Poets & Writers Theater

In this interactive Narrative 4 writing workshop, Deborah Taffa, author of Whiskey Tender (Harper, 2024), leads participants through practical exercises on self-discovery, shares exemplary work, and discusses how a memoir can answer the question: “Who am I?” Taffa says: “We’re telling people what we’ve learned in the time that has transpired between when we were that character on the page and who we are now.”

In this virtual event, Sofia Samatar reads from and discusses her book Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life (Soft Skull Press, 2024), and the chaos and strangeness of writing with Zach Powers, novelist and artistic director at the Writer’s Center. 

In this Storytellers’ Studio video filmed at St. Louis University, Neil Gaiman speaks about ending his DC Comics series The Sandman and why he feels stories deserve a satisfying close. Gaiman received the prestigious 2023 St. Louis Literary Award for his prolific career and discussed his passion for world-building and storytelling at the award ceremony.

“My whole task in writing a book is to get closer; to hear what I’m hearing more clearly and to see what I’m seeing more clearly.” In this conversation for the Reading the Room podcast, Amina Cain speaks about her book A Horse at Night: On Writing (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2022) and her creative process with host Jaylen Lopez. 

“You don’t have to have an MFA to be a writer, you’re a writer by writing.” In this 2017 Talks at Google event, Grant Faulkner, author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo (Chronicle Books, 2017) and The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), discusses tips to boost creativity and endurance when writing fiction with author Anthony Francis. For more from Faulkner, read his essays on writing from our Craft Capsule series.

In this 2020 Academy for Teachers craft talk, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins discusses his theories on how poems find their way to an ending and discusses the works of David Berman, Wisława Szymborska, Tom Wayman, and others.

“I think I always accepted revision as what you have to do as a writer,” says Erika T. Wurth on the revision process for her stories and novels in this Lighthouse Writers Workshop interview with Rachel Weaver. Wurth’s third novel, White Horse (Flatiron Books, 2022), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Madhu Kaza and Jeremy Tiang speak about their “slow, long fall into translation” and how writing and literary translation are forms of encounter in this conversation for the Literary Translation Clinic series, presented by the Center for Fiction and Cedilla & Co.

In this 2017 craft talk for Hugo House, Terrance Hayes reads from his book American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018) and discusses the work and writing strategies of the late poet Lynda Hull.

“Genre writing is an amazing place to try new words out as long as you provide good context.” In this video, Stacey Abrams discusses her love of language and word choice, as well as the writing process for her latest novel, While Justice Sleeps (Doubleday, 2021), with Merriam-Webster editors Ammon Shea and Adam Maid.

“To what and whom am I responsible when translating this text?” In this Center for Fiction virtual event, Brazilian literature translator Katrina Dodson offers ways to consider a practical philosophy of translation and speaks with translator Heather Cleary about questions and ways to approach the work. The Literary Translation Clinic is a monthly series of open sessions with a focus on literary translation as a profession hosted by members of the translator collective, Cedilla & Co.

“Writing for me came about because I wanted to write from a Black British woman’s perspective.” In this Vogue Visionaries class produced in partnership with YouTube, Bernardine Evaristo offers a five-chapter tutorial on writing fiction and explains why “rejection is really good for you.”

“I became interested in Black poets writing about the animal as the result of my own work,” says Joy Priest at the beginning of her virtual craft talk titled “The Black Poet & the Deer: On the Transpositional Phenomena of the Line” for the Vermont Studio Center. Priest is the author of Horsepower (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) and was a featured guest writer for Craft Capsules, a series of micro craft essays exploring the finer points of writing.

“When you’re looking at the transitions in your own poetry, one of the things to do is feel as you’re reading over your poem, ‘Am I bored? Do I feel lectured at?’” says Jane Hirshfield in this video from a 2011 Poets House event. “Take out some of the transitions. Allow more mystery. Allow things to stand on their own two feet.” Hirshfield is the author of nine books of poetry, including her most recent collection, Ledger (Knopf, 2020).

In this video for Poets House, Carl Phillips, whose most recent poetry collection, Pale Colors in a Tall Field, was published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, reflects on his process for putting a book together, as well as his journey as a poet, teacher, and mentor. 

“Maybe every talk about poetry is a defense of poetry,” says Tony Hoagland in this 2011 Chicago Ideas Week talk at the Poetry Foundation on the mind of a poet and how poets explain the world. Hoagland, the author of eight books of poetry and a recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, died on October 23 at the age of sixty-four.

In a craft talk at the Center for Fiction in New York City, A. M. Homes discusses the value of having a writing routine, how she approaches novels and short stories differently, and her fascination with Barbie. Homes is the author of Days of Awe (Viking, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Carl Phillips gives a craft talk on poems by Thom Gunn, francine j. harris, and Louise Glück at the 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Phillips’s most recent poetry collection, Wild Is the Wind (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual craft talk, Patricia Lockwood reads from her debut novel, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead Books, 2021), and talks about her writing process and how her poetry influences her prose writing with Zach Powers, novelist and director of communications at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. 

"Number 1: Don't write what you know. Start with what you don't know, what you don't understand." In her craft talk at the 2012 Colgate Writers' Conference, novelist Dana Spiotta explains how she wrote Stone Arabia (Scribner, 2011) in six (not-so-easy) steps. Her new novel, Innocents and Others (Scribner, 2016), explores a friendship between two female filmmakers.