Poets & Writers Theater

“It is the Glad Season / Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.” At the annual White House Christmas celebration in 2005, the late Maya Angelou reads a poem written for the holiday and in the spirit of peace.

Flag Day is a film adaptation of Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life, directed by Sean Penn with a screenplay by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. Penn stars in the film along with his daughter Dylan Penn, Josh Brolin, Regina King, James Russo, and Katheryn Winnick.

Looking for Alaska (Dutton Books, 2005), John Green’s debut young adult novel based on his own experiences at a boarding school, has been adapted into a television miniseries for Hulu. Created by Josh Schwartz, the teen drama stars Kristine Froseth, Charlie Plummer, Uriah Shelton, and Sofia Vassilieva.

The forthcoming film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005, stars Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, James Gandolfini, and 2010 Jeopardy! Kids Week champ Thomas Horn.

Public television station KNPB's reporter Michael Hagerty interviews Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran and author of the poetry collections Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005), about his experience writing about the war.