Poets & Writers Theater

“It was like a portrait of the room with different people using that room day after day.” In this video for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, artist and writer Sophie Calle speaks about her time working as a hotel maid and documenting her observations of guests for her book The Hotel (Siglio Press, 2021). Calle’s project is featured in “The Written Image: The Hotel” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“My adoption story didn’t come to me in any linear form and that’s always how they kind of want you to write memoir,” says Megan Culhane Galbraith about the hybrid structure of her debut memoir, The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, 2021), in this Left Banks Books interview with Rena J. Mosteirin. Galbraith is featured in “5 Over 50: 2021” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I believe that the best books aren’t those that entertain us. The best books are those that hurt us.” In this 2018 interview at the Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, Italian writer Domenico Starnone talks about the pleasure and exhaustion of writing and refers to a letter Kafka wrote about the importance of writing books “that are like an axe that breaks the frozen chest.” Starnone’s novel Trust (Europa Editions, 2021), translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri, is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I am a product of this country that I interrogate in this book,” says Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021), in this episode of Coffee & Conversations with Enrique Rosell, program manager at Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab. Samaha’s debut memoir is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual poetry reading hosted by Annie Bloom’s Books, Teresa K. Miller reads from her new collection, Borderline Fortune (Penguin Books, 2021), and Amanda Moore reads from her debut collection, Requeening (Ecco, 2021), both winners of the 2020 National Poetry Series. Moore’s Requeening is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Vinod Busjeet speaks about emigration versus immigration and how his debut novel, Silent Winds, Dry Seas (Doubleday, 2021), started out as a memoir in this virtual conversation with NYU Washington, DC lecturer Sydney Boyd. Busjeet is featured in “5 Over 50: 2021” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I’ve turned old. I ache most / To be confronted by the real, / By the cold, the pitiless, the bleak.” In this 2018 video from the 92nd Street Y, Tracy K. Smith reads her poem “Annunciation,” which appears in her new collection, Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2021). Smith’s fifth poetry collection is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“We claimed it first, this little mountain. Me and MaViolet and a scattering of neighbors,” reads Jocelyn Nicole Johnson from the title novella of her debut story collection, My Monticello (Henry Holt, 2021), which is featured in Page One in the November/December 2021 of Poets & Writers Magazine, in this reading and conversation with Walter Mosley for Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Missouri.

“For some reason, the poems are much closer to the reality in my life,” says Ananda Lima about her writing process for poetry versus fiction in this episode of The Story Talks Back podcast with Dave Stanton. Lima’s first poetry collection, Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“I felt like someone was talking to me and I had to write it down.” Natashia Deón talks about vivid dreams and how events from her life inspired the opening lines of her debut novel, Grace (Counterpoint, 2016), in episode 1 of Are You There, Ghost? It’s Me, Chiwan with host Chiwan Choi. Deón’s second novel, The Perishing (Counterpoint, 2021), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Dark and huge, it is frightening to be alive with a song in you,” reads Shangyang Fang from his poem “Serenade Behind a Floating Stage” in this Copper Canyon Press video promoting his debut collection, Burying the Mountain, which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“What does it mean to dream of better places in this book?” Anthony Doerr talks about exploring utopian questions while writing his latest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner, 2021), in this interview for Late Night With Seth Meyers. A Q&A with Doerr by Joshua Mohr appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.