In a renewed effort to share with a contemporary audience some of the great literary moments the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this page features archival recordings of some of the best writers of our time.

“One steps into history, as well as into the company of legends (from Neruda to Nabokov), when walking into the 92nd Street Y. I can’t think of any institution that more steadily and elegantly speaks for the power of the word, the value of tradition and the fact that, even in the age of Twitter and cell-phones, hundreds can be bound together by a poet onstage, alone, declaiming his words. A night at the Y is like no night anywhere else.” (Pico Iyer)