5 Over 50: 2020
Five authors over the age of fifty—Elizabeth Wetmore, Vivian Gibson, A. H. Kim, Susan Buttenwieser, and Daniel Becker—share excerpts from their first books.
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Article Archive: Feature
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
World of Wonders: An Interview With Aimee Nezhukumatathil
In her new essay collection, World of Wonders, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil turns her creative powers of attention, play, openness, and love to a world of magic and imagination outdoors.
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I’m Writing to You: Letters From Writers of the Black Literary Community
Eleven writers pen letters addressed to fellow Black writers, to their ancestors, to gatekeepers, to members of the media, and to allies, among others.
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First Fiction 2020
Our annual debut fiction roundup features Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, Jean Kyoung Frazier, Corinne Manning, Megha Majumdar, and John Fram.
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5 Over 50: 2019
In our fourth annual installment of this series, five debut authors over the age of fifty—Julie Langsdorf, Valencia Robin, Timothy Brandoff, Margaret Renkl, and Peter Kaldheim—share excerpts from their first books.
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Name a Song: A Conversation With Reginald Dwayne Betts
Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose latest poetry collection, Felon, is out now from Norton, sits down with poet and activist Mahogany L. Browne for a conversation about political poetry and the realities of the U.S. prison system.
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Agents & Editors: Ben George
Ben George, a senior editor at Little, Brown who works with some of the biggest names in literary fiction and nonfiction, talks about the author-editor relationship, the plight of the midlist writer, and the art of revision.
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Be Bold: A Profile of Ocean Vuong
Following the acclaim of his debut poetry collection, Ocean Vuong found power in imagination and freedom in embellishment and wrote a stunningly original novel: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
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First Fiction 2019
Our annual debut fiction roundup features novelists Ruchika Tomar, Chia-Chia Lin, Miciah Bay Gault, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and Regina Porter.
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Shape-Shifter: A Profile of Marlon James
The Man Booker Prize-winning novelist whose new book, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, is the first title of an epic fantasy trilogy, sits down with Kima Jones for a conversation about the freedom of genre-defying fiction.
Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky
Fifteen years in the making, Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic is a dramatic masterwork, a parable-in-poems that confronts the darkness of war and terror with the blazing light of “a poet in love with the world.”
5 Over 50: 2018
In our third annual installment of this series, five authors over the age of fifty who published their debut books this year—Jeanne McCulloch, A. G. Lombardo, Anne Youngson, Maw Shein Win, and Laura Esther Wolfson—share their paths to publication.
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A Talk in the Woods: Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers
A conversation between two best-selling authors turns into an impromptu master class in fiction under a canopy of leaves in southwestern Virginia.
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The Poetry of Perseverance: An Interview With Ada Limón
In her fifth collection, The Carrying, Ada Limón digs deep down to the roots of what she sees happening in the world today—and she is deeply troubled by what she finds.
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A Day in the Life of a Book Editor: Caroline Bleeke of Flatiron Books
For an editor like Caroline Bleeke of Flatiron Books, there is a lot more to the job than simply reading and editing manuscripts.
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First Fiction 2018
This year’s debut fiction roundup features emerging writers R. O. Kwon, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Jamel Brinkley, Katharine Dion, and Tommy Orange.
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Severe Weather in the Sunshine State: A Profile of Lauren Groff
Florida isn’t just the title of Lauren Groff’s new story collection, published in June by Riverhead Books; it’s also a bad joke, a good home, a source of inspiration, a set of contradictions, and, perhaps, ultimately a state of mind.
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My Past and Future Assassin: A Profile of Terrance Hayes
In his sixth book, a sonnet sequence published by Penguin in June, Terrance Hayes cuts deep, to the marrow of the American moment, in a form with a razor’s edge: love poems for the forces trying to kill you.
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The Love of Labor, the Labor of Love: An Interview With Carmen Giménez Smith
Poet, publisher, editor, and activist Carmen Giménez Smith, whose fifth book, Cruel Futures, is out from City Lights, has some advice for other hardworking poets: We make art to reach readers, not to win a race.
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The Poem Chooses You
Poetry Out Loud offers high school students a new way of seeing the world.
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The Novel I Buried Three Times
Novelists Caroline Leavitt and Jonathan Evison discuss the books that just didn’t work.
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5 Over 50: 2017
Five writers over the age of fifty whose debut books were released this year: Jimin Han, Laura Hulthen Thomas, Karen E. Osborne, Tina Carlson, and Peg Alford Pursell. Excerpts of their books are available in 5 Over 50 Reads 2017.
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The Poet at Work: A Profile of Kevin Young
With a new book of nonfiction, Bunk, a new job as director of a leading research center on black culture, and a new role as poetry editor of the New Yorker, Kevin Young is fully engaged in a personal program of moving multitudes.
Vagrant & Vulnerable: Dawn Lundy Martin, Nicole Sealey
Two of the most dynamic poets writing today, both with new collections out, explore issues of poetry and craft, aesthetics and language, luxury and yearning, drag and systematic repression.
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Epic: An Interview With Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Golden House, marks a triumphant return to realism for the titan of letters whose insights on everything from novel-writing and magical realism to identity and social media are as fascinating as the worlds he creates in his books.