Poets & Writers Theater

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Rumaan Alam reads from his fourth novel, Entitlement (Riverhead Books, 2024), and discusses how writing about race, class, and age encourages readers to interrogate these identities in a conversation with Jason Reynolds. Entitlement is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To me, reading becomes a lot more palatable if young people realize that the stories, the books that exist within them are as valuable as the books that exist on the outside of them.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Jane Pauley speaks to Jason Reynolds, award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, about lifting up children through storytelling, his journey as a writer, and the importance of friendship.

“What does it mean when we say books unite us? It means that books can be the tethers, that books can connect human beings.” In this video, Jason Reynolds, honorary chair of Banned Books Week 2021, talks about the importance of reading a range of narratives and stories that make up this “tapestry of life” and the danger of censoring that knowledge. “To censor a book is to damage the framework in which we live,” says Reynolds.

“You get to watch a relationship, and you get to watch it change,” says author Jason Reynolds in this 60 Minutes video about his experience as a StoryCorps facilitator recording almost three hundred sessions of conversations by everyday people that are now archived in the Library of Congress.

Jason Reynolds speaks about his appointment by the Library of Congress as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the importance of young readers, and the danger of banning books in this interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

In this Books Are Magic event celebrating the book launch of Ashley C. Ford’s debut memoir, Somebody’s Daughter (Flatiron Books, 2021), she talks to Jason Reynolds, who tries not to drop any spoilers. The memoir is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jason Reynolds speaks about his new books, Sunny and For Every One, both published last month by Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, reading for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and the importance of daring to dream on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

“When I think about what I’m going to write next, I’m like, where do we not exist?” Jason Reynolds, who won the Kirkus Prize for young readers’ literature for his novel As Brave As You (Caitlyn Dlouhy, 2016), speaks about growing up in Brooklyn and not seeing characters like himself in literature as a child.