Poets & Writers Theater

In this Milkweed Editions video, Aimee Nezhukumatathil introduces torrin a. greathouse who reads from her debut poetry collection, Wound From the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020), winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. greathouse is featured in “A Life in Poetry: Our Sixteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Hannah dreams the family buries her mother, a woman they haven’t seen in more than forty years.” Eman Quotah celebrates the book launch for her debut novel, Bride of the Sea (Tin House, 2021), with author Susan Muaddi Darraj in this Politics and Prose virtual event. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“For people who have so little…it’s so deeply appreciated that it’s almost life-changing.” In this 2010 video, Gary Fine speaks about the Prisoner Express program, which sends packages of books along with a personalized, handwritten note to participants who are incarcerated. For more on the growth of the program, read “Books Offer Lifeline in Incarceration” by Alissa Greenberg in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“Everyone can do a paragraph.” Emily Rapp Black speaks about working with a writing partner during the pandemic in this video for the Throw Us a Line series hosted by Lighthouse Writers Workshop program director Andrea Dupree. Black’s new memoir, Sanctuary (Random House, 2021), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this installment of ENCLAVE, a virtual reading series curated by Rae Armantrout and Jeanne Heuving, poet Peter Gizzi reads from his collections Archeophonics (Wesleyan University Press, 2016) and Now It’s Dark (Wesleyan University Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Restless, I want to return and stand at the mouth where wild fig trees grow,” reads Anne Marie Macari in this installment of the P.O.P. series, shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Macari’s poetry collection Heaven Beneath (Persea Books, 2020) is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Not the wealth of the thousand / Not the segregated place / Not the segregated classroom, the segregated desk,” reads Rodney Gomez from his poem “Rio Grande Valley Litany” at this 2017 reading for the Poets Against Border Walls Collective in Hidalgo, Texas. Gomez’s poetry collection Arsenal With Praise Song (Orison Books, 2021) is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What is lost is already behind the locked doors.” This mini-documentary by Made to Measure about the life of Joan Didion, outlines her early career as a research assistant at Vogue leading to her cult following in the sixties, and her literary impact as she was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2012. Didion’s essay collection Let Me Tell You What I Mean (Knopf, 2021) is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Librarians and libraries have such a special place in my heart because growing up, like a lot of people, they were a safe place to go to after school.” In this video for Baker & Taylor, a provider of books for public libraries, Mateo Askaripour talks about the importance of libraries and his debut novel, Black Buck (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2018 video, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor reads a collaborative poem about her son Malik Taylor with South Carolina’s first poet laureate Marcus Amaker at the Free Verse poetry festival in Charleston. Boyce-Taylor’s fifth poetry collection, Mama Phife Represents (Haymarket Books, 2021), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.