Poets & Writers Theater

“It’s difficult to describe how I felt about the pictures I collected, how I continued to forge a link with them that I didn’t particularly understand.” Patricia Smith speaks about the photographs she collected over the course of twenty years that inspired her latest collection, Unshuttered (Northwestern University Press, 2023), for this recording of the Academy of American Poets’ 2023 Blaney Lecture. For more on Smith, read her conversation with Tyehimba Jess in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I am so happy to tell people, and to have learned myself, that a passion for the writing is all you really need.” Patricia Smith reads from her new collection, Unshuttered (TriQuarterly Books, 2023), and speaks about continuing to challenge herself with her writing for this Poetry.LA interview with host and poet Lynne Thompson. For more on Smith, read “Unshuttered: Patricia Smith’s Journey Into the Aperture of History” by Tyehimba Jess in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Free Library of Philadelphia event, Joseph Earl Thomas reads from his debut memoir, Sink (Grand Central, 2023), and speaks with author Elias Rodriques about writing in third person and on the subjects of violence, care, and family. Sink is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2020 McSweeney’s Instagram Live reading, Mai Nardone reads an excerpt from his short story “The Tum-Boon Brigade,” which appears in his debut story collection, Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023). Nardone’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2022 virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment reading series, poets Samiya Bashir, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Adrian Matejka read from their works and discuss their leadership roles in publishing and within the literary community. A Q&A with Bashir by Jonathan Vatner is included in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2022 virtual reading, Charif Shanahan reads from his second poetry collection, Trace Evidence (Tin House, 2023), alongside Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms (BOA Editions, 2019), for the Chicago Poetry Center’s Blue Hour reading series. Trace Evidence is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I pop tins of the greasiest luncheon meat open, / slather my chin with animal salt…” In this video, Ina Cariño, a 2022 Whiting Award winner in poetry, reads their poem “Lean Economy” from their debut collection, Feast (Alice James Books, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“More people are turning to [poetry] for truth,” says Patricia Smith in this 2018 interview with Lauren K. Alleyne for The Fight & The Fiddle, the quarterly online publication of the Furious Flower Poetry Center. For more on Smith, read “Unshuttered: Patricia Smith’s Journey Into the Aperture of History” by Tyehimba Jess in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.