Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2015 Page Meets Stage event, Aziza Barnes reads “a good deed is done for no good reason,” which appears in their debut poetry collection, i be, but i ain’t (YesYes Books, 2016). “You allow yourself to become whatever these hands will make you,” writes Barnes. The award-winning poet and playwright died at the age of thirty-two on December 15, 2024.

“Once on the back porch my lab barked / and barked. / he was always spooked / by something, garter snake, black / snake, rabbit.” In this Ours Poetica video produced in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation, Phillip B. Williams reads an untitled poem by Kayleb Rae Candrilli from their debut book, What Runs Over (YesYes Books, 2017).

In this 92nd Street Y video, Mahogany L. Browne reads poems from her books Black Girl Magic (Roaring Brook Press, 2018) and Kissing Caskets (YesYes Books, 2017). Her forthcoming book, Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice, will be out in March from Roaring Brook Press.

Khadijah Queen reads “Monologue for an Onion” by Suji Kwock Kim for the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s From the Stacks series, which invites poets to share favorites from their renowned poetry library. Queen’s fifth book, I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books, 2017), is a collection of narrative writing and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

At an event for YesYes Books and Sixth Finch at the AWP conference in 2012, Leigh Stein reads a selection of poems from her debut collection, Dispatch From the Future (Melville House, 2012).