Poets & Writers Theater

In this WIRED interview with Katie Drummond, Emily St. John Mandel discusses how the current political climate in America informed the speculative catastrophe in her latest novel, Exit Party (Knopf, 2026), and shares how she connects her novels in what the New Yorker calls the “Mandel Cinematic Universe.”

In this Green Apple Books event, Black Ocean, a nonprofit independent publisher based in Boston and Chicago, celebrates its twentieth anniversary with readings from authors Carrie Olivia Adams, Kristin George Bagdanov, Nathan Hoks, and Zachary Schomburg.

In this episode of the Fashion Neurosis podcast hosted by Bella Freud, French Moroccan author and journalist Leïla Slimani talks about the dangers of gaining recognition as a writer, discovering the timelessness of literature through Dostoevsky and Tolstoy as a child, and what it means to dress like an intellectual.

In this Book Passage event, Téa Obreht reads from her fourth novel, Sunrise (Random House, 2026), and talks about her decision to write scene by scene without an outline, and her fascination with the American West after growing up in the former Yugoslavia in a conversation with Parini Shroff. “I think for me, the West has always occupied a really mythical space.”

In this episode of Literary Hub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast cohosted by Christian Barter, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, and Whitney Terrell, author Claudia Rankine discusses how current political crises inspired her new book, Triage (Graywolf Press, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Politics and Prose event, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn reads from their second essay collection, I Have This Thing for Flowers: Essays on the Roots of Relationships (Flatiron Books, 2026), and discusses how researching and writing about flowers helped structure their personal experiences in a conversation with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes. Sawchyn’s book is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this live episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Ed Park reads from his hybrid memoir, Three Tenses: A Transmission From the Nineties (Random House, 2026), and reminisces about his time working as a literary editor at the Village Voice.

Produced by PBS American Masters and directed by Sasha Waters, this documentary celebrates the life and career of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Mary Oliver, and interviews Steve Buscemi, Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Nick Flynn, Donika Kelly, and other artists who have been influenced by her work.

In this Fine Arts Work Center event in Provincetown, Massachusetts, poet Hieu Minh Nguyen, writer Lydi Conklin, and photographer Ron Amato present their respective works. Nguyen reads a selection of poems from his third collection, Staying Still (Tin House, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“There is no price tag on a poem.” In this Poetry in America video, Martín Espada’s poem “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” is read and analyzed by economist Justin Wolfers, and the poet talks about the true value of poetry.

“The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?” In this 2013 Moyers & Company segment, Wendell Berry reads his poem, “A Poem on Hope.” Berry died at the age of ninety-two on August 31, 2026.

In this 2018 interview with former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Dolly Parton speaks about how her father’s illiteracy inspired her to launch the Imagination Library, a book gifting program that has provided over 330 million books to children across the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Parton died at the age of eighty on August 25, 2026.

In this episode of the Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky podcast, Chang-rae Lee talks about his latest novel, A Tender Age (Riverhead Books, 2026), his choice to leave a career in finance in order to become a writer, and his experience writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of C Pam Zhang’s novel How Much of These Hills Is Gold, directed by Ang Lee.

In this video, Joe Wilkins presents “Language, Memory, and Story” for the 2022 Wallace Stegner Lecture hosted by the Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. Wilkins, author of Every Sky at Home: Essays on Landscape and Family (Bison Books, 2026), is featured in “Literary MagNet” in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this PBS NewsHour interview, Fred de Sam Lazaro speaks with Daniel Umemezie, who has been named the tenth National Youth Poet Laureate, about how he aims to use his work to inspire social change. Umemezie is featured in a Q&A by Rigoberto González in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“to speak is not yet to have spoken.” In this video, Carolyn Forché reads her poem “What Comes” for the Dear Poet series, the Academy of American Poets’ educational project for National Poetry Month. Forché’s collection Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026 (Scribner, 2026) is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this On the Serendipitous Side podcast episode, Deesha Philyaw talks about the twenty-year journey of her first novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman (Mariner Books, 2026), and how the story developed with the help of her agent and a satire writing class. A profile of Philyaw by Brian Gresko appears in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s the most personal novel I’ve ever written.” In this Penguin Random House Spring Book & Author Festival virtual event, Marlon James talks about his desire to present the world he grew up in through an exploration of queer life in Jamaica in the eighties and nineties in his new novel, The Disappearers (Riverhead Books, 2026), which is featured in Page One in the September/October 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this Haymarket Books event, Edna Bonhomme reflects on the impacts of colonialism and racial capitalism, and how her journeys to cities across the world informed the writing of her memoir, Tending to Our Wounds: A Diasporic Memoir (Haymarket Books, 2026), in a conversation with Edwidge Danticat. Bonhomme’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this virtual Harvard Radcliffe Institute event, Christian Wiman reads a selection of poems from his collections Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) and Survival Is a Style (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), as well as Osip Mandelstam’s poem “And I Was Alive,” which he translated from the Russian with Ilya Kaminsky. Major Jackson then joins Wiman in a conversation about his latest collection, The Dance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026).