Poets & Writers Theater

In this Gays Reading podcast interview with host Jason Blitman, T Kira Madden talks about the events that led to writing her debut novel, Whidbey (Mariner Books, 2026), and how exploring different points of view of a crime offered new insights. A profile of Madden appears in the March/April 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Abiodun Oyewole talks about the legacy of the spoken word group The Last Poets, the influence of Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, and his thoughts on the poets of today.

In this Amanpour and Company segment, Hari Sreenivasan speaks with poet Megan Falley and comedian Tig Notaro about their Oscar-nominated documentary film Come See Me in the Good Light, which follows Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson’s journey with terminal cancer.

Tayari Jones discusses her new novel, Kin (Knopf, 2026), and the history she uncovered in her research for the book in a conversation with Jill Cox-Cordova, former Library Journal editor, for this virtual event of the Penguin Random House Winter Book and Author Festival. For more from Jones, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with guest host Jenna Seery, Jeanette Winterson talks about retelling some of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights in her first hybrid book, One Aladdin Two Lamps (Grove Press, 2026). Winterson’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Gays Reading podcast interview with host Jason Blitman, Gabriel Tallent speaks about perseverance and what inspired his second novel, Crux (Riverhead Books, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the January/February 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this LIVE From NYPL event, director Clint Bentley screens clips from his latest film, Train Dreams, and discusses the timeliness of its release amidst concerns about ecological disaster and racial violence. The film is an adaptation of the 2011 novella of the same name by Denis Johnson.

In this 1997 interview for the Poet to Poet series, X. J. Kennedy reads his poems, including “Nude Descending a Staircase” and “Nothing in Heaven Functions as It Ought,” and talks about his start as a writer with host Robert Dunn. Kennedy, who was awarded the 2015 Jackson Poetry Prize, died at the age of ninety-six on February 1, 2026.

In this video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths talks about grief, poetry, vulnerability, and writing her first memoir, The Flower Bearers (Random House, 2026), for an episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with host Miwa Messer. For more on Griffiths, read “Marvelous and Dangerous: A Q&A With Rachel Eliza Griffiths” by Renée H. Shea.

In this Waterstones interview, Maggie O’Farrell talks about the process of cowriting the screenplay for the film adaptation of her novel Hamnet (Knopf, 2020) with director Chloé Zhao. “The film sits alongside the book, and that’s exactly as it should be,” says O’Farrell.

In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Salman Rushdie speaks about encountering mortality and the pivotal moments that have shaped his life and upbringing, and about the stories and themes in The Eleventh Hour (Random House, 2025), his first book of fiction since the 2022 attack that nearly took his life.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Bryan Washington speaks about how his experiences in Tokyo and Osaka informed his latest novel, Palaver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and how third-person narratives reflect the estrangement of being in a different country.

In this 60 Minutes interview, Margaret Atwood speaks about her response to book banning, her new memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Doubleday, 2025), and why she says the popularity of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale is “not due to me or the excellence of the book. It’s partly the twists and turns of history.”

In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Patti Smith offers advice to young artists and talks about her award-winning memoir, Just Kids, and her new memoir, Bread of Angels (Random House, 2025).

In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Ocean Vuong speaks about how the Japanese concept of negative space, ma, influences his approach to the line in both prose and poetry, and why he wants to write eight books in total by the end of his career.

In this Service95 Book Club interview hosted by Dua Lipa, Margaret Atwood talks about the research she conducted in order to imagine the Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986) while writing the novel in Berlin during the Cold War and how the current political landscape is reflective of the themes in her book.

In this episode of the Artsy Raven Podcast hosted by JF Garrard, author Yiming Ma talks about leaving the tech and finance world to write and the process of publishing his debut novel, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us (Mariner Books, 2025). Read “Writing in the Age of AI: The Case for Collective Resistance” by Ma in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Service95 Book Club conversation hosted by Dua Lipa, Percival Everett revisits his award-winning 2021 novel, The Trees, and talks about how the murder and image of Emmett Till urged him to write the story, and how important the relationship between author and reader is to art. “People find their truth in art. It’s not complete until the reader comes to it. That’s when meaning gets made,” says Everett.

In this CBS Boston interview, R. F. Kuang talks about her latest novel, Katabasis (Harper Voyager, 2025), and its forthcoming television series adaptation, her connection to Sylvia Plath and the city of Boston, and the importance of buying from independent bookstores.

“Books became my friends, my companions, from an early age.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, novelist Elif Shafak talks about the universality of storytelling and how literature revealed other worlds to her from a young age.