Poets & Writers Theater

In this event hosted by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, poet and biologist Brandon Kilbourne talks about the relationship between scientific inquiry and poetics which manifests in his debut poetry collection, Natural History (Graywolf Press, 2025), and reads a selection of poems. Kilbourne’s collection is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was little and lost / the season I learned to be still...” In this Charis Circle event, Donika Kelly reads poems from her new collection, The Natural Order of Things (Graywolf Press, 2025), and speaks with Jericho Brown about family, home, and her writing process. Read a profile of Kelly by Brian Gresko in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“So much has happened / that I would never have known / I could remember.” In this Silo City Reading Series video, Donika Kelly reads her poem “Suicide Watch: Spring,” which appears in her third poetry collection, The Natural Order of Things (Graywolf Press, 2025). Read a profile of Kelly by Brian Gresko in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Service95 Book Club conversation hosted by Dua Lipa, Percival Everett revisits his award-winning 2021 novel, The Trees, and talks about how the murder and image of Emmett Till urged him to write the story, and how important the relationship between author and reader is to art. “People find their truth in art. It’s not complete until the reader comes to it. That’s when meaning gets made,” says Everett.

Chloé Caldwell reads from her second memoir, Trying (Graywolf Press, 2025), in this Green Apple Books event with Ariel Gore and Mia Arias Tsang in which they speak about the meaning of failure, the nuances of writing about relationships, and the process of representing queerness on the page. Caldwell’s book is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“You might think I am just old but I have finally decided to make the decision to never grow up, and remain under my hood.” In this video, Fanny Howe reads from her poetry collection Second Childhood (Graywolf Press, 2014) at the 2014 National Book Awards ceremony. Howe died at the age of eighty-four on July 9, 2025.

In this Green Apple Books event, Irene Solà celebrates the English language release of her third novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2025), translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, with a reading and discussion with author Shruti Swamy. Solà’s novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Button Poetry video filmed at SubText Books in Saint Paul, Danez Smith reads their poem “Dede was the last person i came out to,” which appears in their fourth collection, Bluff (Graywolf Press, 2024).

In this Brookline Booksmith event, Shuba Sunder reads from her first novel, Optional Practical Training (Graywolf Press, 2025), and speaks about the process of writing her “immigrant novel” in a conversation with Neema Avashia. Optional Practical Training is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“All of the stories, in some way, seem to be about characters moving away from their own points of origin or states of mind.” In this Green Apple Books event, Corinna Vallianatos reads from her story collection Origin Stories (Graywolf Press, 2025) and discusses her fascination with the interiority of characters in a conversation with Colin Winnette. For more from Vallianatos, read her installation of our Ten Questions series.

In this Harvard Radcliffe Institute event, Ilya Kaminsky reads a selection of poems from his collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), including “We Lived Happily During the War” and “While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses,” and discusses being an immigrant and poet in between languages in a conversation with Stephanie Sandler.

In this 2024 Guest Writers Series event hosted by the University of Utah’s Creative Writing department, Monica Youn reads poems about magpies from her fourth collection, From From (Graywolf Press, 2023), and Béatrice Szymkowiak discusses how natural history inspired her debut collection, B/RDS (University of Utah Press, 2023).

In this event presented by Green Apple Books and the Center for the Art of Translation celebrating the launch of Yuri Herrera’s novel Season of the Swamp (Graywolf Press, 2024), translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman, Herrera and Dillman read from the book and discuss their collaborative approach to translation in a conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras.

In this NGC Bocas Lit Fest event, Edwidge Danticat speaks about the roots of her work and reads excerpts from her works of fiction and nonfiction, including the preface from her new essay collection, We’re Alone (Graywolf Press, 2024), in a conversation with Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw. A profile of Danticat by Renée H. Shea appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

In this Left Bank Books virtual event, Diane Seuss reads from her new collection, Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024), and joins poet Jane Hilberry in a conversation about their fathers, writing practices, and friendship. Seuss is interviewed by Bianca Stone in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2023 Green Apple Books event, Sally Wen Mao reads from her third poetry collection, The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023), and discusses the history of Chinese women in America, the influence of Anne Anlin Cheng’s book Ornamentalism, and the urgent need for Asian literary imagination in a conversation with Cathy Park Hong.

“This whole place has always meant, to me, that this work does have some consequence and meaning in the world.” In this video, Sally Wen Mao speaks about her research at the New York Public Library during her Cullman Center fellowship, including discovering a first edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, which inspired her poetry collection The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023). Mao’s collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved.” In this reading at the Kelly Writers House in 2020, Carmen Maria Machado reads from her debut memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019).

“Of the foreground, we will not speak. Look past the / blotted figures.” Jenny Xie reads “Red Puncta,” which appears in her second poetry collection, The Rupture Tense (Graywolf Press, 2022), in this video for the Nation’s Spring Poetry Reading, which also featured Golden and Donika Kelly, hosted by Kaveh Akbar. The Rupture Tense is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.