Poets & Writers Theater

In this video, Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Tin House, 2022), and Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust (Riverhead Books, 2022), speak about writing within off-kilter realities for this 2022 National Book Festival event moderated by Poets & Writers editor-in-chief Kevin Larimer.

“Black of pure tint, I cry and laugh / the vibration of being a black statue; / a chunk of night, in which my white / teeth are lightning.” In this video for the Favorite Poem Project, bilingual special education teacher Glaisma Pérez-Silva reads Julia de Burgos’s poem “Ay, Ay, Ay, de la Grifa Negra,” translated from the Spanish by Jack Agüeros.

“The greatest trailblazer for me, in some ways, was my local library,” says Lucinda Roy, author of Flying the Coop (Tor Books, 2022), in this discussion with Leslye Penelope, author of The Monsters We Defy (Orbit, 2022), and journalist Angie Miles about speculative fiction and creating strong empowered female heroines for this virtual event celebrating the 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Geraldine Brooks speaks about her “ridiculous optimism” for new writing projects, the connection she has with her characters, and her new novel, Horse (Viking, 2022), with librarian Rebekah Scarborough in this virtual event, hosted by PBS Books in collaboration with Georgia Public Broadcasting celebrating the 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Jason Reynolds speaks about his appointment by the Library of Congress as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the importance of young readers, and the danger of banning books in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

In this 2019 video, Diane Seuss reads from her books of poetry and speaks about her writing with Washington Post’s Ron Charles at Hill Center in Washington, D.C. for a series hosted by the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. Seuss’s essay “Restless Herd: Some Thoughts on Order—In Poetry, In Life” appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“One of the women greeted me. / I love you, she said. She didn’t / Know me, but I believed her, / And a terrible new ache / Rolled over in my chest,” reads Tracy K. Smith from her poem “Wade in the Water” in this 2018 Library of Congress event with Ron Charles, book critic of the Washington Post. Smith is featured in a profile by Renée H. Shea in the March/April 2015 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Marie Arana, literary advisor at the Library of Congress, presents a video tribute of the late Denis Johnson, who was awarded the 2017 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Johnson’s second story collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Random House, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We harness a wildness in the ‘I’ of our poems.” In this 2013 video at the Library of Congress, Dorothea Lasky delivers the Bagley Wright Lecture on Poetry and explores how poetry makes us human. Lasky interviews the late Max Ritvo about his poetry and process in “The World Beyond: A Last Interview With Max Ritvo” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"A lightning flash split the gloom and a rumble of cascading boulders burst from the sky." At an event at the Library of Congress, A. Igoni Barrett reads from "The Shape of a Full Circle," a short story from his collection Love Is Power, Or Something Like That (Graywolf Press, 2013). His debut novel, Blackass (Graywolf Press, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“[The poem] allows for a place for the reader to breathe,” says Ada Limón in this 2019 reading and conversation about her books of poetry with Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, hosted by the Library of Congress. “In that empty space we actually bring ourselves to the page, so that the writer is not the only person experiencing the poem, but the reader is part of that journey.”

In this 2014 video for the Library of Congress, Natasha Trethewey delivers the final lecture of her second term as U.S. poet laureate speaking on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the major victories of the civil rights movement, as well as reflecting on how these events cross with her own personal history and laureateship.

María Kodama discusses the work of her late husband, Jorge Luis Borges, at the Library of Congress, which Borges often called his home. Kodama is joined by Saúl Sosnowski, a professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Maryland.

Poet, memoirist, and novelist Jon Pineda discusses the Filipino American experience and his writing at the Library of Congress. Pineda’s second novel, Let’s No One Get Hurt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

The Library of Congress announced today that Charles Wright is the new U.S. poet laureate. In this clip, Wright, the author of nearly two dozen poetry collections, most recently Caribou (FSG, 2014), reads his poem "Together" for PBS NewsHour.

Last month Ron Charles interviewed poet Carl Phillips, whose most recent collection, Silverchest, was published by FSG in April 2013, as part of the Hill Center Poetry Series, cosponsored by the Library of Congress and the Washington Post.

On April 11 the author of five books of poetry and two essay collections, including Power and Possibility: Essays, Interviews, Reviews (University of Michigan Press, 2007), read her poem "Haircut" at the opening presentation of the Hill Center Poetry Series, cosponsored by the Library of Congress and the Washington Post.

The eighty-seven-year-old poet talks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about a life of writing poetry and his Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992, for which he recently won the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.