Poet and conceptual sound artist Jonah Mixon-Webster, author of the PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award-winning collection Stereo(TYPE), will read from his work at 5:00 p.m. on November 7 in the Drapkin Studio at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton University campus. Priyanka Aiyer, Abigail Anthony, Ngan Chien, and Allen Delgado, seniors in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing, will also read from their recent work; senior Cassandra James will host the evening. This event is part of the 2022-2023 C.K. Williams Reading Series, named after the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C.K. Williams, who served on Princeton’s faculty for 20 years. This series showcases senior students of the Program in Creative Writing alongside established writers as special guests. The event is free and open to the public, no tickets are required. The studio is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Jonah Mixon-Webster. Photo Credit: Aslan Chalom
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet, conceptual sound artist, educator, scholar, and art activist from Flint, Michigan. He is the founder of the Flint-based nonprofit Center for Imaginative Freedoms and Economic Relief (C.I.F.E.R.) and serves as chapter leader of PEN America – Detroit. His debut poetry collection, Stereo(TYPE), in addition to receiving the prestigious PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. When Webster was named a winner of the 2020 Windham Campbell Prize for poetry, the judges praised his work: “Intimate and violent, provocative and tender, mythic and ritualistic, Stereo(TYPE) compels its readers to become witnesses to environmental and social evil.” Mixon-Webster’s other honors and awards include the 2017 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, the inaugural Mellon Arts Postdoctoral Fellow in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Images & Voices of Hope, The Conversation Literary Festival, and the PEN Writing for Justice Program. His poetry and hybrid works are featured in various publications including Obsidian, Harper’s, The Yale Review, The Rumpus, Callaloo, The New Republic, Best New Poets and Best American Experimental Writing. He is an alumnus of Eastern Michigan University and received his Ph.D. in creative writing from Illinois State University.
The four seniors who will read from their work are among 25 Princeton students pursuing certificates in creative writing in addition to their major areas of study. Each is currently working on a novel, a screenplay, translations, or a collection of poems or short stories as part of their creative independent work for the certificate. These students in the Program in Creative Writing work closely with a member of the faculty, which includes award-winning writers Michael Dickman, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Daphne Kalotay, Christina Lazaridi, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Susan Wheeler, and a number of distinguished lecturers and visiting professors.
The 2022-23 series continues on December 5 with a reading by novelist Raven Leilani, followed by readings by fiction writer Dantiel W. Moniz on February 6 and poet Ina Cariño on March 27.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the reading series, the Program in Creative Writing, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free.
