Students in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ world-renowned Program in Creative Writing will present new work at a reading on December 10 at 4:30 p.m. at Chancellor Green Rotunda on the Princeton University campus. Students from fall workshops in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and literary translation will read from new work completed during the past semester. The reading, part of the Program in Creative Writing’s Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series at the Lewis Center for the Arts, is free and open to the public.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski
“Students have written and read all semester with nine of their colleagues under the instruction of writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Tracy K. Smith,” notes Susan Wheeler, Director of the Program, “and the range of their work – across several genres – is extraordinary and inspiring. This ‘Best of Fall ’14” sampler, live and in person, is a snapshot of the next generation of great writers and of the vitality of the creative writing endeavor at Princeton, where each year over a tenth of all Princeton undergraduates undertake imaginative writing.”
Through the Program, students can earn a certificate in creative writing in addition to their degree in a major. They have the opportunity to pursue original work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and translation under the guidance of practicing, award-winning authors, including permanent faculty members Jeffrey Eugenides, Chang-rae Lee, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Jim Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, and Edmund White. Lecturers this semester included Catherine Barnett, Susan Choi, Michael Dickman, A. M. Homes, Steven Katz, Sheila Kohler, Christina Lazaridi, Fiona Maazel, Patrick McGrath, Susanna Moore, Idra Novey, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Hannah Pylväinen, and Monica Youn. Small workshop courses, averaging eight to ten students, provide intensive feedback and instruction for both beginners and advanced writers. Each year 15 to 20 seniors work individually with a member of the faculty on a creative thesis, such as a novel, a screenplay, or a collection of short stories, poems, or translations.
Graduates of the Program include such well-known writers as Jonathan Ames ’87, Jonathan Safran Foer ’99, Jane Hirshfield ’73 and Monica Youn ’93.
The Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series annually brings a number of distinguished writers to campus to read and discuss their work. Writers reading in the coming months include Evie Shockley (poetry) and Meg Wolitzer (fiction) on February 11, A.E. Stallings (poetry) and Akhil Sharma (Fiction) on March 11, and Rachel Kushner (fiction) and John Yau (poetry) on April 15. All readings are free and open to the public.
