News

October 6, 2016

Lewis Center for the Arts presents A Reading with Writers NoViolet Bulawayo and Valeria Luiselli

On Wednesday, October 12, fiction writer and 2016-17 Hodder Fellow NoViolet Bulawayo and fiction and nonfiction writer Valeria Luiselli will read from their work as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series of the Program in Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. The reading, beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, is free and open to the public.

noviolet bulawayo

Writer NoViolet Bulawayo. Photo courtesy Open Book

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of We Need New Names, which was published in 2013 and has been recognized with the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Pen/Hemingway Award, and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. We Need New Names was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award and was featured on The New York Times Notable Books of 2013 list, the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers list, and the National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Fiction Selection. Bulawayo won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Hitting Budapest.” Having grown up in Zimbabwe, she earned her M.F.A. at Cornell University, where she was a recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she now teaches as a Jones Lecturer in Fiction. As a Princeton Hodder Fellow she was selected through a highly competitive process. During her fellowship year she is working on a novel and short story collection.

Kirstin Valdez Quade, an assistant professor of creative writing at Princeton and recipient of a National Book Critics Circle award, will introduce Bulawayo.

Valeria Luiselli’s most recent novel, La Historia de Mis Dientes (The Story of my Teeth), was published in 2015. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 2016 and was featured on The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015 list. Her essay collection, Sidewalks, was published in 2014. Other works include a book of personal essays titled Papeles Falsos, or Fake Papers (2012), and her first novel, Los Ingravidos, or Faces in the Crowd (2014), which was originally published by Sexto Piso in 2011 and in the United Kingdom by Granta in 2012. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Asymptote, McSweeney, Granta, Letras Libres, and The New York Times. Luiselli has been named one of the “5 under 35” by the National Book Foundation, and her work has been translated into 14 languages. Born in Mexico City, Mexico, she has recently completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Luiselli will be introduced by Lecturer in Creative Writing and award-winning writer Boris Fishman, who is also a Princeton alumnus, Class of 2001.

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 contemporary writers. All readings are free and open to the public and take place on select Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. in the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center.

Other readings scheduled in the 2016-2017 series include:

  • Stephen King and Eileen Myles on November 16 (this reading will be ticketed with advance ticket reservations encouraged; free tickets will be available later in October.)
  • Paul Beatty and Marilyn Chin on February 8
  • Douglas Kearney and Kirstin Valdez Quade on March 15
  • John Ashbery and Jim Jarmusch on April 19

Press Contact

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