Poets & Writers Theater

In this OR Books Live on Avenue C event, Mosab Abu Toha reads “If I Must Die” by the late Refaat Alareer, which appears in his posthumously published collection of poetry and prose, If I Must Die (OR Books, 2024).

In this video, Nikki Giovanni reads a selection of her poems and speaks about her life and career for the Wright Conversations series hosted by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and PBS Books. Giovanni died at the age of eighty-one on December 9, 2024.

In this virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers features editor India Lena González introduces the 2024 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors: Suzette Mullen, author of The Only Way Through Is Out (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024); Dorsía Smith Silva, author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry Press, 2024); Uchenna Awoke, author of The Liquid Eye of a Moon (Catapult, 2024); Parul Kapur, author of Inside the Mirror (University of Nebraska Press, 2024); and Deborah Jackson Taffa, author of Whiskey Tender (Harper, 2024).

In this Tucson Humanities Festival event held at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, scholar Jacqueline Barrios introduces Brandon Som, who reads from his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Tripas (Georgia Review Books, 2023).

In this 2023 Indigenous Nations Poets virtual event, fellows Kenzie Allen, Kalehua Kim, Halee Kirkwood, Mary Leauna Christensen, Erin Marie Lynch, m.s. RedCherries, and Annie Wenstrup read for their work.

In this event presented by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Kundiman, writers Hannah Bae, Jen Lue, Gina Chung, and Rajat Singh read from their work and participate in a conversation moderated by Thuy Phan, regional cochair of Kundiman Northeast.

In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Sherwin Bitsui reads selected poems from his collections Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) and Dissolve (Copper Canyon Press, 2018).

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 virtual reading and conversation, Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González introduces the five debut authors featured in “The New Nonfiction 2024” in the September/October issue: David Martinez, author of Bones Worth Breaking (MCD, 2024); Wei Tchou, author of Little Seed (A Strange Object, 2024); Zara Chowdhary, author of The Lucky Ones (Crown, 2024); Lydia Paar, author of The Exit Is the Entrance: Essays on Escape (University of Georgia Press, 2024); and Neesha Powell-Ingabire, author of Come by Here: A Memoir in Essays From Georgia’s Geechee Coast (Hub City Press, 2024).

In this Poets & Writers event, 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize winner Fady Joudah reads a selection of poems, including from his National Book Award–nominated collection, [...] (Milkweed Editions, 2024), and joins Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation about his work and life as a poet.

“It’s an ongoing interrogation of how we think about narrative. It’s my ongoing interrogation of history.” In this Toronto Public Library event, poet and novelist Dionne Brand speaks about how her new nonfiction book, Salvage: Readings From the Wreck (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), wrestles with the ways novels from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries sustain and reproduce colonialism in a conversation with David Chariandy.

In this Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event at Books Are Magic, the Institute of American Indian Arts presents readings by students, alumni, and faculty of the program, including program director Deborah Jackson Taffa, m.s. RedCherries, Lily Philpott, and Julianne Warren.

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 192 Books event at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City, Rachel Kushner reads from her new novel, Creation Lake (Scribner, 2024), and discusses the very real spies and saboteurs who inspired her noir characters in a conversation with Hua Hsu.

In this Green Apple Books event, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) presents the Then & Now: Vietnamese American Literature reading series with opening remarks by executive director Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, followed by readings by Lan Duong, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Anastasia Le, Angie Chau, Frank Thanh Nguyen, and Carolyn Huynh with introductions by chief operating officer Kathy Nguyen.

“The book is, in many ways, about expectations and change.” In this Fane Productions event, Juli Min reads from her debut novel, Shanghailanders (Spiegel & Grau, 2024), and discusses her choice to begin the novel in the future in Shanghai and how the diverse and multifaceted city is its own character in a conversation with author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.

In this Books Are Magic event, Kat Tang reads from her debut novel, Five-Star Stranger (Scribner, 2024), and describes her experience revisiting a novel manuscript years after finishing her MFA in a conversation with author Jinwoo Chong.

In this NGC Bocas Lit Fest event, Edwidge Danticat speaks about the roots of her work and reads excerpts from her works of fiction and nonfiction, including the preface from her new essay collection, We’re Alone (Graywolf Press, 2024), in a conversation with Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw. A profile of Danticat by Renée H. Shea appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Books Are Magic event with Adam Dalva, author and translator Laura Marris reads from and speaks about her debut essay collection, The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the September/October of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The reason why I favor long poems—not just writing them but reading them—is that it just feels like a much truer picture of the self, or selves.” In this Books Are Magic event, Jason Koo reads from his latest poetry collection, No Rest (Diode Editions, 2024), and discusses the narrative opportunities of long poems in a conversation with Bessie Flores Zaldívar.