Poets & Writers Theater

In this Books Are Magic event, Tiana Clark reads from her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025), and discusses the cinematic quality of poems and whether poetry should always tell the truth in a conversation with Terrance Hayes.

In this Green Apple Books event, Atlantic senior editor Jeremy Gordon reads from his debut novel, See Friendship (Harper Perennial, 2025), and talks about the decision to write a book of fiction amidst a career in journalism in a conversation with New Yorker staff writer and author Jay Caspian Kang.

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 Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Caryl Phillips reads from his latest novel, Another Man in the Street (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and talks about his immigrant characters and how “the idea of the outsider is very much rooted in British life.”

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 Left Bank Books event, Rebe Huntman talks about her journey to Cuba following her mother’s passing, which inspired her debut memoir, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle (Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2025). For more from Huntman, read her installation of our Ten Questions series.

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.

“Noses of bats, it’s time / To write the first poem in English / Each line the last, small / rain turning glass.” In this Poetry Book Society video, Ben Lerner reads his poem “The Pistil,” which appears in a special U.K. slipcase edition of his collection The Lights released by Granta Books and the Poetry Books Society.

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.

Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González hosts this two-part event celebrating the ten debut poets featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from our January/February 2025 issue. The virtual event includes readings from the poets, as well as conversations about their debut books, their influences and inspirations, and their individual paths to publication.

In this Harvard Radcliffe Institute event, Ilya Kaminsky reads a selection of poems from his collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), including “We Lived Happily During the War” and “While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses,” and discusses being an immigrant and poet in between languages in a conversation with Stephanie Sandler.

“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 Green Apple Books event, Karissa Chen reads from her debut novel, Homeseeking (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2025), and speaks about how her late grandfather’s experiences during the Chinese Civil War inspired the book in a conversation with Vanessa Hua.

In this 2024 Guest Writers Series event hosted by the University of Utah’s Creative Writing department, Monica Youn reads poems about magpies from her fourth collection, From From (Graywolf Press, 2023), and Béatrice Szymkowiak discusses how natural history inspired her debut collection, B/RDS (University of Utah Press, 2023).

In this 2023 Bristol Ideas virtual event, Solmaz Sharif speaks with host Zoë Steadman-Milne about the nature of customs and interrogating those imposed within nation-states and literature, and reads from her poetry collection Customs, her first collection to be published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury.

“I love when a character in a novel, or in a story, or even in a poem, experiences a sense of change that they cannot come back from.” In this Books Are Magic event, Aria Aber reads from her debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), and discusses themes of shame, self-destruction, and coming of age as an artist in a conversation with Leslie Jamison. For more from Aber, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

“Poetry is our essential language, and it is as essential to me as breathing.” In this Library of Congress event, Arthur Sze accepts the 2024 Rebekah Bobbitt Johnson National Prize for Poetry for Lifetime Achievement, reads several poems from his career, and talks about his formal exploration of poetics in a conversation with Rob Casper.

In this Green Apple Books event, Kinsale Drake reads from her debut poetry collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024), and discusses how Indigenous heritage, nature, pop culture, and other influences shaped many of her poems.
 

“Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.” In this Poetry Hour series reading from the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, actor Jeremy Irons reads “The Folly Of Being Comforted” by W. B. Yeats.

Patrick Rosal reads Paul Genega’s poem “Aliens” in this short film directed by Williams Rossa Cole and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.