Poets & Writers Theater

Weike Wang speaks with Mary Laura Philpott of A Word on Words about her debut novel, Chemistry (Knopf, 2017), and why her main character doesn’t have a name. Wang is a 2017 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction.

In this 2013 video, Lucie Brock-Broido reads her poem “You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World” from her collection Stay, Illusion (Knopf, 2013), which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. Brock-Broido died on March 6, 2018 at the age of sixty-one.

Daniel Borzutzky, who won the 2016 National Book Award in poetry for The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), reads poems from the collection at a reading for the finalists hosted by the New School. Borzutzky’s forthcoming poetry collection, Lake Michigan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), is a series of nineteen lyric poems.

“We will need writers who can remember freedom.” In this video, Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin’s essay collection, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video, Halle Butler reads her short story “The Restaurant Business” alongside her illustrations at the Brain Frame performative comics and zine series in Chicago. Butler is the author of the debut novel, Jillian (Curbside Splendor, 2015), and a 2017 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.

“They make us more empathetic. They connect us to one another. They make people who are not like us more human.” Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, shares her love of books and why reading them is so important for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series.

Kwame Dawes talks about the importance of literary activism at the National Book Foundation's 2016 "Why Reading Matters" conference in New York City. Dawes is the founder of the African Poetry Book Fund, which was an honoree of the National Book Foundation's 2015 Innovations in Reading Prize.

“Books tend to get short shrift in the cultural world,” says Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, in this interview with James Brown. Lucas speaks about the foundation’s goal to promote a love of writing and the BookUp program, which connects young people with published authors and provides free copies of books. 

In 2008 Time magazine interviewed Tom Wolfe on the fortieth anniversary of his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The journalist and novelist was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation in 2010.