Poets & Writers Theater

"The mission of Deep Vellum is... to promote and foster the art and craft of translation." Will Evans, founding publisher and executive director of Deep Vellum Publishing, speaks about the need for translation in contemporary literature and his hopes for a more vibrant literary culture. The Dallas-based press is featured in Small Press Points in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Kathleen Jamie reads "The Whale-watcher" from her poetry collection The Tree House (Picador, 2004). Jamie's poetry was published in Issue 131 of Granta, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"If you think the human mind is a wonderful thing, there is an infinite interest in cultivating it." Marilynne Robinson speaks with Bill Moyers about her novel Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), and her thoughts on faith, democracy, and creativity. Robinson discusses her new book of essays, The Givenness of Things (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"The mind is a much more generous resource than we're in the habit of considering it to be." The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist speaks about accessing imagination through writing and her teaching experiences at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Robinson discusses her new book of essays, The Givenness of Things (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"When he dreams, he's always fourteen. He's always back in Mexico." John Irving describes the two parts of his new novel, Avenue of Mysteries (Simon & Schuster, 2015), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Yusef Komunyakaa reads "The Great Migration" at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the exhibition, "One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North." Komunyakaa's new poetry collection, The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"At the ocean's edge, which feels like a kind of conclusion to the clumsy whisper of names we read onto the land—we are left with no words for the choppy shove of the waves..." Jeffrey Thomson's debut memoir, Fragile (Red Mountain Press, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Miguel Syjuco describes his usage of Velcro, file folders, and ten separate Microsoft Word documents for the construction of his debut novel, Ilustrado (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). Syjuco speaks about the importance of Asia Literary Review in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Who doesn't still dream of a world other than this one." Garth Risk Hallberg's debut novel, City on Fire (Knopf, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, reads from her first poetry collection, Empty Chairs (Graywolf Press, 2015), while under house arrest in her home in Beijing. Empty Chairs, translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern, is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“You can be honest. This / is Godspeed-less, workaday chatter.” Sandra Beasley reads her poem, “The Conversation,” at the National Archives, which has partnered with the Academy of American Poets to present original poems inspired by the holdings of the National Archives. Read “Mermaids and Matryoshkas: The Secret Life of a Poetic Sequence” by Beasley in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Rebecca Giggs reads selected poems at the Rosemount Hotel in Perth, Western Australia. Giggs's work was published in Issue 131 of Granta, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"The shared memories sprang to both their faces." Matthea Harvey, author of If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? (Graywolf Press, 2014), reads "The Homemade Mermaid," from her collection of mermaid poems. Harvey is featured in "Mermaids and Matryoshkas" by Sandra Beasley in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"I knew then how war was possible." Tarfia Faizullah reads from her award-winning debut poetry collection, Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). Faizullah is featured in "Mermaids and Matryoshkas" by Sandra Beasley in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

John Gallaher reads "Your Lover, Later," a poem cowritten by G. C. Waldrep, from Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2011). Waldrep's poetry has been published in Issue 42.1 of Black Warrior Review, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"I read everything aloud as I'm writing, because the ear is a great editor. I think listening is the most important thing in the creative arts, but also in life." Yusef Komunyakaa, whose new poetry collection, The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the importance of poetry as a celebration of language and as a way to give voice to the psyche.

"A written story can inhabit an individual vision far more intensely and deeply than film is able to do." Mary Gaitskill, whose new novel, The Mare (Pantheon Books, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the powerful worlds that can be built by great literature.

"It's hard to protect a person you love from pain, because people often choose pain. I am a person who often chooses pain. An animal will never choose pain." Mary Gaitskill, whose new novel, The Mare (Pantheon Books, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from her personal essay "Lost Cat" (Granta, 2009) at Baruch College.

"As readers we can't simply witness or observe a book from afar—we have to live inside it, we have to go through it, and every time we do, we expand a version of our own lives." Carrie Brownstein talks about the relationship between readers, books, and writers in her introduction to the 2013 National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 ceremony. Brownstein's debut memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl (Riverhead Books, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Gerry Cambridge, founder of the international literary magazine Dark Horse, which is featured in Literary MagNet in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from a sequence of poems he wrote about collecting birds' eggs as a young boy in Britain.