Poets & Writers Theater
Every day we share a new clip of interest to creative writers—author readings, book trailers, publishing panels, craft talks, and more. So grab some popcorn, filter the theater tags by keyword or genre, and explore our sizable archive of literary videos.
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In this WREG News Channel 3 interview in Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow talks about how her work as an attorney informed her writing and discusses the poems in her first collection, Magic Enuff (Dial Press, 2024). For more from Stringfellow, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.
Tags: Poetry | Tara Stringfellow | Magic Enuff | Dial Press | WREG News Channel 3 | Memphis | interview | Ten Questions | 2024 -
In this Moon Palace Books event in Minneapolis celebrating Taiyon J. Coleman’s debut essay collection, Traveling Without Moving: Essays From a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, the author reads with fellow Chicagoan writers April Gibson and Lester A. Batiste.
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“We are afraid like all mothers.” In this Write About Now Poetry video, spoken word artist and activist Amal Kassir reads her poem “A Prayer” for a live audience.
Tags: Poetry | Spoken Word | Amal Kassir | A Prayer | Write About Now Poetry | reading | activism | 2024 -
“I know all the dark places / Where the sun hasn’t reached yet...” Charles Simic reads his poem “Summer Morning,” which he says needs no introduction, in this video for an installment of Poetry Breaks, a series created by Leita Luchetti in the 1980s and 1990s presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet died at the age of eighty-four on January 9, 2023.
Tags: Poetry | Charles Simic | Summer Morning | reading | Poetry Breaks | Academy of American Poets | in memoriam -
In this Louisiana Channel video, Russian poet and journalist Maria Stepanova offers her advice for young writers to look forward to something unknown and to be able to “look into the future with some degree of hope.”
Tags: Poetry | Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Translation | Maria Stepanova | writing advice | writing process | Louisiana Channel | interview | 2022 -
Watch this short video offering a glimpse of the miniature books handwritten by revered authors in the library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House at Windsor Castle, the residence of the British royal family in the eponymous English town. Read more about the miniature library in “The Written Image: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House Library Books” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tags: Poetry | Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Queen Mary's Dolls' House | Windsor Castle | library | miniatures | books | The Written Image | July/August 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.
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“On the wall of the room there was a mirror / reflecting back a comical skull that was laughing at itself.” In this bilingual poetry reading, “Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence” is read in the original Spanish by Homero Aridjis and the English translation is read by George McWhirter. Aridjis and McWhirter won the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize for the collection of the same name, published by New Directions.
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In this virtual reading hosted by the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Furious Flower Poetry Center, Lauren K. Alleyne introduces Ashia Ajani, who reads from their debut collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023), and Ariana Benson, who reads from their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023), winner of the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
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In this event hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Ocean Vuong talks about his journey through poetry and teaching, how his voice and understanding of genre have changed, and whether or not poetry can change the world in a conversation with Cathy Park Hong. “I’ve always been doubtful of myself, of my work, of my life. But when I’m writing, when I’m inside the poem, I rarely feel true fear,” says Vuong.
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In this Poetry.LA interview, bridgette bianca reads from her debut collection, be/trouble (Writ Large Press, 2020), and talks about the origins of her writing career, documenting her experiences as a professor, and her love of romance novels in a conversation with host Luivette Resto.
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In this event for Vancouver Writers Fest’s Incite reading series, Booker Prize–winning author Michael Ondaatje reads from his new poetry collection, A Year of Last Things (Knopf, 2024), and discusses why he returned to poetry after twenty years of writing novels in a conversation with Jenny Penberthy. “The voice was the most important thing to find, that I could speak almost casually in a poem, whereas a novel is more formal and planned.”
Tags: Poetry | Michael Ondaatje | A Year of Last Things | Knopf | Vancouver Writers Fest | Incite reading series | Jenny Penberthy | reading | 2024 -
In this Haymarket Books event, Julian Randall reads from his first essay collection, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd Sh*t (Bold Type Books, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. The event also includes an introduction by Gabriel Ramirez and readings by poets George Abraham and Itiola Jones.
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In this 2014 Louisiana Channel interview from his home in Brooklyn, Paul Auster talks about how a chance meeting with legendary baseball player Willie Mays led him to become a writer and what he has learned about writing. “The essence of being an artist is to confront the things you’re trying to do, to tackle it head on, and if it’s good, it will have its own beauty.” Auster died at the age of seventy-seven on April 30, 2024.
Tags: Poetry | Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Paul Auster | interview | Louisiana Channel | writing process | writing practice | 2014 | in memoriam -
“If I must die, / you must live / to tell my story…” In this video filmed for the Palestine Festival of Literature, actor Brian Cox reads “If I Must Die” by the late Palestinian poet and English literature professor Refaat Alareer, who died after an Israeli airstrike on Gaza on December 6, 2023. Alareer’s posthumous book of the same name will be published in September by OR Books.
Tags: Poetry | Refaat Alareer | If I Must Die | Palestine Festival of Literature | Brian Cox | reading | in memoriam | 2023 | OR Books -
In this recent installment of UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Brandon Shimoda reads a selection of poems and essays with the theme of “oranges,” which address the memory of Japanese American incarceration and war.
Tags: Poetry | Creative Nonfiction | Cross-Genre | Brandon Shimoda | Lunch Poems | UC Berkeley | reading | 2024 -
“This year I turned my back to the world. I let language face // the front. The parting felt like a death.” In this About the Authors TV video, Victoria Chang speaks about her award-winning collection, Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), and reads a poem from her new collection, With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), which engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin.
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“When I sit down, I invite that muse, that ardor, that passion to get to some place of discovery.” In this preview for the season four premiere of the public television series Poetry in America, poets Richard Blanco and Amanda Gorman, among other writers and scholars, join host Elisa New to discuss two poems by pioneering Black poet Phillis Wheatley. Watch the full episode here.
Tags: Poetry | Poetry in America | Phillis Wheatley | Richard Blanco | Amanda Gorman | Elisa New | television series | trailer | 2024 -
In this inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón introduces her signature project which includes site-specific poetry installations in seven national parks and the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, published by Milkweed Editions in association with the Library of Congress. Limón is joined by poets Molly McCully Brown, Jake Skeets, Analicia Sotelo, and Paul Tran for a reading and conversation.
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In this Politics and Prose event, Dylan Thomas Prize–winning author Nam Le reads from his debut poetry collection, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem (Knopf, 2024), and discusses the choice to write poetry rather than prose, and the sometimes questionable authority of writing about trauma in a conversation with Natasha Sajé.