In a series of conversations that bring guest artists to campus to discuss what they face in making art in the modern world, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, director of the Princeton Atelier, moderates a discussion with Princeton scholar, translator and biographer David Bellos (Who Owns This Sentence: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs); songwriter Bridget Kearney, a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and founding member of the band Lake Street Dive; and novelist and journalist Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, Someone Like Us).
This year’s series is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books, and recent books by some of the guests will be available for purchase.
Admission & Details
This event is free and open to the public; no tickets or advance registration required.
Directions
Get directions to Richardson Auditorium, located in Alexander Hall on the Princeton University campus.
Accessibility
Richardson Auditorium is an accessible venue with assistive listening devices available. A house wheelchair (for transfer only) is available upon request; inquire with staff at the door. Guests in need of other 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.
About the Artists
David Bellos
David Bellos. Photo courtesy of David Bellos
David Bellos is a Professor of French and Italian and Comparative Literature and Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton. He gained his doctorate in French literature from Oxford University (UK) and taught subsequently at Edinburgh, Southampton and Manchester before coming to Princeton in 1997. He worked first in nineteenth century studies, particularly on the novel and the history of literary ideas and then developed interests in post-war French writing and film. He is the translator and biographer of Georges Perec and has also written major studies of Jacques Tati and Romain Gary. A well-known translator, he is also the author of an irreverent introduction to translation studies, Is That A Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything (2011). In 2017, The Novel of the Century. The Amazing Adventure of Les Misérables, marked a return to nineteenth-century studies in a trans-national perspective. His latest book, Who owns this sentence? A history of copyrights and wrongs, co-authored with Alexandre Montagu, appeared with Mountain Lion Press in London and W.W. Norton in New York in January 2024. He has won the French-American Foundation’s translation prize (1988), the Prix Goncourt de la Biographie (1994), the Man Booker International translator’s award (2005) and the Book Award of the American Library in Paris, and holds the rank of officier in the Orde national des Arts et des Lettres. He was the recipient of Princeton’s 2019 Howard T. Berhman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. He is currently translating Victor Hugo’s last novel, Quatrevingt-treize, and is working on a popular history of the French language.
Bridget Kearney
Photo by Rodneri
Bridget Kearney is an Iowa-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. A founding member of the band Lake Street Dive, she has performed at venues including Radio City Music Hall, The Hollywood Bowl, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and The White House South Lawn and has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report and Conan. Her third solo album, “Comeback Kid,” will come out later this year on Keeled Scales. In 2020 she released the album “Still Flying” on Verve Forecast, written and recorded in Accra, Ghana, a collaboration with Ghanaian artists Aaron Bebe Sukura and Stevo Atambire, as well as Los Angeles-based producer Benjamin Lazar Davis. She also performs as a side person with various artists, having recently played bass with pop singer Ed Sheeran and folk singer Aoife O’Donovan. Kearney holds a B.M. from the New England Conservatory in Jazz Studies (bass) and a B.A. from Tufts University in English.
Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007). A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Jane, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. He is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College.
