Award-winning writers next in 2017-18 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series at Princeton

On Wednesday, October 11, award-winning fiction writer Rachel Cusk and acclaimed poet and Princeton alumnus Nathaniel Mackey, Class of 1969, 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. in the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, is free and open to the public.On Wednesday, October 11, award-winning fiction writer Rachel Cusk and acclaimed poet and Princeton alumnus Nathaniel Mackey, Class of 1969, 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. in the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, is free and open to the public.

Award-winning fiction writer Rachel Cusk. Photo by Siemon Scamell-Katz

Rachel Cusk is the author of nine novels and three works of nonfiction. She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes. Her 2014 novel, Outline, was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Canadian Governor General’s Award. The New York Times named Outline as one of the top ten books of the year. Her most recent novel, Transit (2016), was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and moved to the United Kingdom in 1974.  In 2003, she was named one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta magazine. In 2015 her version of Euripides’ Medea was staged at the Almeida Theatre with Rupert Goold directing and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Cusk will be introduced by A.M. Homes, novelist, memoirist, screenwriter and member of the Program in Creative Writing faculty.

Acclaimed poet and Princeton alumnus Nathaniel Mackey, Class of 1969. Photo by Paul Schraub

Nathaniel Mackey, Princeton class of 1969, is the author of six books of poetry, the most recent of which is Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015); an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, whose fifth and most recent volume is Late Arcade (New Directions, 2017); and two books of criticism, the most recent of which is Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).  He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone, coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993), and coeditor, with Michael Bough, Kent Johnson and others, of the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Dispatches Editions/Spuyten Duyvil, 2017).  His awards and honors include the National Book Award for poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the William B. Hart Residency in Poetry at the American Academy in Rome, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize from the Library of Congress. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University.

Mackey will be introduced by Susan Stewart, poet, critic and faculty member of Princeton’s Department of English.

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. Other readings scheduled in the 2017-2018 series include:

• Hilton Als and Hoa Nguyen on Wednesday, November 15, 7:30 p.m. at the Lewis Arts complex
• Alaa Al Aswany and Linda Gregorson on Wednesday, February 7, 7:30 p.m., at the Lewis Arts complex
• Osama Alomar and Luc Sante on Wednesday, March 7, 7:30 p.m., at the Lewis Arts complex
• Jane Hirshfield, Princeton Class of 1973, and Walter Mosley, on Wednesday, April 18, 4:30 p.m., at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center