Poets & Writers Theater

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.

In this virtual reading and celebration, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the 2025 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love (Norton, 2025); Vishwas R. Gaitonde, author of On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Orison Books, 2025); Yael Valencia Aldana, author of Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky, 2025); Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025); and Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions, 2025).

In this Poets & Writers event, 2025 Jackson Poetry Prize winner Cyrus Cassells reads a selection of poems from his first book, The Mud Actor (Henry Holt, 1982), and his most recent book, Everything in Life Is Resurrection: Selected Poems, 1982–2022 (TCU Press, 2025), and joins Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation about his evolution as a poet.

In this 2012 Library of Congress event, László Krasznahorkai reads from his novel Satantango (New Directions, 2013), translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes, and speaks about the evolution of his writing style and the relationship between author and translator. Krasznahorkai is the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature.

In this Alaska Quarterly Review virtual event, poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield reads from her collection SOFAR (Persea Books, 2025) and discusses the relationship of her poetics to ocean ecologies, memories of queer love, and both human and natural histories.

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the five debut authors featured in “The New Nonfiction 2025” in the September/October issue: Sarah Aziza, Erika J. Simpson, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Amanda Hess, and Samina Najmi.

In this Poets House event, four poets read from their new books: Kimberly Alidio, author of Traceable Relation (Fonograf Editions, 2025); Courtney Bush, author of A Movie (Lavender Ink, 2025); Natalie Shapero, author of Stay Dead (Copper Canyon Press, 2025); and Emily Skillings, author of Tantrums in Air (The Song Cave, 2025).

In this Poets & Writers event, 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize winner Fady Joudah reads a selection of poems, including from his National Book Award–nominated collection, [...] (Milkweed Editions, 2024), and joins Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation about his work and life as a poet.

In this Writers Speak event hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, Patricia Lockwood speaks about her second novel, Will There Ever Be Another You (Riverhead Books, 2025), and shares her experiences writing about health and illness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in a conversation with Tara K. Menon.

In this Asia Society Switzerland event, South Korean author Bora Chung reads “To Meet Her” from her second story collection, Your Utopia (Algonquin Books, 2024), translated from the Korean by Anton Hur, and discusses how activism shaped her life and writing in a conversation with Serena Jung.

In this Poetry.LA video, Altadena co-poets laureate Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar read a selection of their poems and speak about how the Eaton Fire has affected their lives and community. Lennon and Sarwar were recently awarded a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to launch their poetry project “After the Fires: Healing from Histories.”

In this Poets House event, Garrett Hongo reads from his fourth poetry collection, Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025), and Edward Hirsch reads from his new memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (Knopf, 2025), followed by a conversation between the authors about their friendship and humor.

In this Creative Writing Series event at the University of Notre Dame, Kristen Arnett reads from her novel Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One (Riverhead Books, 2025) and talks about how she played with form by using different typefaces for “funny” and “not funny,” and her process to ensure that each joke lands.

In this excerpt from an interview with NBC Chicago, the late Andrea Gibson reads their poem “Love Letter From the Afterlife” to their wife Megan Falley. Gibson died at the age of forty-nine on July 14, 2025.