Poets & Writers Theater

In this DC Public Library event, Imani Perry speaks with Clint Smith about the recurrence of the color blue in her life and how it sparked an aesthetic examination of the color’s place in African and Black history for her book Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (Ecco, 2025).

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.

“For me, poetry is the act of paying attention. It pushes me to pay attention to a moment, a feeling, an idea, an image.” Clint Smith speaks about what poetry means to him, the themes in his new collection, Above Ground (Little, Brown, 2023), and reads his poem “All at Once” in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

“People talk about epigenetic trauma all the time. People don’t talk about epigenetic joy. There can’t be one and not the other.” In this event hosted by the DC Public Library and Loyalty Bookstores, Ross Gay reads from and discusses his new essay collection, Inciting Joy (Algonquin Books, 2022), with Clint Smith. A Q&A with Gay by Aimee Nezhukumatathil is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Poets & Writers Live virtual event, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021), with poet and novelist Destiny O. Birdsong. Smith is featured in a profile written by Birdsong in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, poet and scholar Clint Smith speaks about the historic places he visited and writes about in his new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 2021). A profile of Smith by Destiny O. Birdsong is featured in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Silence is the residue of fear. It is feeling your flaws, gut-wrench guillotine your tongue.” In this TED Talk, Clint Smith speaks about the danger of silence and finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice. “The Poet at Work,” Smith’s profile of poet Kevin Young, is in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.