Matthew Zapruder discusses his new book Why Poetry, an impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, with David Ulin at Skylight Books.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of Why Poetry (Ecco, August 2017), a book of prose about poetry, as well as the poetry collections Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), Come On, All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), The Pajamist (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), and American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002). An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College of California, he is also editor at large at Wave Books and from 2016-2017 was editor of the poetry column for the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, CA.
David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground (Unnamed Press, 2016). A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2015), a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America, 2012), which won a California Book Award.
Skylight Books is a general bookstore serving the historic Los Angeles neighborhoods of Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park, and Downtown. It is located in the shadow of Griffith Park and its iconic Observatory and is surrounded by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, R.M. Schindler, and Richard Neutra.
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