fathers

Patricia Smith reads widely from her work, including several uncollected poems.

In this performance, Michael Burkard reads from his first three books, particularly from the 1981 collection Ruby for Grief. He also reads some uncollected work.

This reading, originally given with Leslie Marmon Silko, was Daryl Ross Begay's first public reading. 

Mark Halperin reads work primarily from Backroads (1976). He also reads some unpublished poems at the time, which would go on to be collected in A Place Made Fast (1982).

Ofelia Zepeda reads from Where Clouds Are Formed (2008). This reading was originally given with Christopher Burawa.

A celebration of the fairy tale, featuring readings from authors included in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (2010), an anthology of new fairy tales edited by Kate Bernheimer.

David Rivard reads primarily from Wise Poison (1996). He also reads unpublished work and poems that would go on to appear in his collection Bewitched Playground (2000).

Zachary Schomburg reads from Fjords (2012) and Scary, No Scary (2009). This reading was originally given with Joyelle McSweeney.

Shannon Cain reads a story from her collection The Necessity of Certain Behaviors (2011) as part of the University of Arizona Prose Series. This reading was originally given with Lydia Millet.

In this reading, originally given with Aurelie Sheehan, Beth Alvarado shares an excerpt from the short story collection Not a Matter of Love (2006).

In this reading, originally given with Beth Alvarado, Aurelie Sheehan shares excerpts from the novel History Lessons for Girls (2006), as well as a work in progress called One Hundred Histories.

Richard Russo reads the title story from his collection The Whore's Child and Other Stories (2002).

Patricia Hampl reads an excerpt from her memoir The Florist's Daughter (2007).

Rebecca Seiferle reads poems from The Ripped-Out Seam (1993), The Music We Dance To (1999), and Bitters (2001).

Timothy Liu reads new poems that would go on to be published in Don't Go Back to Sleep (2014), as well as poems from Polytheogamy (2009) and Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse (2009).

Gene Frumkin reads poems from The Rainbow-Walker (1968). This reading was originally given with Douglas Flaherty.

Robin Robertson reads poems from his books Sailing the Forest: Selected Poems (2014), A Painted Field (1997), and Hill of Doors (2013).

Elizabeth Evans reads from the first and fifth chapter of The Blue Hour (1995). She opens her performance by reading a poem by W. B. Yeats, "Adam's Curse."

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Stephen Dunn opens with "Under the Black Oaks," the poem he had most recently written at the time of this reading. Dunn reads poems from throughout his career, often on the theme of family, including a poem about losing his mother, an atheist's parenting dilemmas as his daughter moves toward Christianity, and an ode to the sister he never had.

John Logan reads from his collections The Spring of the Thief: Poems 1960-1962 (1963), The House That Jack Built: or, A Portrait of the Artist as a Sad Sensualist (1974), and from the long poem A Trip to Four or Five Towns. He concludes by reading all eight sections of the book-length poem Poem In Progress (1975). Many of the poems read here would go on to appear in his Collected Poems (BOA Editions, 1989) and are used with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Richard Jackson reads long poems from his collection Worlds Apart (1987) and others that would be collected in Alive All Day (1992). He begins with a poem by Thomas Hardy, "I Looked Up from My Writing."

Mark Doty reads from his collection of poetry Deep Lane (2015).

Essayist and poet Erik Reece reads poems from A Short History of the Present (2009) and essays from An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (2009) as well as Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016).

Renee Angle reads from her book-length poetry project WoO (2016). This reading was originally given with Wendy Burk.

Charles Yu reads "Origin Story," a draft of a chapter from his novel Interior Chinatown (2020). This reading was originally given with Kristen Radtke.

Thomas Mira y Lopez reads from his essay collection The Book of Resting Places: A Personal History of Where We Lay the Dead (2018). This reading was originally given with Francisco Cantú and Sylvia Chan. 

Donika Kelly reads from her first two books, Bestiary (2016) and The Renunciations (2021). She closes by reading several recent, uncollected poems.

Los Angeles poet Sesshu Foster reads from City Terrace Field Manual (1996), World Ball Notebook (2008), and City of the Future (2018). He reads poems that engage with East LA, the influences of his father, and his own life as a father, mixing candor and humor throughout.