Poets & Writers Theater

“Have I forgotten it – / wild conch-shell dialect, / black apostrophe curled / tight on my tongue?” In this video, Safiya Sinclair reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), as well as new poems for this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series with an introduction by poet Noah Warren.

“The tepid / American I sank with my old shoes over the jaws of the Atlantic / could never understand the hard clamor of my laugh…” Safiya Sinclair reads from her debut collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), and speaks about poetry as the “language of an impolite body” in this episode of LIT hosted by Yahdon Israel.

“Back home we are plagued by a politeness / so dense even the doctors cannot call things / what they are…” Safia Elhillo narrates her poem “To Make Use of Water” from her collection, The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), for this animated TED-Ed film directed by Jérémie Balais and Jeffig Le Bars.

“Writing memoir is the ultimate control of my story.” Sandra Gail Lambert talks to author Michele Leavitt about her own motivations for writing memoir, and the challenges that accompany it. Lambert, author of the debut memoir, A Certain Loneliness (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), is featured in “Outsiders on the Inside” by Michele Sharpe in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This poem ‘Home’ is not only talking about ‘home,’ a physical place. It’s also talking about language as a home which I feel exiled from.” Safiya Sinclair, author of the debut collection Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) and winner of a 2016 Whiting Award for poetry, reads from “Home” and talks about the multiple languages and places that inhabit her poems.

“I left Indiana and drove towards happiness.” Watch the book trailer for John W. Evans's second memoir, Should I Still Wish (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Matthew Gavin Frank talks about one of his favorite characters from Pot Farm (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), a nonfiction account of his experience living on a marijuana farm in Northern California. Frank, whose most recent book, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America's Food, was published by Liveright in November, will be a panelist at Poets & Writers Live in Austin, Texas on January 9.

R. A. Villanueva reads “A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert and “Mine Will Be a Beautiful Service,” a poem from his collection Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). This video is part of the P.O.P. series, shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

Brookline Booksmith hosts a reading and discussion with Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You (Penguin Press, 2014) and Jennifer De Leon, editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). Read "Ethnicity and Craft: Creating Characters, Not Caricatures" by De Leon in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.