Poem

Saeed Jones joins Kevin Young to read “The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart,” by Deborah Digges, and his own poem “A Spell to Banish Grief.” Jones’s work has received the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, and a Stonewall Book Award.

Eileen Myles joins Kevin Young to read “Without,” by Joy Harjo, and their own poem “Dissloution.” Myles has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Their honors include the Publishing Triangle’s 2020 Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, multiple Lambda Literary Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Christian Wiman joins Kevin Young to discuss “Far from Kingdoms” and “Outside, In Fact, There Wasn't Any Change,” by Patrizia Cavalli, translated by Judith Baumel, and his own poem “Eating Grapes Downward.” Wiman is a poet, essayist, editor, and translator, whose honors include the 2016 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Amanda Gorman joins Kevin Young to read “Declaration,” by Tracy K. Smith, and her own poem “Ship’s Manifest.” Gorman served as the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, received a 2020 Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and, in 2021, became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history.

Aria Aber joins Kevin Young to read “Half Light,” by Frank Bidart, and her own poem “Dirt and Light.” Aber is a Whiting Award recipient, a current Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the author of “Hard Damage,” which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.