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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.
“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.
“I write to ask questions and to inquire, not declare.” In this Virtual Craft Chat hosted by the Writer’s Center, poet Sarah Ghazal Ali reads from her debut collection, Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), and discusses her use of the ghazal form, the architecture of her book, and the inspirations she drew from the Qur’an in a conversation with Poet Lore editor Emily Holland.
“I pop tins of the greasiest luncheon meat open, / slather my chin with animal salt…” In this video, Ina Cariño, a 2022 Whiting Award winner in poetry, reads their poem “Lean Economy” from their debut collection, Feast (Alice James Books, 2023), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this Dartmouth video celebrating Robert Frost’s birthday last March, Matthew Olzmann reads his poem “Letter to the person who, during the Q&A session after the reading, asked for career advice” from his latest collection, Constellation Route (Alice James Books, 2022), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“So how do you discern a shape for / What is often called g-d.” Kazim Ali reads from his latest collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020), in this Academy of American Poets virtual reading and conversation with Joshua Bennett, author of Owed (Penguin Poets, 2020). For more from these poets, read what motivates Ali’s writing in Writers Recommend and about Bennett’s writing process in Ten Questions.
“Child, we move through graves / like eels, delicious with our heads first, our mouths / agape.” In this Ours Poetica video, Jane Wong reads her poem “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly” published in the November 2018 issue of Poetry magazine. Wong’s second poetry collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2021.
“Even a baby is / a paper cut theater, / a necklace of incisions strung together / into a country.” In this Poetry.LA video, Kenji C. Liu reads poems from his collections Map of an Onion (Inlandia Institute, 2016) and Monsters I Have Been (Alice James Books, 2019) at the Writers for Migrant Justice reading in Los Angeles.
“I do hope one day to be free of this body’s dry wood...” In this Button Poetry video, Kaveh Akbar, author of the poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), reads a poem that was published in Tin House’s “The Rehab Issue” in 2017.
In this video for PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series, Franny Choi reads her poem “Introduction to Quantum Theory” and discusses the importance of asking unanswerable questions and imagining alternate realities. Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and Soft Science, which is forthcoming from Alice James Books in April.
