Poets & Writers Theater

In this video, Nikki Giovanni reads a selection of her poems and speaks about her life and career for the Wright Conversations series hosted by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and PBS Books. Giovanni died at the age of eighty-one on December 9, 2024.

In this PBS Books virtual event celebrating the release of the fortieth anniversary edition of The House on Mango Street, published by Everyman’s Library, author Sandra Cisneros discusses the novel and how it has touched many lives and affected the literary landscape in a conversation with Heather-Marie Montilla.

In this installment of the Visions of America: All Stories, All People, All Places series hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and PBS Books, Kaoukab Chebaro, head of Global Studies at the Columbia University Libraries, discusses the importance of first-person storytelling and her work in preserving the individual history of Arabs across the globe.

In this video, PBS Books and the American Library Association’s Booklist Reader editors recommend their top twelve books for this summer, which include James by Percival Everett (Doubleday, 2024), This Strange Eventful History (Norton, 2024) by Claire Messud, State of Paradise (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) by Laura van den Berg, and One of Our Kind (Knopf, 2024) by Nicola Yoon.

“blood tells the story,” reads Evie Shockley from her poem “you can say that again, billie” discussed in this PBS Books conversation about the history of racism, violence, and artistic tradition in the American South with historian Robin D. G. Kelley, actress LisaGay Hamilton, and professor Elisa New, director and host of the Poetry in America television series.

In this PBS Books interview at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair, Keith S. Wilson speaks about his love of video games, Affrilachian poetry, and his debut collection, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Wilson is featured in “Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“One of the nice things about conferences like this one is you meet these other human dream incubators. They’ve got their lightning rods up. They’re also receiving these dreams.” Karen Russell speaks to Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair about the writers who have inspired her, motherhood, and her third story collection, Orange World (Knopf, 2019). Orange World is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl, speaks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about the beginnings of her book club and organization, and the anthology Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves (Ballantine, 2018), which is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Ada Limón speaks about her poetry collections Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) with PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Limón is interviewed by Carrie Fountain in “The Poetry of Perseverance” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

R. O. Kwon talks about her debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair. Kwon is featured in “First Fiction 2018” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book is very much about climate change…the collision between the human in nature, between internal and external, between domesticity and the wild.” Lauren Groff speaks about her short story collection Florida (Riverhead Books, 2018) with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. “Severe Weather in the Sunshine State,” a profile of Groff by Bethane Patrick, is in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Gregory Pardlo talks about the difference between writing poetry and creative nonfiction, and the universality of storytelling in this interview with Rich Fahle at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. Pardlo’s debut memoir, Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America (Knopf, 2018), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

“I didn’t begin with the dog—I wrote that book the way I’ve written all my books which is I start at the beginning and I move on and create the story as I go along.” Sigrid Nunez talks with Rich Fahle of PBS Books about her latest novel, The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018), at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.

“Literature is more of a community effort than most people realize.” Alexander Chee talks about how the essays came together for his first collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays (Mariner Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.