and Edward Hirsch reads from his new memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (Knopf, 2025), followed by a conversation between the authors about their friendship and humor.

“She was a short story that kind of got too big and started rolling away from me,” says Katie Yee about her debut novel, Maggie; or a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar (Summit Books, 2025), in this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, in which they discuss writing outside of your own experience and usual style.

In this Creative Writing Series event at the University of Notre Dame, Kristen Arnett reads from her novel Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One (Riverhead Books, 2025) and talks about how she played with form by using different typefaces for “funny” and “not funny,” and her process to ensure that each joke lands.

Directed by Ebs Burnough, this documentary explores the influence that Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel, On the Road, has had on writers, actors, storytellers and artists, and follows the lives of Americans who set off on their own journeys in the footsteps of the famous author, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.

In this Daily Show interview, author Rob Franklin speaks about the themes of race, class, and privilege in his debut novel, Great Black Hope (Summit Books, 2025), with host Josh Johnson.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, and Maureen Corrigan, professor and book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, offer recommendations for summer reading, including The Satisfaction Café (Scribner, 2025) by Kathy Wang, King of Ashes (Flatiron Books, 2025) by S. A. Cosby, and A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (Riverhead Books, 2025) by Sophie Elmhirst.

In this Service95 Book Club conversation hosted by Dua Lipa, author Vincent Delecroix talks about the 2021 English Channel disaster that inspired his novel Small Boat (Hope Road Publishing, 2025), translated from the French by Helen Stevenson, and his decision to write from the perspective of a bystander observing calamity.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers discusses the themes of Blackness, intersectionality, and diaspora in her essay collection, Misbehaving at the Crossroads (Harper, 2025), and how it serves as a companion piece to her novel, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (Harper, 2021).

“In a lot of ways, this popular culture is the water that I swim in. I can’t escape it.” In this Magers & Quinn Booksellers event, Alice Bolin reads an essay about Star Trek from her latest collection, Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse (Mariner Books, 2025), and discusses technology, cults, and feminism with author Sally Franson.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda reads from her English translation of Yoko Tawada’s essay collection Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions, 2025) and discusses Tawada’s defamiliarization of the Japanese and German languages in a conversation with fellow translator Susan Bernofsky.

Watch the trailer for Washington Black, a Hulu series adaptation of the 2018 novel of the same name by Esi Edugyan. The series, which stars Eddie Karanja, Ernest Kingsley Jr., Tom Ellis, Iola Evans, and Sterling K. Brown, follows the life of an enslaved boy who flees the sugar plantation in Barbados where he was born.

In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Maggie Nelson reads from her book Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (Wave Books, 2025) and speaks about the norms around illness memoirs and her desire to confront pain head-on through writing in a conversation with Darcey Steinke. “The book ended up being about what’s beneath this kind of quest for care,” says Nelson.

For this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2025 Blaney Lecture, Kaveh Akbar reminisces on his childhood spent studying and reciting prayers in Arabic and discusses how sacred poetics and language allow us to sit in complexity and remain in awareness. “Such poetry is a potent antidote against a late capitalist empire that would use empty, vapid language to cudgel us into inaction,” Akbar says.

Watch the trailer for Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel of the same name written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz, the film is set for release in November.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lydi Conklin celebrates the release of their debut novel, Songs of No Provenance (Catapult, 2025), with John Shakespear performing an original song, “Green Weeks,” based on the book and a conversation with Jenny Xie about music and writing.