Poets & Writers Theater

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers Magazine senior editor India Lena González introduces the five debut authors featured in “The New Nonfiction 2026” in the September/October 2026 issue: Nita Noveno, Phill Branch, Megan O’Grady, Joseph Trinidad, and Elena Dudum.

In this Green Apple Books event, Black Ocean, a nonprofit independent publisher based in Boston and Chicago, celebrates its twentieth anniversary with readings from authors Carrie Olivia Adams, Kristin George Bagdanov, Nathan Hoks, and Zachary Schomburg.

In this Book Passage event, Téa Obreht reads from her fourth novel, Sunrise (Random House, 2026), and talks about her decision to write scene by scene without an outline, and her fascination with the American West after growing up in the former Yugoslavia in a conversation with Parini Shroff. “I think for me, the West has always occupied a really mythical space.”

“The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?” In this 2013 Moyers & Company segment, Wendell Berry reads his poem, “A Poem on Hope.” Berry died at the age of ninety-two on August 31, 2026.

In this 2018 interview with former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Dolly Parton speaks about how her father’s illiteracy inspired her to launch the Imagination Library, a book gifting program that has provided over 330 million books to children across the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Parton died at the age of eighty on August 25, 2026.

“When, under summer stars, you have built a cabin in the wilderness....” In this New Mexico in Focus interview, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze reads his poem “Anvil,” which appears in his collection Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), and his translation of Tao Qian’s poem “Drinking Wine,” which appears in the anthology Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2026) edited by Sze.

In this video, chaun webster reads his essay “This Occupation Is Strange but Familiar” for the Minnesota Writers Respond event presented in partnership with the Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Books. webster’s book Without Terminus (Graywolf Press, 2026) is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Louisiana Channel interview, Danez Smith reads their poems “Colorado Springs” and “Craft,” and talks about finding hope for the world in the right ways with poetry and optimism, reflecting on some of their favorite writers, including James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and D. A. Powell. “I believe that poems are gathering spaces across time,” says Smith.

In this video, Lillian Li talks about her desire to write about friendships and friendship breakups, and the experience of growing up in a hypercompetitive Chinese American community in her second novel, Bad Asians (Henry Holt, 2026), for this Politics and Prose event with Angie Kim.

In this installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Cindy Juyoung Ok reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024), which won the 2023 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, and some newer poems inspired by her experience as a neurosurgical patient.

“Am I living? Do I / accept revision / as my godhead / and savior?” Wendy Xu reads her poem “Looking at My Father,” which appears in her collection The Past (Wesleyan University Press, 2021), in this video for the Dear Poet series, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month.

In this event at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Annie Wenstrup reads from her debut collection, The Museum of Unnatural Histories (Wesleyan University Press, 2025), and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha reads from her latest collection, Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024).

In this Green Apple Books event, Will Brewer, author of Nocturama (Milkweed Editions, 2026), and Richie Hofmann, author of The Bronze Arms (Knopf, 2026), read from their latest poetry collections and discuss what they have learned from each other as poets and friends.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, speaks about the efforts to support literary nonprofits, including independent publishers, residencies, and fellowships for writers.

Watch Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González host this two-part event celebrating the ten debut poets featured in “New Ways of Seeing: Our Twenty-First Annual Look at Debut Poets” from our January/February 2026 issue. The virtual event includes readings from the poets, as well as conversations about their debut books, their influences and inspirations, and their individual paths to publication.

In this reading celebrating the annual Poets House Showcase exhibition, Hala Alyan reads from The Moon That Turns You Back (Ecco, 2024), Cynthia Cruz reads from Sweet Repetition (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Carl Phillips reads from Scattered Snows, to the North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads from Silver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).

“may the tide / that is entering even now / the lip of our understanding / carry you out / beyond the face of fear…” Here’s a poem to help welcome in the new year: Elizabeth Acevedo reads “blessing the boats” by Lucille Clifton in this 2021 installment of the Ours Poetica series, sponsored by Complexly and the Poetry Foundation.

Watch authors Malcolm Gladwell, Meg Rosoff, Emma Thompson, Colm Toibin, and others read the classic poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore in this Penguin Books video from 2013.

In this Green Apple Books event, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) presents a night of readings featuring writers François Luong, Aimee Phan, Minnie Phan, and Thien Pham, sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and San Francisco Arts Commission.

“This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” In this video that originally aired in 2012, poet Joy Harjo reads her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” which appears in her collection The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Norton, 1994), for PBS NewsHour.