Poets & Writers Theater

In this 1998 video from Howard County Poetry & Literature Society’s The Writing Life series, Amiri Baraka reads a selection of his poems including his first published poem, “Preface to a 20 Volume Suicide Note,” and speaks with poet E. Ethelbert Miller about his writing influences, the link between his poetry and music, and pushing against the norms.

"Having been much criticized for lots of things I've talked about actually is a very liberating thing," says Joyce Maynard in this clip from Open Road Media. Maynard is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, in which she revealed her relationship with J. D. Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.