Poets & Writers Theater
Every day we share a new clip of interest to creative writers—author readings, book trailers, publishing panels, craft talks, and more. So grab some popcorn, filter the theater tags by keyword or genre, and explore our sizable archive of literary videos.
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“We in the fields, the watchers from the burnt slope, / Facing the west, facing the bright sky, hopelessly longing / to know the red beauty…” In this 2011 PBS NewsHour video, Jeffrey Yang reads William Everson’s poem “We in the Fields” along with other poems published in Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems From New Directions, an anthology edited by the poet celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of New Directions. Yang’s new poetry collection, Line and Light (Graywolf Press, 2022), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Poetry | Jeffrey Yang | Birds, Beasts, and Seas | New Directions | 2011 | nature | PBS NewsHour | Line and Light | Graywolf Press | Page One | May/June 2022 -
“When a loved one dies, you experience your life in just two days, today, when they are no longer here, and yesterday, the immense, vast yesterday, when they were here,” says Ocean Vuong, author most recently of Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022), in this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” arts and culture video series.
Tags: Poetry | Ocean Vuong | Time Is a Mother | Penguin Press | Brief but Spectacular | PBS NewsHour | 2022 -
“I still believe that we listen more closely to a whisper than to a shout.” In this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Rita Dove speaks about history, rage, the power of poetry, and her latest collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse (Norton, 2021).
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“There’s so many young people, the first time they start to think seriously about class, about sexuality, about gender, about identity, about vulnerability, about spirituality is through her work,” says Princeton University professor Imani Perry about the legacy of bell hooks in this PBS NewsHour video commemorating the influential critic, author, and feminist scholar and activist who died at the age of sixty-nine on December 15, 2021.
Tags: Poetry | Creative Nonfiction | bell hooks | Imani Perry | PBS NewsHour | 2021 | in memoriam -
“A book is much more than a transactional object. The words are flooding in, and ideas are filling you in emotion. It’s haunting in a good way.” In this PBS NewsHour interview, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Louise Erdrich speaks from her bookstore Birchbark Books & Native Arts in Minneapolis about her love of books and her new novel, The Sentence (Harper, 2021), a ghost story which explores the racial divides of her hometown.
Tags: Fiction | Louise Erdrich | The Sentence | Harper | 2021 | PBS NewsHour | Jeffrey Brown | BirchBark Books & Native Arts | Minneapolis -
“Here is another reason to write a memoir: to utter what must not be erased.” In this 2017 PBS NewsHour video, Richard Ford speaks about his reasons for writing, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (Ecco, 2017), a memoir about his parents. “I wrote about my parents because, decades after their deaths and when I was no longer young, I realized that I plainly missed them.”
Tags: Creative Nonfiction | Richard Ford | Between Them: Remembering My Parents | Ecco | 2017 | PBS NewsHour | memoir -
“To walk down the streets in the Bay Area is really to walk through a dystopia,” says San Francisco poet laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin about the rapid gentrification of his native city as he discusses how poetry serves as a tool for revolution in this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series.
Tags: Poetry | Tongo Eisen-Martin | Brief but Spectacular | PBS NewsHour | 2020 | San Francisco | poet laureate -
“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this 2019 PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown. A Q&A with Harjo about her new memoir, Poet Warrior (Norton, 2021), appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Poetry | Joy Harjo | poet laureate | United States Poet Laureate | 2019 | PBS NewsHour | Jeffrey Brown | September/October 2021 -
“I look back, just with a little wonder. Wonder that I stuck with this thing.” In this 2004 interview with Jeffrey Brown for PBS NewsHour, Philip Roth reflects on his writing career and the role of a writer. Roth died at the age of eighty-five on May 22, 2018.
