News

April 14, 2016

Poet Ocean Vuong Reads with Four Seniors in Princeton’s Creative Writing Program

Poet Ocean Vuong and four seniors in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University will read from their work on Friday, April 22 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 Andra Bailard, Lauren Frost, Eliza Mott, and T.J. Smith, the reading begins at 6:00 p.m. at the bookstore, 122 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public.

ocean vuong

Award-winning poet Ocean Vuong. Photo courtesy Vuong.

OCEAN VUONG is the author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds (2016). A 2016 winner of the Whiting Award and a 2014 Ruth Lilly fellow, he has received honors from Kundiman, Poets House, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy), the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and a Pushcart Prize. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Best New Poets 2014, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the 2012 Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Vuong was among the poets featured at Princeton’s 2015 biennial Poetry Festival.

The four 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, a screenplay, translations, or a collection of poems or short stories as part of a creative thesis for their certificate. Thesis students in the Program in Creative Writing work closely with a member of the faculty, which includes Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, Paul Muldoon, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, Edmund White, and a number of distinguished lecturers.

The series, hosted by the seniors in the program, is intended to present a public showcase for the work of the thesis students and give the senior class the opportunity to read with and learn from established writers they admire.

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Steve Runk
Director of Communications
609-258-5262
srunk@princeton.edu