Poets & Writers Theater

In this Politics and Prose event, award-winning author Tommy Orange reads from his second novel, Wandering Stars (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the musicality of language and the challenge of writing about trauma in a conversation with Kaveh Akbar. Wandering Stars is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this PBS NewsHour video, Kaveh Akbar speaks about writing his first novel, Martyr! (Knopf, 2024), and how pop culture as well as Persian and contemporary literature mix into the narrative in an interview with Jeffrey Brown. The novel is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“In Lagos, we name our girls / Darling, Sincere, Precious, because / A name is a stake in the grave.” Omotara James reads her poem “Half Girl, Then Elegy,” which appears in her collection, Song of My Softening (Alice James Books, 2022), for this virtual reading with Charif Shanahan and Maggie Smith, hosted by Kaveh Akbar, poetry editor of the Nation.

“Of the foreground, we will not speak. Look past the / blotted figures.” Jenny Xie reads “Red Puncta,” which appears in her second poetry collection, The Rupture Tense (Graywolf Press, 2022), in this video for the Nation’s Spring Poetry Reading, which also featured Golden and Donika Kelly, hosted by Kaveh Akbar. The Rupture Tense is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 92nd Street Y recording, Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf Press, 2021), is introduced by poet Angel Nafis, and John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020), is introduced by poet Terrance Hayes before reading from a selection of their poems.

“I do hope one day to be free of this body’s dry wood...” In this Button Poetry video, Kaveh Akbar, author of the poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), reads a poem that was published in Tin House’s “The Rehab Issue” in 2017.

The Kindergarten Teacher stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as an aspiring poet and elementary school teacher who discovers the talents of a five-year-old boy in her class and becomes obsessed with protecting and encouraging his writing. Gyllenhaal and director Sara Colangelo commissioned poetry from Kaveh Akbar, Dominique Townsend, and Ocean Vuong to include as verses written by the two characters.

Kaveh Akbar reads two poems for “A Tribute to Max Ritvo,” an event presented by the Academy of American Poets, the Writing Program of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Milkweed Editions, and the Poetry Society of America. Akbar is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017) and is featured in “The Whole Self: Our Thirteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.