Multiple Pushcart Prizes-winning poet and debut novelist Kaveh Akbar (Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf) and award-winning poet and prose writer Aracelis Girmay (the black maria and Green of All Heads) read from their work as part of the 2025-26 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series. The writers’ books will be available to purchase and have signed.
This event is cosponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and Labyrinth Books.
About the Authors
Kaveh Akbar. Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Kaveh Akbar is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine. In 2024, Kaveh published his first novel, Martyr!, of which John Green praises, “So stunning, so wrenching, and so beautifully written that reading it for the first time, I kept forgetting to breathe. I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life.” In 2020, Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.
Aracelis Girmay. Photo credit: Yekaterina Gyadu
Aracelis Girmay is a poet who makes work across genres. She is the author of the poetry collections the black maria (BOA, 2016), Kingdom Animalia (BOA, 2011), and Teeth (Curbstone, 2007). For her work she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Recent works (poetry and prose) have been published in e-flux, Astra, The Paris Review Online, Jewish Currents, and Periphery Journal. The Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford, Girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund. Her new poetry collection, Green of All Heads, was published by BOA Editions in September 2025.
Admission & Details
The reading is free and open to the public; no tickets required.
Directions
Get directions to Labyrinth Bookstore, located at 122 Nassau Street in Princeton.
Accessibility
Labyrinth Books is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
