News

April 4, 2016

Poet Ciaran Berry and Novelist Nell Zink read next in Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series

ciaran berry

Poet Ciaran Berry. Photo by Stacie Turner

On Wednesday, April 6, poet Ciaran Berry and novelist Nell Zink will read from their work as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series of the Program in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts. The reading, beginning at 4:30 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, is free and open to the public.

Ciaran Berry is the author of The Dead Zoo (2013), a recent Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and The Sphere of Birds (2008), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Berry has received a 2012 Whiting Writers’ Award, and his work has been featured in The Best of Irish Poetry, Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses, and Best New Poets, as well as in journals such as AGNI, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The Missouri Review, and The Threepenny Review. Originally from western Ireland, he directs the Creative Writing Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Nell Zink has published two novels: The Wallcreeper, which was named one of 100 Notable Books of 2014 by The New York Times, and Mislaid, which was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2015. Born near Los Angeles, Zink grew up in rural Tidewater Virginia and majored in philosophy at the College of William and Mary. In the mid-1990s she founded and ran the punk rock ’zine Animal Review. Zink has worked a wide variety of jobs — bricklayer, executive secretary, waitress, translator, and technical writer — and has lived in Tel Aviv and Germany, where she earned her doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen. After encouragement from Jonathan Franzen, Zink began to publish literary work in the early 2010s. Her third novel, Nicotine, is scheduled for release in fall 2016. Her writing has appeared in n+1, and she has also been profiled in The New Yorker. She currently lives near Berlin.

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Fiction writer Nell Zink. Photo by Fred Filkorn

The Lewis Center’s Program in Creative Writing annually presents the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, which provides an opportunity for students, as well as all in the greater Princeton region, to hear and meet the best writers of contemporary poetry and fiction. All readings are free and open to the public and take place on select Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center.

On May 2 and 4 seniors in the Program will read from their recent senior thesis work — a novel, screenplay, or a collection of short stories, poems, or translations — developed under mentorship with faculty in the Program, including Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri, Paul Muldoon, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, and Edmund White.

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Steve Runk
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srunk@princeton.edu