Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Maggie Millner, Lynne Tillman, and Ann Stephenson discuss the life and legacy of author and playwright Jane Bowles in celebration of the reissue of two of her books, Plain Pleasure and Two Serious Ladies, published by Picador.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lana Lin reads from her book The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2025) and discusses how she uses both Gertrude Stein and Audre Lorde’s genre-bending approaches to autobiography in order to highlight Asian diasporic narratives in a conversation with Monique Truong.

In this Books Are Magic event, Jaquira Díaz reads from her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom (Algonquin Books, 2025), and discusses what inspired her to write a queer coming-of-age story in a conversation with Lupita Aquino and Angie Cruz. Díaz’s novel is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic video, Amanda Hess reads from her debut memoir, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), and speaks with Wesley Morris about her experiences using the internet for information and support during her pregnancy. Hess is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Marissa Davis reads from her debut poetry collection, End of Empire (Penguin Books, 2025), in this Books Are Magic event with poets Sasha Burshteyn and A. D. Lauren-Abunassar. Davis’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

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.

In this Books Are Magic event, Cathy Linh Che reads from her second poetry collection, Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), and talks about how her parents’ experience as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now shaped her book in a conversation with poet Wo Chan.

In this Books Are Magic event, Tiana Clark reads from her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025), and discusses the cinematic quality of poems and whether poetry should always tell the truth in a conversation with Terrance Hayes.

In this Books Are Magic event, Ada Calhoun talks about the themes of love and identity in her debut novel, Crush (Viking, 2025), the expectations of marriage as a Gen Xer, and the current state of women’s literature in a conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

“I love when a character in a novel, or in a story, or even in a poem, experiences a sense of change that they cannot come back from.” In this Books Are Magic event, Aria Aber reads from her debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), and discusses themes of shame, self-destruction, and coming of age as an artist in a conversation with Leslie Jamison. For more from Aber, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this Books Are Magic event, Lili Anolik reads from her new biography, Didion and Babitz (Scribner, 2024), and discusses how the book originated from discovering a box of Eve Babitz’s unsent letters, which included a letter to Joan Didion, in a conversation with Emma Straub.

In this Books Are Magic event, Albert Abonado reads from his second poetry collection, Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, 2024), and discusses Asian American families and the model minority myth in a conversation with Jason Koo. Field Guide for Accidents is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event, Miller Oberman reads from his latest poetry collection, Impossible Things (Duke University Press, 2024), and is joined by poets Jason B. Crawford, Joan Kwon Glass, and I. S. Jones for a reading and Q&A. For more from Oberman, read his installation of our Ten Questions series.

In this Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event at Books Are Magic, the Institute of American Indian Arts presents readings by students, alumni, and faculty of the program, including program director Deborah Jackson Taffa, m.s. RedCherries, Lily Philpott, and Julianne Warren.

In this Books Are Magic event, Kat Tang reads from her debut novel, Five-Star Stranger (Scribner, 2024), and describes her experience revisiting a novel manuscript years after finishing her MFA in a conversation with author Jinwoo Chong.

In this Books Are Magic event with Adam Dalva, author and translator Laura Marris reads from and speaks about her debut essay collection, The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the September/October of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The reason why I favor long poems—not just writing them but reading them—is that it just feels like a much truer picture of the self, or selves.” In this Books Are Magic event, Jason Koo reads from his latest poetry collection, No Rest (Diode Editions, 2024), and discusses the narrative opportunities of long poems in a conversation with Bessie Flores Zaldívar.

“In each of my close relationships, I feel like I get to be a different version of myself.” In this Books Are Magic event, Lilly Dancyger speaks with Leslie Jamison about how she tackled writing about her closest friendships in her first essay collection, First Love: Essays on Friendship (Dial Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books are Magic event with Isaac Fitzgerald, author Rachel Khong discusses the themes of race, family, and belonging in her second novel, Real Americans (Knopf, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “I think it’s both an American feeling and an immigrant feeling, that there’s not enough time and you need to make the most of it,” says Khong.