Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2023 event co-presented by Bellevue Literary Review at the Center for Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips reads from her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Night Watch (Knopf, 2023), and discusses setting her story during the Civil War in West Virginia in a conversation with editor Danielle Ofri. “History gives us the facts, but literature tells us the story,” says Phillips. “The characters access the meaning of history for us.”

Watch the trailer for All the Light We Cannot See, a Netflix limited series adapted from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Mark Ruffalo. The series is set to premiere in November.

“Speak to me; speak into me, / the wind said, when I woke this morning, Let’s see what happens.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Carl Phillips reads a selection of poems from his Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022), and speaks to Jeffrey Brown about the intimacy and power of poetry. Phillips is the recipient of the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize.

In this New York Public Library event, Cullman Center fellow Hua Hsu reads from his debut memoir, Stay True (Doubleday, 2022), and speaks about writing through grief with Ken Chen. Hsu is the winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in memoir or autobiography.

In this 92nd Street Y event, Ama Codjoe reads from her debut collection, Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), with an introduction by poet Nkosi Nkululeko, followed by Carl Phillips reading from his latest collection, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007–2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), with an introduction by poet Shane McCrae. Phillips won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection.

“[The Congo] is the heartbeat of the world, and it’s never recognized as a central heartbeat,” says Will Alexander about the focus of his most recent collection, Refractive Africa (New Directions, 2021), a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, in this Poetry.LA interview with Douglas Manuel about the intuition he follows for his writing. “I’m not colonized by cognitive expertise,” says Alexander.

“I still believe that we listen more closely to a whisper than to a shout.” In this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Rita Dove speaks about history, rage, the power of poetry, and her latest collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse (Norton, 2021).

“I don’t call it sleep anymore. / I’ll risk losing something new instead,” reads Natalie Diaz from her poem “From the Desire Field” in this Graywolf Press virtual event celebrating her collection Postcolonial Love Poem, for which she won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

“We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves,” reads Washington Post’s Robin Givhan from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s latest novel, The Committed (Grove Press, 2021), in this conversation with the Pulitzer Prize–winning author on how history and memory have shaped his life and writing. 

“I am convinced that the more I am well-known, the better known I am, the easier it is for other writers to come along,” says Toni Morrison in this 1987 interview with PBS NewsHour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault on her success as an author and what inspired her novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

“I was born passing / off the problem of the twentieth century: I was born.” In this 2016 video, Gregory Pardlo reads “Written By Himself” from his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), accompanied by the Finnish jazz combo Hot Heros at the Annikki Poetry Festival in Finland. For a writing prompt inspired by this poem, visit The Time Is Now.

“We thought / Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning / Names in heat, in elements classical / Philosophers said could change us.” In this Paris Review video, Jericho Brown reads two poems from his most recent collection, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), for which he received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Filmed in 2019 in the woods of Decatur, Georgia, “Poets in Space” was directed and produced by Daniel Grossman and Sean Webley in collaboration with the poet Malachi Black.

“We like to think about people and nature as two separate things,” says Richard Powers speaking about his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Overstory (Norton, 2018), in this PBS NewsHour interview. “This book is precisely a book that challenges that notion of human separatism.” For more Powers, read “A Talk in the Woods: Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers” from the November/December 2018 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“To deprivatize is not the same as to make public. A field is only natural or private after so much hurt.” In this short film, Jos Charles offers a preface for her poetry collection feeld (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

“You don’t need a lot of sensitivity or soul to feel moved by a redwood forest,” says Richard Powers about the origins of his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Overstory (Norton, 2018). In this 92nd Street Y video, Powers joins Barbara Kingsolver, author of the novel Unsheltered (HarperCollins, 2018), for a reading and conversation with Kevin Larimer, editor in chief of Poets & Writers Magazine. The authors were featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Forgive / yourself, they say, but / after you forgive / what you have lived, / what is left?” At San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center, Forrest Gander reads “Stepping Out of the Light” from his collection Be With (New Directions, 2018), for which he won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize award in poetry.

“The main advice I would have is to be really easy on yourself, to shut off as much as you can the voice that’s saying maybe you’re wasting your time, and maybe everything that you do is stupid.” Elif Batuman, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for her debut novel, The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), talks to Granta about the literary model of Charles M. Schulz’s Snoopy and the blurred boundary between fiction and nonfiction.

“Poetry travels, you don’t need a lot of money to write it, you don’t need a lot of money to print it and distribute it.” Evie Shockley, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third collection, semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), talks with City of Asylum about the accessibility of writing poetry and its long and powerful tradition.

“The next morning Less is awakened at six, as planned, introduced to a cup of coffee, and led into a black van with smoked windows....” In this video for Mercury News, Andrew Sean Greer reads from his fifth novel, Less (Lee Boudreaux Books, 2017), for which he was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

“I became a writer once I realized no one liked my stuff. I just had no choice but to keep going and start a new novel.” In an interview for Louisiana Channel, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Colson Whitehead talks about how rejections of his first manuscript pushed him forward to pursue writing and why he enjoys exploring different genres.