Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Simon Shieh reads from his debut poetry collection, Master (Sarabande Books, 2023), and speaks about the themes within his book, the power of language, and truth in poetry with Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022). Shieh is featured in “Performing the Future: Our Nineteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event, Karisma Price reads from her debut collection, I’m Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023), and discusses the inspiration behind her work with poet Terrance Hayes. “As a poet, oddity is good,” says Price. For more from Price, read her installment of our Writers Recommend series.

“A poem is an utterly free space for language,” says Kathleen Ossip in this 2017 lecture at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. “That is what makes it indispensable to me, and also what makes it political.” Ossip’s fourth poetry collection, July (Sarabande Books, 2021), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My great-grandfather held a brain and studied it for signs of music.” In this video, Maya C. Popa reads her poem “A Technique for Operating on the Past,” which won the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Popa, the author of American Faith (Sarabande Books, 2019), is featured in “Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That is a vapor at day’s far edge. That’s Lauren Bacall in a penny / arcade. That’s a streaming video but will not load.” At the 2012 TILTS Summer Workshop at the University of Texas in Austin, Chad Bennett reads “George Dyer” and “Other Weathers” from his first poetry collection, Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era (Sarabande Books, 2020), which is currently featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

David Tomas Martinez reads his poem “Hoodies” accompanied by musicians David Cieri and Mike Brown for the Gavagai music and reading series at Cornelia Street Café in New York City. Martinez is the author of Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014) and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder (Sarabande Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2002 video, poet and essayist Mary Ruefle reads a selection of poems and prose pieces for the Lunch Poems reading series at UC Berkeley. Ruefle is the author of On Imagination (Sarabande Books, 2017), a chapbook-length essay exploring the act of writing.

Mike Scalise reads from his debut memoir, The Brand New Catastrophe (Sarabande Books, 2017), at the Sunday Salon series in New York City. Scalise is featured in “The Unknown Yet Inevitable: Debut Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The thing when you write about pop culture—especially pop culture that you’re interested in—that you have to avoid, is just saying ‘isn’t this cool?’ again and again...I realized that I needed to put myself into it.” Elena Passarello talks about writing creative nonfiction and reads from her first book, Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande Books, 2012). Passarello’s Animals Strike Curious Poses (Sarabande Books, 2017) is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Oh, look: Poet, novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor Ander Monson appears to be reading "For Orts," a poem from The Available World (Sarabande Books, 2010), in a refrigerator. In a tiger costume.

This short film by Tucker Capps, featuring music by Goldmund, is inspired by "First," an essay from Ryan Van Meter's debut collection, If You Knew Then What I Know Now, to be published next month by Sarabande Books.

A short film by Tucker Capps, inspired by One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe, edited by Molly McQuade and published by Sarabande Books this month.