Poets & Writers Theater

In this Brookline Booksmith event, Shuba Sunder reads from her first novel, Optional Practical Training (Graywolf Press, 2025), and speaks about the process of writing her “immigrant novel” in a conversation with Neema Avashia. Optional Practical Training is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2017 Asian American Writers’ Workshop event, Esther Lin reads her poem “I See Her Best,” which appears in her debut collection, Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books, 2025). Lin’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Lauren Francis-Sharma reads from and speaks about her third novel, Casualties of Truth (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025), in a conversation with Kwame Alexander. The novel is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of Tightwires with host Hiba Tahir, poet Patrycja Humienik talks about navigating grad school and writing, identity, and her debut collection, We Contain Landscapes (Tin House, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

For this 2024 Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters event, Arati Kumar-Rao talks about how her book, Marginlands: A Journey Into India’s Vanishing Landscapes (Milkweed Editions, 2025), is not about a specific place, but can be somewhere at “the edge of our psyche” in a conversation with Prem Panicker. Rao’s book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Lise Goett reads from her third poetry collection, The Radiant (Tupelo Press, 2024), in this Jules’ Poetry Playhouse virtual reading with Mark Wunderlich hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche. The Radiant is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This book is not about blame, it’s about understanding.” In this Enoch Pratt Free Library event in Baltimore, Lee Hawkins speaks about the history and research he encountered in the writing process of his debut memoir, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free (Amistad, 2025). Hawkins’s memoir is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Some things, then, cannot be repaired and must go on, into a kind of dusk that seems somehow endless,” reads Matthew Nienow from his poem “Dusk Loop,” which appears in his second poetry collection, If Nothing (Alice James Books, 2025), in this reading and conversation for the Table For Deuce podcast hosted by poets Kate Hanson Foster and Michael Schmeltzer. Nienow’s collection is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this episode of the Keep Talking Podcast, Pico Iyer talks about losing his home in the 1990 Painted Cave fire in Santa Barbara, his experiences with silence, and his new book, Aflame: Learning From Silence (Riverhead Books, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Hala Alyan reads her poem “Light Ghazal,” which appears in her fifth poetry collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (Ecco, 2024), in this short film directed by Jake McAfee and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.

In this virtual reading from the Well Versed series hosted by StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and Open Book, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads from his collection Feed the Beast (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and discusses the themes of place and nature within his poems. Ó Tuama’s fourth poetry collection, Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Brooklyn Book Festival virtual event, authors Hisham Matar, Rania Mamoun, and Omar Khalifah talk about the purpose and urgency of writing about history during times of crisis in a conversation moderated by writer and translator Yasmin Seale. Khalifah’s novel, Sand-Catcher (Coffee House Press, 2024), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual book launch event hosted by the Writer’s Center, Zahid Rafiq reads from his debut short story collection, The World With Its Mouth Open (Tin House, 2024), and discusses his experiences living in Kashmir in a conversation with Emily Fridlund. Rafiq’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Patricia Coral reads from her debut memoir, Women Surrounded by Water (Mad Creek Books, 2024), and talks about the experimental nature of her book in a conversation with Susan Coll. Women Surrounded by Water is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event, Albert Abonado reads from his second poetry collection, Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, 2024), and discusses Asian American families and the model minority myth in a conversation with Jason Koo. Field Guide for Accidents is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, André Aciman reads from his memoir Roman Year (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) and talks about the loss he experienced during his adolescence in Rome and how writing has helped him come to terms with his identity in a conversation with Marie Arana. Roman Year is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Institute of Politics Policy and History video, A. B. Spellman joins a panel of poets, historians, and critics for a discussion of his contributions to literature, music, and the Black Arts Movement, and then reads a selection of poems from his new collection, Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

In this event, authors Hiromi Kawakami and Adam Ehrlich Sachs discuss writing about specific places, fiction’s relationship to personal truth, and their literary inspirations in a conversation with Motoyuki Shibata, translator and founder of the Japanese journal MONKEY New Writing From Japan. Kawakami’s new novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird (Soft Skull Press, 2024), ), translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda, is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this short reading hosted by the University of Illinois Chicago’s SparkTalks series, Daniel Borzutzky reads “Apparatus #519” from his poetry collection The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (Coffee House Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.