New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

In the second part of this public presentation by Mart�n Espada for Park University's 2013 Ethnic Voices Poetry Series at the Kansas City Public Library, the former tenant lawyer talks about how he was able to transfer his advocacy from the justice system to poetry, giving voice to those who are otherwise silenced. After a fresh reading of the title poem from Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (tha...

Poet Kenneth Irby was born in Texas and raised in the Midwest before serving in the U.S. Army. A graduate of Harvard and Berkeley, Irby settled in Lawrence, Kansas, where he's spent his teaching and writing career at the University of Kansas. Often associated with the Black Mountain Poets, particularly Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Ed Dorn, Irby tells former Kansas Poet Laureate, Den...

This compilation features very different approaches to intertwining poetry and music, resulting in equally different performances.� It includes work by Missouri Poet Laureate (2012-2014)�William Trowbridge with musician Bob Walkenhorst in their presentation of Ship of Fool: The Musical. Tony Barnstone talks about r...

Ron Tanner has been crafting stories for decades, but it was his turn-of the-century move, when he and his girlfriend began renovating an old frat house together that inspired his memoir, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. The home has been featured in This Old House�magazine and is also the subject of Ron T...

Inspired by Latino writers Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garc�a Marquez to write across genres, Rigoberto Gonz�lez, the 2015 winner of the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, discusses his work that includes poetry, young adult fiction, and nonfiction. A self-proclaimed gay Chicano, his book Butterfly Boy�won the 2007 American Book Award, and his most recent full length poetry book,...

As part of the Writers at Work series at the Kansas City Public Library, Jayne Anne Phillips reads from her fifth novel,�Quiet Dell, and discusses it with the University of Missouri-Kansas City's New Letters Writer-in-Residence, Whitney Terrell. They talk about the many facets of her research into this mass murder of a widow and her three children by Har...

Acclaimed writer George Saunders reads a passage from his prestigious Story Prize-winning collection,�Tenth of December. In this public presentation for Rainy Day Books, Saunders discusses his path to becoming a writer, how his family and career have influenced his work, and the desire he has to connect with and engage readers. His unique experiences as a ...

Originally from Xalapa, in Veracruz, Mexico,�X�nath Caraza�likes to use poetry to showcase some of Mexico's linguistic and cultural diversity, drawing inspiration from Afro-Mexican history, Latino pop culture, and the rhythmic language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl.�In this interview at Mid-Continent's Woodneath Library Center for Park University's 2014 Ethnic Voices Poetry Series, she talks about her ekphrastic poetry...

Christina Anderson is an up-and-coming playwright who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. She talks about her unusual journey first to Brown University and then to Yale to study theatre. She discusses the importance of transformation in her plays, from the first creative spark to the final curtain call, and hopes that her work will inspire change in the real world by testing audiences about their feelings on settings and situations not often examined. She reads from her play, Good Goods, ...

Inspired by Latino writers Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garc�a Marquez to write across genres, Rigoberto Gonz�lez discusses his work that includes poetry, young adult fiction, and nonfiction. A self-proclaimed gay Chicano, his book Butterfly Boy�won the 2007 American Book Award, and his most recent poetry book,�Unpeopled Ed...

In this public reading entitled "Love Letters to Generations," Angela Jackson, a Chicago poet and playwright who was a prominent member of the Organization of Black American Culture that grew out of the Civil Right Movement, shares some of her work, including a reading from her first novel that was 40 years in the making,�Where I Must Go, winner of the 2008 American Book Award. Jackson also ...

In part two of this interview with Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort,�she reads from her 2011 book,�Collected Body,�and talks about how her grandmother and female ancestry inspired the work, helping her develop themes of migration, movement and the exiled body. Mort also talks about how family, nature, and various landscapes...

In part one of this interview, Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, winner of the 2005�Crystal of Vilenica Award in Slovenia and the 2008 Burda Poetry Prize in Germany, discusses her work, in particular her book,�Factory of Tears.�She admits that her poems are never truly finished�and discusses how translating the work fr...

We pay tribute to Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson, the former Virginia Poet Laureate (2008-10) who died December 4, 2014. A former bookseller, mail carrier, and real estate agent, Emerson deftly portrayed her native rural Virginia in her five books, with another forthcoming in 2015. In this 2007 archive program, she talks about what led her to poetry and reads from her first book,...

We honor the life of poet Mark Strand, who passed away on November 29, 2014 at the age of 80. This 2004 recording features the former U.S. Poet Laureate and MacArthur "genius" in conversation with New Letters editor Robert Stewart. With wit and style, Mark Strand talks about his life in letters, the dark humor of his poetry, and his refusal to speak his native French language.�He reads from several of his books including his 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winner,...