Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2024 Writers on Writing event hosted by the Newberry Library and StoryStudio Chicago, Hanif Abdurraqib and Eve L. Ewing discuss their literary careers, the craft of writing, and how they tackle the complexities of art and activism.

In this Talking Volumes event with MPR News host Kerri Miller, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Louise Erdrich reads from her latest novel, The Mighty Red (Harper, 2024), and discusses how her upbringing in the Red River Valley in Minnesota shaped her writing.

In this event from the 2024 Eric Williams Memorial Lecture, Danez Smith reads from their work and discusses the poetics of resistance and rebellion with Jennifer M. Wilks, director of the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

In this virtual event hosted by the Strand Book Store, Sue Shapiro, author of The Forgiveness Tour: How to Find the Perfect Apology (Skyhorse, 2021), leads a conversation about best practices for pitching, submitting, and querying with agents and editors including Miya Lee, Rakesh Satyal, and Howard Yoon.

In this New York Public Library event, comic book writers and artists Amy Chu, Arielle Jovellanos, Soo Lee, and Amy Reeder talk about character development and the diverse and influential roles women play in shaping the world of comics at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York.

In this Green Apple Books event, Kayla Min Andrews reads from her late mother Katherine Min’s posthumous novel, The Fetishist (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024), and discusses the history of her mother’s original manuscript and the book’s poignant themes of race and femininity in a conversation with Cathy Park Hong.

In this event hosted by the Free Library of Philadelphia, Kiley Reid reads from her second novel, Come and Get It (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024), and discusses what it means to have an artistic responsibility to truth in a conversation with Niela Orr. Come and Get It is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this 2023 London Review of Books event, Emily Wilson reads from and discusses her translation of The Iliad by Homer, published in September by Norton, and how she wishes to present Homer to a new generation in a conversation with classicist and historian Edith Hall. Passages from Wilson’s translation are also read by actors Tobias Menzies and Juliet Stevenson.

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Rachel Heng discusses her latest novel, The Great Reclamation (Riverhead Books, 2023), and talks about writing fiction that is both historical and speculative, and how she uses notecards to organize writing her gargantuan novels.

In this Green Apple Books event, Alexandra Chang reads from her short story collection, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco, 2023), and discusses the various Asian and Asian American women voices in her work, experiments in form, and the feeling of writing a short story with promise in a conversation with author Shruti Swamy.

In this event hosted by the Korea Society in New York, prolific and award-winning author Yu Miri talks about her family’s history under Japanese occupation, her struggles writing for Japanese and Korean readers as a Zainichi Korean author, and the themes in her latest translated novel, The End of August (Riverhead Books, 2023), translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles.

In this event hosted by the Free Library of Philadelphia, Sigrid Nunez, author of The Vulnerables (Riverhead Books, 2023), and Henry Hoke, author of Open Throat (MCD, 2023), read from their novels and discuss the writing of nontraditional lines, the appeal of literary absurdity, and current trends in literature.

“When you see injustice, you have to bite back.” In this Books Are Magic event, Julia Lee reads from her memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America (Henry Holt, 2023), and joins author Hua Hsu for a conversation about healing from family trauma, Asian American rage and shame, and lessons learned from teaching literature to college students.

In this PEN America event from their 2022 World Voices Festival, authors Jean Guerrero, Omar El Akkad, Ousman Umar, and Yuri Herrera come together for a conversation about border and migrant narratives, the current global crises of displacement, and how literature tells the stories of those often ignored or hidden.

Lauren Groff discusses how she unpacks the history of British colonialism in America and reckons with the frontier narrative in her new novel, The Vaster Wilds (Riverhead Books, 2023), in this conversation with Atlantic managing editor Andrea Valdez held at the 2023 Atlantic Festival.

Award-winning author K-Ming Chang reads from her latest novel, Organ Meats (One World, 2023), and joins Amanda Mei Kim for a conversation about the sensual qualities of language and the intimate relationship between writing and the self for this event hosted by the Center for Literary Arts of San José at the Hammer Theatre.

In this National Book Festival event, George Saunders accepts the 2023 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and speaks about his writing process, how problems in a work-in-progress contain opportunities, and the place of empathy in storytelling in a conversation moderated by Library of Congress literary director Clay Smith.

In this virtual Poets & Writers event, 2023 Jackson Poetry Prize winner Sandra Lim reads a selection of poems from her latest collection, The Curious Thing (Norton, 2021), and speaks about her writing process with poet Carl Phillips, the 2021 winner of the prize.

“I write toward what hurts. I write toward the truth, and I tell it again. I scribe the whole.” In this National Book Festival event, Jesmyn Ward, recipient of the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, speaks about how her grandmother influenced her work as a writer and joins Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a conversation about her award-winning novels, grief writing, and cultural authenticity.

In this recorded event, Terrance Hayes, Claudia Rankine, and Ocean Vuong, acclaimed authors and professors at New York University’s Creative Writing Program, read from their work and participate in a conversation together for a packed audience at NYU Skirball. Rankine is the recipient of the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize.