Poets & Writers Theater

“I have heard my father tell a wide variation of the same five stories but you can affix a certain moral to one—you can affix an entry point, an exit point, an image—that makes it feel like a new story every time,” says Hanif Abdurraqib in this lecture on the nature and impact of storytelling for CreativeMornings in Columbus, Ohio. “Twelve Things That Help Me Set My Table” by Abdurraqib appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To me, reading becomes a lot more palatable if young people realize that the stories, the books that exist within them are as valuable as the books that exist on the outside of them.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Jane Pauley speaks to Jason Reynolds, award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, about lifting up children through storytelling, his journey as a writer, and the importance of friendship.

“I read so much, still, because I want to learn how to tell the perfect story.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Alex Schulman, author most recently of the novel The Survivors (Doubleday, 2021), speaks about the impact reading has had on his life, the power of storytelling, and how he started his writing career as a blogger.

“You get to watch a relationship, and you get to watch it change,” says author Jason Reynolds in this 60 Minutes video about his experience as a StoryCorps facilitator recording almost three hundred sessions of conversations by everyday people that are now archived in the Library of Congress.

“The only time I meet a stranger is when I confront myself. Any time I meet new people, they’re not strangers.” Poet, novelist, and essayist Chris Abani tells a story about meeting strangers in the airport, learning from their kindness, and how these experiences have influenced his writing for this 2016 House of SpeakEasy event at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York.

“This is how you tell a story,” says narrator Tilda Swinton in a short film written and directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, which goes through six steps of a writer’s process paired with a dance choreographed by Kyle Abraham. “There is a problem. It is an obstacle so monumental that it seems unlikely our tiny protagonist will be able to overcome something so impressive. It’s a mountain pressing down, it’s a witch, a curse, a giant.”

Paul Muldoon speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about “Muldoon’s Picnic,” a monthly show held at the Irish Arts Center in New York featuring music, storytelling, and poetry.

“They’re not the same as any other books I’ve read.” Visitors of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, located in Dahl’s home village Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, England, share their love of the author’s classic books and characters.

“Real stories never end.” At a celebration for the New Yorker’s ninetieth anniversary, David Remnick recounts an experience of journalist failure and speaks on the importance of reporters and citizens.

In this video, Benjamin Percy, author of Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 2016), is challenged to tell a five-minute true story from a randomly selected prompt for the Back Fence PDX storytelling series. Percy joins the two-day Poets & Writers Live conference in San Francisco on January 14 and 15, 2017.