Award-winning poet Wendy Xu 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 11 at Labyrinth Books. The reading is part of the C. K. Williams Reading Series, which showcases senior thesis students of the Program in Creative Writing alongside established writers as special guests. Featuring student writers Luisa Banchoff, Ben Goodman, Cai Marshall, Shannon Osaka, and Margaret Wright, the reading begins at 6:00 p.m. at Labyrinth Books, located at 122 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public.
Award-winning Poet Wendy Xu. Photo credit: Adrianne Mathiowetz
Wendy Xu is the author of Phrasis, winner of the Ottoline Prize. Her other works include You Are Not Dead, which was profiled as one of 2013’s best debuts by Poets & Writers magazine. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Xu’s work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Best American Poetry, A Public Space, Boston Review, Poetry, and Gulf Coast. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing M.F.A. Program at Columbia University and serves as poetry editor for Hyperallergic.
The five seniors, who are pursuing a certificate in the Program 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 a 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, Paul Muldoon, Kirstin Valdez Quade, 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 provide the senior class the opportunity to read with and learn from established writers they admire. The series is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C. K. Williams, who served on Princeton’s creative writing faculty for twenty years.
The Program in Creative Writing also presents the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series on Wednesdays at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center. Upcoming guests include Eileen Myles, Stephen King, Paul Beatty, Marilyn Chin, Douglas Kearney, Kirstin Valdez Quade, John Ashbery, and Jim Jarmusch.
