Poets & Writers Theater

“You’re not really thinking of speaking those words. Often you think about what the most wrong thing to say or do would be, in any given situation.” In this video, Merritt Tierce, a 2019 Whiting Award winner in fiction, reads from her short story “Distributed Denial of Service.”

Esmé Weijun Wang, a 2018 Whiting Award winner, reads from her essay “On the Ward” from The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf Press, 2019). Wang is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It was sad. I would rather talk to my idea of a person, a fantasy ghost-person that existed only in my imagination, than talk with my own parents.” Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney’s, 2017) and a recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction, reads from her essay “My Abyss.”

Weike Wang speaks with Mary Laura Philpott of A Word on Words about her debut novel, Chemistry (Knopf, 2017), and why her main character doesn’t have a name. Wang is a 2017 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction.

“One ear to the singing black boulder…” In this video, Simone White, recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for poetry, reads her poem “Some Creek” from her collection Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem Books, 2016).

“This poem ‘Home’ is not only talking about ‘home,’ a physical place. It’s also talking about language as a home which I feel exiled from.” Safiya Sinclair, author of the debut collection Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) and winner of a 2016 Whiting Award for poetry, reads from “Home” and talks about the multiple languages and places that inhabit her poems.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, winner of a 2016 Whiting Award for poetry, reads “damn right it’s betta than yours” from her collection, TwERK (Belladonna, 2013), and talks about the influences of music and language on her writing. 

"You get to the end of a line in a poem, and you have no idea what's going to happen." In this TEDx Talk, Jericho Brown reads a selection of his poems, and speaks about his childhood, his ideas on faith, and what being a poet means to him. Brown is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Alice Sola Kim reads a selection of short stories for a Litquake event with Kearny Street Workshop in 2012. Kim is one of the 2016 Whiting Award winners in fiction.

In this video, Francisco Cantú reads from his debut memoir, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border (Riverhead Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, for an event showcasing the 2017 Whiting Award winners.

“During the spring and summer all the grasses come up, and that’s always the first thing I smell when I go up there [to South Dakota], and the first thing I miss when I come back...” Layli Long Soldier talks about the inspiration for her “Grass Poems” series and reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, WHEREAS, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2017. Long Soldier is a 2016 Whiting Award winner in poetry.

Layli Long Soldier, one of the 2016 Whiting Award winners in poetry, reads a selection of poems for Real Pants.

Brian Blanchfield reads from his essay collection, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (Nightboat, 2016), at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Blanchfield is one of the 2016 Whiting Award winners in nonfiction.