Poets & Writers Theater

“Poetry is the tempo of one’s temperament.” In this 2015 event for the House of SpeakEasy’s “Seriously Entertaining” series, Rowan Ricardo Phillips talks to a live audience about the nature of poetry and his memories of the 1980 film Altered States. Phillips discusses his role as editor of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in a Q&A in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jamel Brinkley reads from his new story collection, Witness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and speaks about tone, reveals, and the themes in his stories with Garth Greenwell in this Books Are Magic event. From more from Brinkley, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

Eirinie Carson talks about her debut memoir, The Dead Are Gods (Melville House, 2023), which was inspired by the sudden loss of a close friend, in this conversation with author Savala Nolan at the Booksmith bookstore in San Francisco. Carson is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2023” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this short video, Andrew Leland walks through the streets of Northampton, Massachusetts, and introduces his debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (Penguin Press, 2023), in which he writes about his experience with vision loss. Leland is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2023” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was born to tell my story and the story of my people, to make everyone aware that we exist still, that we breathe still.” In this virtual Charis Circle event, Leah Myers reads from her debut memoir, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity (Norton, 2023), and discusses how Native folklore informed the structure of her book in a conversation with author Kung Li Sun. Myers is featured in “The New Nonfiction 2023” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual reading for the Common’s 2021 Festival of Debut Authors, Cleo Qian reads from her short story “Monitor World,” which appears in her debut story collection, Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go (Tin House, 2023). Qian is featured in Literary MagNet in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What surprised me was that I discovered I enjoyed it sometimes: writing prose.” In this Books Are Magic event, Shane McCrae speaks with Patricia Smith and reads from his debut memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This whole place has always meant, to me, that this work does have some consequence and meaning in the world.” In this video, Sally Wen Mao speaks about her research at the New York Public Library during her Cullman Center fellowship, including discovering a first edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, which inspired her poetry collection The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023). Mao’s collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2009 reading filmed at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Jane Hirshfield reads her poem “For What Binds Us,” which is included in her latest collection, The Asking: New and Selected Poems, forthcoming in September from Knopf. A profile of Hirshfield by Danusha Laméris is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.