Poets & Writers Theater

“What we can contribute is an open space that’s really excited about learning and welcoming poets and writers from across different communities of literature in New York.” In this BRIC TV video, Rachel Valinsky, the artistic director of the Brooklyn nonprofit Wendy’s Subway, talks about the organization’s history and programming, and how it functions in the community as a reading room, event space, and publisher.

On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, presents her summer reading recommendations including Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift Hogarth, 2019), Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black (Knopf, 2018), and Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

“The ‘need’ is many things in the book...a child’s need for milk and then also the mother’s need for the child to relieve her of the milk and the mother’s need for her children, that love going two directions.” On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Helen Phillips talks about her second novel, The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019), different reactions to the book, her own experiences as a mother, and some of the inspiration for its themes. For more Phillips, read her answers to Ten Questions about her novel.

“If you believe in literature...then you believe that some of these books have the power to transform people and the way they see the world.” Danny Schaffer, a member of the Books Through Bars volunteer collective, which matches and sends requested books to incarcerated people, talks about the importance of access to knowledge, history, and literature in the prison system.

“When I think about what I’m going to write next, I’m like, where do we not exist?” Jason Reynolds, who won the Kirkus Prize for young readers’ literature for his novel As Brave As You (Caitlyn Dlouhy, 2016), speaks about growing up in Brooklyn and not seeing characters like himself in literature as a child.

“The body is a person.” In this video from BRIC TV, Morgan Parker reads her poems and discusses her life as a young writer. Her second collection, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in February.