Poets & Writers Theater

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.

“If you write a poem you’re in conversation with every poem ever written,” says Emily Lee Luan, author of 回 / Return (Nightboat Books, 2023), in this promotional video for the Jersey City Reads Poems series, presented by Monira Foundation and ROQ Initiative, in which she discusses her writing process and reads a poem from her chapbook I Watch the Boughs. For more from Luan, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

Watch this surreal animated book trailer for Colin Winnette’s new novel, Users (Soft Skull, 2023), animated by Casey Jarman with music by Ben Morton and Kyle Morton. For more about the book, read this installment of our Ten Questions series featuring Winnette.

In this video, DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark, author of How to Communicate (Norton, 2022), performs a Protactile poem called “The Rebuttal” with Jelica Nuccio and Heather Holmes, and voiced by Halene Anderson. For more on Clark, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

“For a time I believed / myself in love with Orpheus, which only meant I loved // what I could make if I were free from what happened to my body.” In this reading from the 2022 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, Safia Elhillo reads “Orpheus” from her poetry collection Girls That Never Die (One World, 2022). For more from Elhillo, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

Akwaeke Emezi talks about their love of romance novels, exploring stories of grief, and writing seven books in four years, including Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (Riverhead Books, 2021) and You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty (Atria Books, 2022), in this interview for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah. For more from Emezi, read their installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this Waterstones video, Sloane Crosley speaks about her second novel, Cult Classic (MCD, 2022), and offers her book recommendations, which include All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews and Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark. For more from Crosley, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

Watch this recording of Greenlight Bookstore’s Poetry Salon event and book release party for Safia Elhillo’s Girls That Never Die (One World, 2022), hosted by Angel Nafis and featuring readings by Jay Deshpande, Shira Erlichman, and Ladan Osman. For more from Elhillo, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

“Some people wore their difference honestly, but my parents were liars,” reads Sarah Manguso from her first novel, Very Cold People (Hogarth, 2022), in this virtual reading event for The Booksmith with author Heidi Julavits. For more from Manguso, read her installment of Ten Questions.

“Bread pudding was the first thing that I baked after I came out to my parents,” says Bryan Washington in this New Yorker video about his personal connection to the dish. For more on Washington, read his installment of Ten Questions, in which he speaks about his debut story collection, Lot (Riverhead Books, 2019).

“Yes— / I am opening myself for the black-horned galaxies / where the soul hides...” In this Poets House Presents video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths reads a selection of poems from her latest collection, Seeing the Body (Norton, 2020). For more Griffiths, read her installment of Ten Questions.

“I worked on the book until I was about halfway done with it before I told anyone about it.” Adrian Tomine talks about his graphic memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn and Quarterly, 2020), and how he was able to revert to his childhood version of making comics for his own amusement in this virtual Politics & Prose Bookstore event with critic Jason Zinoman. For more Tomine, read his answers to our Ten Questions.

“The theater goes dark. I’m watching characters move across the screen, but thinking more about Noah holding my hand, rotating the knuckle of my thumb with his own.” Paul Lisicky reads from his memoir Later: My Life at the Edge of the World (Graywolf Press, 2020) in this online reading event for Books Are Magic with Susan Choi. For more Lisicky, read his installation of Ten Questions.

“It’s a confusing time to be a teenager in America.” In this Salon interview, Gabriel Bump speaks about the main character of his debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong (Algonquin Books, 2020), an average, quiet teenager growing up in Chicago tackling the social issues around him. For more from Bump, read his installment of Ten Questions. 

“I was employee number twenty, and the fourth woman.” In this video, Anna Wiener reads from and discusses her debut memoir, Uncanny Valley (MCD/FSG, 2020), with editor Laura Marsh at the Strand Book Store in New York. For more about the book, read Wiener’s installment of Ten Questions.

“The ‘need’ is many things in the book...a child’s need for milk and then also the mother’s need for the child to relieve her of the milk and the mother’s need for her children, that love going two directions.” On BRIC TV’s 112BK, Helen Phillips talks about her second novel, The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019), different reactions to the book, her own experiences as a mother, and some of the inspiration for its themes. For more Phillips, read her answers to Ten Questions about her novel.

This book trailer by filmmaker Diego Ongaro introduces Courtney Maum’s third novel, Costalegre (Tin House Books, 2019), which tells the story of an American heiress and art collector, her neglected teenage daughter, and the elite group of artists who escape into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II. For more from Maum, read her installment of Ten Questions.

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles takes a humorous look at Helen Oyeyemi’s sixth novel, Gingerbread (Riverhead Books, 2019), for his Totally Hip Video Book Review series. Oyeyemi answers questions about her new novel in a recent installment of our online series Ten Questions.

In this 2020 Kirkus Reviews interview, Emma Cline talks about her story collection Daddy (Random House, 2020) and discusses the experience of writing about contemporary subjects, inhabiting the voice of a male narrator, and the power of the imagination. For more from Cline, read her installment of our Ten Questions series about her second novel, The Guest (Random House, 2023).

During National Poetry Month last April, Words Without Borders asked its contributors to read their favorite poems from their archive. In this video, Valzhyna Mort reads her poem “Belarusian 1,” translated from the Belarusian by Franz Wright. Mort talks about her new poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in a recent installment of Ten Questions.