Poets & Writers Theater

“The moment kids start to lie is the moment storytelling begins.” Young-Ha Kim delivers a TEDx Talk about all children beginning as artists, novel writing as a process of composing one sentence after another, and the value of a world in which everyone creates art, whether in public or in private. Kim’s story collection Diary of a Murderer (Mariner Books, 2019), translated from the Korean by Krys Lee, is featured in Page One in the May/June 2019 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jan-Henry Gray talks about recipe poems and the structural parallels between poetry and cooking in this short film by Talia Sadie Feder. Gray’s debut poetry collection, Documents (BOA Editions, 2019), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Even if I were blind / I would know night by the noise it made...” In this installment of the Unamuno Poem Project, which presents pairings of poem recitations in English and Spanish, Paisley Rekdal’s poem “The Cry” is read by Joseph Fasano in English and Fernanda Martínez reads Jorge García’s translation in Spanish. A profile of Rekdal appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“One of the nice things about conferences like this one is you meet these other human dream incubators. They’ve got their lightning rods up. They’re also receiving these dreams.” Karen Russell speaks to Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2019 AWP Conference & Book Fair about the writers who have inspired her, motherhood, and her third story collection, Orange World (Knopf, 2019). Orange World is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“As a translator, you could do two thousand things right, but someone is going to notice the two things you do wrong, so it’s really an impossible art.” Krys Lee, whose translation from the Korean of Young-Ha Kim’s story collection Diary of a Murderer (Mariner Books, 2019) is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the inherent difficulties of literary translation.

“The type moves and dances across the page—and it’s very much a book about sound on the page.” Max Porter talks about the unique typesetting in his second novel, Lanny (Graywolf Press, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, at the London Centre for Book Arts.

“There is so much time in the world. How many ways can it be divided?” In this 2017 video, Camille T. Dungy reads “Conspiracy” and “Natural History” from her poetry collection Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) at Syncopated Rhythms: A Celebration of African American Poetry & Music in Washington, D.C. Dungy’s essay “Say Yes to Yourself: A Poet’s Guide to Living and Writing” appears in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Failure is part of the process—maybe the most important part. Street hot dogs are not your friend.” Erin Lee Carr lists twenty-nine things she learned from her father, the late journalist and author David Carr, in this book trailer for her debut memoir, All That You Leave Behind (Ballantine Books, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I think we’re all born explorers. When I look at my kids, they want to climb before they can walk,” says Erling Kagge in this interview with Santiago Rivas Camargo from the 2018 Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia. Kagge’s new book, Walking: One Step at a Time (Pantheon Books, 2019), translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook, is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“That is what my grandfather, Glafkos, must have felt like. / Wandering the hillsides and down to the sea while his parents labored...” In Delphi 1927, a multimedia performance by Eleni Sikelianos, the poet examines her family history and her great grandparents’ efforts to revive the Delphic Festivals. Sikelianos’s collection What I Knew (Nightboat Books, 2019) is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video from the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland, the Bookshop Band performs “Death to the Kindle” inspired by The Diary of a Bookseller (Melville House, 2018) by Shaun Bythell. English singer-songwriters Beth Porter and Ben Please compose music based on books and writers and are featured in News and Trends in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Based on real events, Women Talking is the story of eight women in a remote Mennonite colony who face an agonizing decision in the aftermath of a series of unspeakable sexual crimes.” This book trailer introduces Miriam Toews’s seventh novel, Women Talking (Bloomsbury, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I begin with love, hoping to end there. / I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.” Jericho Brown reads “Duplex” from his third poetry collection, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I was inspired to write Temptation Rag originally because my husband’s grandfather is the great Mike Bernard, who was one of the most famous ragtime pianists.” In this video, Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard talks to Arizona Daily Mix’s Pat McMahon about the motivation behind her novel Temptation Rag (Belle Epoque Publishing, 2018). Bernard is featured in the Savvy Self-Publisher in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series, Franny Choi reads her poem “Introduction to Quantum Theory” and discusses the importance of asking unanswerable questions and imagining alternate realities. Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and Soft Science, which is forthcoming from Alice James Books in April.