Poets & Writers Theater

“When things shut down, I was immediately feeling like what I want to do is make stuff with other people,” says Ross Gay about life during the quarantine in this conversation with artist Arista Alanis for Vermont Studio Center’s Six Feet Apart video series. A Q&A with Aimee Nezhukumatathil by Gay appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Ross Gay reads from his forthcoming essay collection, The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Gay is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“A good bookstore is your friend.” Ross Gay reads his essay about his love for independent bookstores and how they are a “laboratory for our coming together” at one of his favorite places, the Book Corner in Bloomington, Indiana. Gay’s essay collection, The Book of Delights, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in February.

“I know I can be long-winded sometimes. / I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude / over every last thing...” Ross Gay reads his poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” from his collection of the same name, published in 2015 by University of Pittsburgh Press, at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, D.C.

“I’m making an argument with my body and the ground about our bodies and the ground.” At Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), discusses the implications of being a black poet who writes about flowers in a lecture entitled “A Book of Flowers.”

Ross Gay reads "To the Mulberry Tree" from his poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), which is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.

"Listen, to everything." Ross Gay speaks with Furious Flower's Elizabeth Hoover about line breaks, gardening, and his advice to young writers. Gay's latest poetry collection, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), is longlisted for the National Book Award.