Poets & Writers Theater

“There is no price tag on a poem.” In this Poetry in America video, Martín Espada’s poem “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” is read and analyzed by economist Justin Wolfers, and the poet talks about the true value of poetry.

“I perhaps have a style, but don’t believe I have a voice.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Max Porter speaks about rejecting a single authorial voice, preferring to weave multiple voices within his novels, and what it was like to watch a play adaptation of his 2015 novel, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.

In this interview with the Hindu, Amitav Ghosh talks about his writing over four decades and the making of his latest novel, Ghost-Eye (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Curiosity requires discipline. It’s an active act of throwing your mind at an object that deserves your attention and rising to its challenge.” In this interview for Vogue Australia, R. F. Kuang, author most recently of Katabasis (Harper Voyager, 2025), talks about how she cultivates curiosity, her artistic inspirations, and what it means to live a good life.

In this 2017 interview at Claremont Graduate University, Marianne Boruch talks about her 2011 collection, The Book of Hours, for which she won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and how poetry remains a “mysterious form” and creates a space where “it’s a pleasure to be elsewhere.” Boruch is the recipient of the 2026 Jackson Poetry Prize.

“Until you have language or history or context, you are in the dark.” In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, Hilton Als talks about discovering the power of art and language at an early age, how criticism should come from a place of “critical love,” and writing about Prince in his memoir My Pinup (New Directions, 2022).

In this Penguin Random House video, Andy Weir talks about how his novels often emerge from daydreaming, and the origins of his 2021 novel, Project Hail Mary, which has been adapted into a film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and starring Ryan Gosling.

In this Virtual Craft Chat event hosted by Poet Lore and the Writer’s Center, Ally Ang reads from their debut collection, Let the Moon Wobble (Alice James Books, 2025), and talks about how formal challenges and constraints can inspire new poems in a conversation with Emily Holland.

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 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 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 Green Apple Books event, Catherine Lacey talks about the breakup that led to her writing The Möbius Book (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025) and her decision to combine nonfiction and fiction into this hybrid book in a conversation with Rita Bullwinkel. “It’s a different kind of grief,” says Lacey. “It’s not just the sadness of missing someone, but it’s also the sadness of missing yourself.”

“I knew I was going to write about tech, but I did think of it first as a novel about labor.” Elaine Castillo talks about exploring the intersection of virtual reality and the Filipino American diaspora for her second novel, Moderation (Viking, 2025), and how Jane Austen’s novels, including Pride and Prejudice, informed her process in this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer.

In this Writers on Writing event at the Newberry Library in Chicago, authors Carmen Maria Machado and Megan Stielstra engage in a conversation about their creative processes, the evolution of their works, and their insights into the art of storytelling.

In this interview from The Tamron Hall Show, the best-selling author of the romance novels Beach Read (Berkley, 2020), Book Lovers (Berkley, 2022), and Great Big Beautiful Life (Berkley, 2025) talks about her writing process, approaches to character development, and exploration of themes, such as love, loss, and self-discovery.

“If writing has rules, they are exactly the same as the rules of living.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Rachel Cusk reads from her latest novel, Parade (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and talks about her approach to writing, which includes focusing on the interplay of instinct, discipline, and authenticity.

In this video from the keynote of A Writing Room’s 2022 retreat, best-selling author Anne Lamott speaks about the discipline needed to write and reflects on writing as a spiritual and moral practice grounded in truth telling.

In this 2021 virtual craft talk hosted by the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama, author and professor Victoria Redel speaks about narrative structure and the use of collage in fiction and how fragmented, nonlinear storytelling can deepen emotional impact and thematic complexity.

In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Lidia Yuknavitch reads from her memoir Reading the Waves (Riverhead Books, 2025) and speaks to Porochista Khakpour about the process of rearranging fragments of writing.

At this Japanese Literature Night event hosted by the Japan Society, Keiichiro Hirano delivers his keynote speech titled “The Question of Selfhood” in which he shares how his upbringing in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka during the eighties and nineties inspired his interest in literature and how he attempts to tackle questions of the individual’s place in modernity through his novels.