Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair event, National Book Award honorees Donika Kelly and Danez Smith read from their work and discuss the power of poetry for both authors and readers in a conversation moderated by the Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation.

This 2022 AWP Conference & Book Fair event held at Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture in Philadelphia and copresented by Radius of Arab American Writers celebrates the Experimental Issue of Mizna featuring readings by poets George Abraham, Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman, Tracy Fuad, Yasmine Rukia, Glenn Shaheen, and Issam Zineh.

In this PBS Books interview at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair, Keith S. Wilson speaks about his love of video games, Affrilachian poetry, and his debut collection, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Wilson is featured in “Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“One of the nice things about conferences like this one is you meet these other human dream incubators. They’ve got their lightning rods up. They’re also receiving these dreams.” Karen Russell speaks to Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair about the writers who have inspired her, motherhood, and her third story collection, Orange World (Knopf, 2019). Orange World is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Ada Limón speaks about her poetry collections Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) with PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Limón is interviewed by Carrie Fountain in “The Poetry of Perseverance” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

R. O. Kwon talks about her debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Kwon is featured in “First Fiction 2018” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book is very much about climate change…the collision between the human in nature, between internal and external, between domesticity and the wild.” Lauren Groff speaks about her short story collection Florida (Riverhead Books, 2018) with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. “Severe Weather in the Sunshine State,” a profile of Groff by Bethane Patrick, is in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Gregory Pardlo talks about the difference between writing poetry and creative nonfiction, and the universality of storytelling in this interview with Rich Fahle at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. Pardlo’s debut memoir, Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America (Knopf, 2018), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“I didn’t begin with the dog—I wrote that book the way I’ve written all my books which is I start at the beginning and I move on and create the story as I go along.” Sigrid Nunez talks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about her latest novel, The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018), at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.

“There are no rules to writing...and if there are rules, really they’re there to be broken.” Colum McCann, author of Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice (Random House, 2017), speaks to Jeffrey Brown about the challenges and excitement of writing today at the 2017 AWP conference and book fair.

"Dinky planet on a skateboard of dynamite / Oh, what to do..." Juan Felipe Herrera, who has been appointed a second term as poet laureate of the United States, speaks about meeting young poets and reads from his most recent collection, Notes on the Assemblage (City Lights Publishers, 2015), at the 2016 AWP conference and book fair in Los Angeles. 

"You can't be an activist or a writer or a public figure all day long, and I just have to be myself." Roxane Gay, author of the best-selling essay collection, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014), talks about Twitter, adapting her novel, An Untamed State (Grove/Atlantic, 2014), to film, and the unexpected pressures of literary fame at the 2016 AWP conference and book fair in Los Angeles.

“The longest relationship I have ever been in has been with the public transportation system.” In this Button Poetry video, Ariana Brown reads her poem “Ode to the City Bus” from her debut chapbook, Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020), at the 2020 AWP Conference & Book Fair in San Antonio, Texas.

“Literature is more of a community effort than most people realize.” Alexander Chee talks about how the essays came together for his first collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays (Mariner Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.

“Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.” Ocean Vuong reads “Notebook Fragments” for Button Poetry at the 2016 AWP conference and book fair. Vuong, author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), is featured in “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

At an event for YesYes Books and Sixth Finch at the AWP conference in 2012, Leigh Stein reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Dispatch From the Future (Melville House, 2012).

"I saw your book and I was jealous." Lauren Haldeman reads “Jealous” from her debut poetry collection, Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014), at the 2015 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference.

Literary House Press designs and prints their second annual commemorative letterpress broadside, Nance Van Winckel's poem "Because B," for the 2014 AWP Conference in Seattle.

The poet reads at the panel "From Exiled Memories to Cubop City Blues: A Tribute to Pablo Medina," which also featured Fred Arroyo and Rigoberto Gonzalez, at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual conference, held last week in Boston.

As part of "Poetry of Resistance: Poets Responding to Xenophobia and Injustice," a panel at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual conference, held last week in Boston, Alarcón read "For the Capitol Nine," which he wrote in response to a group of students chaining themselves to the Arizona State Capitol on April 20, 2010, to protest the anti-immigrant legislation Arizona SB 1070.