Poets & Writers Theater

Poets & Writers Magazine associate editor India Lena González hosts this virtual reading celebrating the ten debut poets featured in “The Beauty of Being: Our Eighteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue. The two-part event includes readings from the poets and conversation about their debut books, their influences and inspirations, and their individual paths to publication.

“I try my hand at remembering. An origin story is what you make of it. It can be a culture, a treasured heirloom, or a history, reduced.” In this Center for Fiction event, Hafizah Augustus Geter reads from her book The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin (Random House, 2022) and speaks with New York Times Magazine staff writer and author J Wortham. For more from Geter, read “Twelve Ways to Create Space to Write No Matter Where You Are” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event, Patricia Engel reads from her story collection The Faraway World (Avid Reader Press, 2023) and speaks with Naima Coster about writing habits and what inspires her to write. The Faraway World is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Sabrina Imbler speaks about their debut book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (Little, Brown, 2022), with journalist Heather Smith after an introduction by Rebecca Solnit for this event hosted by the Green Arcade in San Francisco. Imbler’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I like to think of subtext as almost being horizontal instead of below the surface of the text,” says award-winning playwright, poet, and essayist Sarah Ruhl in this video for Conchord Theatricals. For more from Ruhl, read her essay “Twelve Reasons You Should Keep Writing” published in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual conversation for the Brown Girl Collective Book Club, Evette Dionne, author of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul (Ecco, 2022), speaks with Marcie L. Thomas about writing her book and researching the biases placed against Black women in healthcare. Dionne’s essay collection is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I have heard my father tell a wide variation of the same five stories but you can affix a certain moral to one—you can affix an entry point, an exit point, an image—that makes it feel like a new story every time,” says Hanif Abdurraqib in this lecture on the nature and impact of storytelling for CreativeMornings in Columbus, Ohio. “Twelve Things That Help Me Set My Table” by Abdurraqib appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I should have turned out normal, but I didn’t. What happened?” Watch the book trailer for Kevin Maloney’s second novel, The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I don’t want to sound unreasonable / but I need to be in love immediately.” In this video, Alex Dimitrov reads a selection of poems from his collection Love and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021) for UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems reading series. “Twelve Films That Put Me in the Mood to Write” by Dimitrov appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.