Tags: Fiction | Philip Roth | interview | 2004 | PBS NewsHour | Jeffrey Brown | in memoriam | writing process -
“Great blue mountain! Ghost. / I look at you / from the porch of the farmhouse / where I watched you all summer / as a boy,” reads the late Donald Hall from his poem “Mount Kearsarge” in this 2018 PBS NewsHour video commemorating his death at the age of eighty-nine. For more Hall, read “Fleeting: In Memory of Donald Hall” by Christopher Locke.
Tags: Poetry | Donald Hall | PBS NewsHour | 2018 | in memoriam | Christopher Locke -
“The storm funneled through town with destructive intent. / Fractured tree limbs, toppled fences, rippled shingles / like tufts of hair.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Fady Joudah reads “House of Mercury” from his poetry collection Tethered to Stars (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Poetry | Fady Joudah | Tethered to Stars | Milkweed Editions | 2021 | PBS NewsHour | Page One | March/April 2021 -
“I am convinced that the more I am well-known, the better known I am, the easier it is for other writers to come along,” says Toni Morrison in this 1987 interview with PBS NewsHour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault on her success as an author and what inspired her novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
Tags: Fiction | Toni Morrison | Beloved | Knopf | Pulitzer Prize | PBS NewsHour | 1987 | interview | in memoriam -
“It would be silly to waste time daydreaming about, if only I were twenty years old again. It’s more interesting to figure out, how do I see the world now.” In this 2015 PBS NewsHour video, the late W. S. Merwin reflects on growing old and writing poems on the three acres of land he purchased in the late 1970s, now known as the Merwin Conservancy, an arts and ecology organization located on the island of Maui.
Tags: Poetry | ecology | PBS NewsHour | Maui | Hawaii | W. S. Merwin | Merwin Conservancy -
“I think that the body does not let you forget.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Natasha Trethewey reflects on the trauma of her mother’s murder, the subject of her book Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (Ecco, 2020), and how the events led her to become a poet and writer. Trethewey is interviewed by Joshunda Sanders in “A Poetics of Resilience” in the July/August 2020 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Poetry | Natasha Trethewey | Memorial Drive | Ecco | 2020 | PBS NewsHour | July/August 2020 -
“We like to think about people and nature as two separate things,” says Richard Powers speaking about his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Overstory (Norton, 2018), in this PBS NewsHour interview. “This book is precisely a book that challenges that notion of human separatism.” For more Powers, read “A Talk in the Woods: Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers” from the November/December 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Fiction | Richard Powers | The Overstory | Norton | 2018 | PBS NewsHour | interview | Pulitzer Prize -
“It’s a book about a rap group, but, more particularly, a book that is examining how fandom seeps into our lives.” In this PBS NewHour video, Hanif Abdurraqib speaks with Amna Nawaz about his memoir, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press, 2019), and the ways in which music intertwines with identity and the poignant moments in our lives.
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“Being born a writer, I had to tell, I had to blab these stories out.” Maxine Hong Kingston speaks about her award-winning book, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, (Knopf, 1976) and the power of imagination with Jeffrey Brown and Celeste Ng, who chose the book for PBS NewsHour’s Now Read This book club.
Tags: Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Maxine Hong Kingston | The Woman Warrior | Knopf | 1976 | Celeste Ng | PBS NewsHour | Now Read This | 2019 -
“You pick the right tool for the job, and sometimes fantasy is a way to open up a story and convey a universal truth, and sometimes realism.” Colson Whitehead speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his writing process and the true story that inspired his latest novel, The Nickel Boys, which was published this week by Doubleday.
Tags: Fiction | Colson Whitehead | The Nickel Boys | Doubleday | 2019 | Page One | July/August 2019 | PBS NewsHour | interview | writing process -
“We can be unrelentingly hard to ourselves, and under such circumstances, it’s a shame to not let the world’s light stick to us when we have the chance.” Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf Press, 2019), speaks about the importance of prioritizing compliments over criticism in this PBS NewsHour video.
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In this PBS NewsHour video, NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada highlight their favorite books for summer reading, which include Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019), Jill Ciment’s The Body in Question (Pantheon, 2019), and José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018).