Poets & Writers Theater

“Hannah dreams the family buries her mother, a woman they haven’t seen in more than forty years.” Eman Quotah celebrates the book launch for her debut novel, Bride of the Sea (Tin House, 2021), with author Susan Muaddi Darraj in this Politics and Prose virtual event. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video from the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica series, Megan Fernandes reads “The Edward Albee Barn” from her second poetry collection, Good Boys (Tin House Books, 2020). For more Fernandes, read her installment of Writers Recommend.

On The Kristen Arnett Show based at the Black Mountain Institute and presented by Literary Hub on Instagram Live, Arnett talks about launching the paperback edition of her first novel, Mostly Dead Things (Tin House Books, 2019), and discusses life during the pandemic with special guest Hanif Abdurraqib.

In this 92Y video, Camille Rankine introduces Hanif Abdurraqib, who reads from his poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster (Tin House Books, 2019), and Timothy Donnelly, who reads from his poetry collection The Problem of the Many (Wave Books, 2019).

“I would LOVE to imagine / being alive in five / years but I have these bones u know? / and just like that I’m writing / a poem / a poem / a poem / again.” In this 2018 video from the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, Tommy Pico reads an excerpt from Feed (Tin House Books, 2019), the fourth book in the Teebs tetralogy of book-length poems.

“My heart had recently cracked // Open. Fear had departed me.” Ariana Reines reads “To the Reader” from her poetry collection, A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019), and talks about the origins of the book, her writing background, and the power of poetry to reach the deepest levels of human experience in this Louisiana Channel interview.

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.

“The other night, somebody asked, is Black poetry back? Like, we penned one verse, and it got lost at sea or slipped inside a big old crack in the big old earth, and then re-returned when everything was chaos.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Erica Dawson reads a poem about her experience while on tour for her poetry collection When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House Books, 2018).

Tommy Pico speaks with Kasie Griffitts for Duende District’s Duende Conversations series about life as a poet, tribal storytelling, and the shifty definition of literary success. Pico is the author of Junk (Tin House Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Bianca Stone talks to Vermont poet laureate Chard deNiord for Poets Speak about her poetry, life with her family in Vermont, and her work restoring the house of her late grandmother, poet Ruth Stone. Bianca Stone’s third poetry collection, The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House Books, 2018), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My parents raised me in a white-sided saltbox house, the sort children draw in crayon. Years before we lived there, it had been cut in half and moved across town. We never learned why.” Jeannie Vanasco, who is featured in “The Unknown Yet Inevitable: Debut Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from her debut memoir, The Glass Eye (Tin House Books, 2017), at the University of Chicago.

“The snake is the whole plot and then the rats are the elements. So the rats have to be fed to the snake in order to nourish the snake.” Fiction writer Annie Hartnett, author of the debut novel Rabbit Cake (Tin House, 2017), is interviewed by Bill Kenower in Seattle for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.

Morgan Parker reads a selection of poems including “Heaven Be a Xanax,” “Hottentot Venus,” and “Slouching Toward Beyoncé” from her second poetry collection, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books, 2017), with musical accompaniment by David Cieri. Parker’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this book trailer for his debut memoir, All Tomorrow’s Parties (Grove Press, 2016), Rob Spillman recounts defining experiences from time spent as a child in Berlin, Aspen, and Baltimore. Spillman, who serves as the editor of Tin House and the executive editor of Tin House Books, is featured in Agents & Editors in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The body is a person.” In this video from BRIC TV, Morgan Parker reads her poems and discusses her life as a young writer. Her second collection, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in February.

Charles D'Ambrosio reads from his new collection of essays, Loitering: New and Collected Essays, published by Tin House Books in November 2014.

"As writers, it's very hard to get over the habit of being civilized." The author of Loitering, published this month by Tin House Books, shares a valuable lesson learned from a class with novelist James Salter. Read Kevin Nance's profile of D'Ambrosio in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Illustrator and writer Allen Crawford offers a glimpse into the process of hand-lettering and illustrating his book, Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself (Tin House Books, 2014). Crawford is the cofounder of Plankton Art Company, known for the illustrations on display at the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Ocean Life.

This animated short film based on Leni Zumas's first novel, The Listeners, published by Tin House Books this month, features art and animation by Luca Dipierro and music by Father Murphy. Zumas was featured in the magazine's First Fiction Annual back in 2008 for her debut story collection, Farewell Navigator (Open City Books).

Inspired by Herman Melville's masterpiece, Ohio artist Matt Kish crafted an original piece of art for each page of Moby-Dick. The resulting collection was published in October by Tin House Books. Take a closer look at Kish's work in this issue's installment of The Written Image as well as the related slideshow, which features eleven images from Moby-Dick in Pictures.