Poets & Writers Theater

In this event recorded at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library and hosted by Books Are Magic, Terrance Hayes discusses his new poetry collection, So to Speak (Penguin Books, 2023), and his new essay collection, Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (Penguin Books, 2023), with poet and memoirist Mary Karr.

“The minute I was born I was not just myself, but the memory of someone else,” reads Hilton Als from his essay collection White Girls, published in 2014 by McSweeney’s and reprinted in 2019 by Penguin Books, in this video in which he tells the story of how he got his name.

“Nowhere else does the sky do what the sky does there / where the graves are filled with dirt the color of fire.” Terrance Hayes reads his poem “Arbor for Butch,” which appears in his National Book Award–winning collection, Lighthead (Penguin Books), for this 2010 reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

“Who doesn’t know how / doubt lifts the hem of its nightgown // to reveal another inch of thigh / before the face of faith?” In this video filmed at Washington University in St. Louis, Paul Tran reads their poem “Copernicus” featured in their debut collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin Books, 2022). A profile of Tran written by Rigoberto González is featured in the March/April 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.

In this 2017 craft talk for Hugo House, Terrance Hayes reads from his book American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018) and discusses the work and writing strategies of the late poet Lynda Hull.

“It was Dre who once said, / You lose something every day / Your mind on the way to the store / The floor on the way to your mind…” In this Ours Poetica video, Jacqueline Woodson reads “You Lose Something Every Day,” a poem from Willie Perdomo’s collection The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Books, 2019). 

“The most astonishing thing to happen in the almost 14 billion years since the birth of the cosmos is that ordinary, apparentle inert matter, has—by its self-organizing capacity (or, autopoesis)—become conscious.” Harry Dodge reads from his debut book, My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin Books, 2020), and discusses its themes in a conversation with Maggie Nelson in their Los Angeles home.

In this bilingual reading presented virtually from three cities hosted by Poets House, Garous Abdolmalekian reads poems from his collection Lean Against This Late Hour (Penguin Books, 2020), along with Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey, who cotranslated the book from the Persian. Lean Against This Late Hour is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s a story of a young girl who comes to America in the early 1980s and, among many other things, discovers something called race,” says Sharmila Sen about her debut memoir, Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America (Penguin Books, 2018), which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in nonfiction.

“I sincerely believe this is a life-affirming book and it is a novel that celebrates diversity, inclusion…and friendships.” Elif Shafak speaks about her writing process and the inspiration behind her latest novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking, 2019), which is shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

“Letter writing is a pure act of devotion, a place where, if not storytellers, we all become human again.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Willie Perdomo, the author most recently of The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Books, 2019), talks about the value of writing letters and how they are “where we attempt to tell the truth and wait.”

“Carson McCullers is probably the author I feel the strongest connection to, in the way of empathy and seeing the world.” Benedict Wells, whose fourth novel, The End of Loneliness (Penguin Books, 2019), translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about his writing process, how he began as a writer, and some of the authors who have inspired him.

“I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” This Motionpoems film directed by Mohammed Hammad features Natalie Diaz’s poem “American Arithmetic,” which appeared in the anthology Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (Penguin Books, 2017) edited by John Freeman.

In this behind-the-scenes video from Penguin Random House, the multistep process of publishing a book is presented as it moves from author to reader, from manuscript editing and book design to distribution and bookstore sale. The book shown in the journey is the debut short story collection, Back Talk (Penguin Books, 2018), by Danielle Lazarin, who is featured in Literary MagNet in the January/February 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Even if what you’re writing seems boring to you...you’re preparing yourself for the moment when life or something else broadsides you and you need to write.” John Freeman, editor of the essay anthology Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (Penguin Books, 2017), shares writing advice and what his favorite authors have in common.

“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, / Part panic closet...” Terrance Hayes reads poems from his new collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books, 2018), and discusses the origin and inspiration for the book at the 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Hayes reads more poems from the collection in the twentieth episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast, and is interviewed by Hanif Abdurraqib for the cover profile in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Adrian Matejka reads “Battle Royale,” “Prize Fighter,” and other poems from his third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin Books, 2013), which focus on the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion. Matejka is the new poet laureate of Indiana, succeeding Shari Wagner.

“‘In a dark cave, I saw’ ‘an apparition:’ ‘almost real, almost there—’...” In this video, Alice Notley reads from her feminist epic The Descent of Alette (Penguin Books, 1996) at the Lab in San Francisco. The two-night program included a reading of the entire book-length poem and was cosponsored by the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University.

“There was something blurry about it, how she tipped moment by moment between woman and child.” In this 2012 video, Leopoldine Core reads from her short story “Teenage Hate” at the Center for Fiction. Her debut short story collection, When Watched (Penguin Books, 2016), is a finalist for the 29th annual Lambda Literary Awards.