Fiction writer Justin Torres and five seniors in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University will read from their work on Friday, November 14 at Labyrinth Books. The reading is part of the Emerging Writers Reading Series, which showcases senior thesis students of the Program in Creative Writing with established writers as special guests. Featuring student writers Samuel Butler, Jared Garland, Ava Geyer, Cameron Langford, and Isabelle Laurenzi, the reading begins at 6:00 p.m. at the bookstore at 122 Nassau Street and is free and open to the public.
Photo by Winni Wintermeyer
Justin Torres is the author of the bestselling and highly regarded novel We the Animals, of which fellow novelist Michael Cunningham wrote, “We should all be grateful for Justin Torres, a brilliant, ferocious new voice.” Torres’ short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, Glimmer Train, Flaunt, and other publications. His non-fiction work has appeared in The Guardian and The Advocate.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Torres was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and most recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. The National Book Foundation named him one of 2012’s “5 Under 35.” He has been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. He teaches at Columbia University, Lesley University’s Low Residency M.F.A. Program and The Writers’ Foundry M.F.A. Program at St. Joseph’s College. Torres is currently a 2014-15 Cullman Center Fellow at The New York Public Library.
The five seniors, who are pursuing a certificate in Creative Writing in addition to their major areas of study, will read from their senior thesis projects. Each is currently working on a novel, screenplay, translations, or a collection of poems or short stories as part of a creative thesis for their certificate with a member of the Creative Writing faculty including Jeffrey Eugenides, Chang-rae Lee, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, and Edmund White.
The series, hosted by the seniors in the Program, is intended to present a public showcase for the work of their peers and to invite professional writers by whom the students have been inspired.
