Poets & Writers Theater

“Working with poetry is really stimulating because it can take you to a limit of human experience, it’s using language in the way that it exists in our minds and in the psyche,” says Moheb Soliman in this TPT Originals video on exploring place, identity, and the natural world in his debut collection, HOMES (Coffee House Press, 2021). Soliman is featured in “A Freeing Space: Our Seventeenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“A lot of my life has been unconventional, but it has led to this point and I wouldn’t have reached this point if I’d given up.” In this Penguin Books UK video, Booker Prize–winning author Bernardine Evaristo speaks with her longtime editor Simon Prosser about her writing career and books, including her new memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Grove Press, 2022).

“The more that I wrote I discovered that writing in a pretty way actually wasn’t the goal,” says Blair Hurley about breaking down good writing and prioritizing writing clearly with characters that feel real in this interview with Junia Doan. Hurley’s essay “Tiny Doable Things” is featured in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To think I’ve gone / to all this trouble / just to lose / my looks & mind.” In this Poetry Society of America video, Devon Walker-Figueroa reads her poem “Noise Cancelling,” which was selected by Amit Majmudar as the winner of the 2021 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award. Walker-Figueroa speaks about her debut collection, Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021), in “A Freeing Space: Our Seventeenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’ve learned to be a lot more flexible and I can write basically anywhere.” Crystal Hana Kim talks about writing after having a baby during the pandemic in this episode of the Writing F(r)iction podcast hosted by author Michael Johnston. Kim’s essay “How to Keep Going” is featured in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Try as we might, we can’t / help believing heaven is up” In this video, Emily Van Kley performs aerial acrobatics and reads “Bodies” from her second poetry collection, Arrhythmia (Persea Books, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Dartmouth video celebrating Robert Frost’s birthday last March, Matthew Olzmann reads his poem “Letter to the person who, during the Q&A session after the reading, asked for career advice” from his latest collection, Constellation Route (Alice James Books, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“When I think about people, I think about space, how much space a person takes up and how much use that person provides.” In this Alaska Quarterly Review reading, Weike Wang reads from her second novel, Joan Is Okay (Random House, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.