On February 13 Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts presents the final event in the 2023-24 Atelier@Large conversation series that brings guest artists and intellectuals to campus for public discussions on the challenges they face in making art in the modern world. For this concluding conversation in the series, Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Princeton Atelier Paul Muldoon will be joined by award-winning transgender writer and bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan and songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bridget Kearney, a founding member of the band Lake Street Dive. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. on February 13 in Richardson Auditorium on Princeton’s campus. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. 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.
The Princeton Atelier, currently directed by Muldoon, was founded in 1994 by Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, at the University. The Atelier brings together professional artists from different disciplines and Princeton students to create new work in the context of a semester-long course that culminates in the public presentation of that new work. Recent artists have included Stew, Laurie Anderson, the improv group Baby Wants Candy, and the Wakka Wakka Puppet Theatre. The Atelier@Large series, established in 2021, is an extension of the Princeton Atelier that brings guest artists and intellectuals to campus to speak on art’s role in the modern world. Guests in the series have included Hernan Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Joy Harjo, Sarah Hart, Jennifer Homans, Andrey Kurkov, Alan Lightman, Michael J. Love, Jonathan Majors, Kyle Marshall, Lorrie Moore, Darryl (Run DMC) McDaniels, Anais Mitchell, Suzanne Nossel, Lynn Nottage, Claudia Rankine, Cara Reichel, and Tom Stoppard. This year’s series is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books.
“Being an artist is tough enough at the best of times,” says Muldoon, “but it’s particularly difficult just now. Artists are coming under pressure from numerous orthodoxies to both left and right, as to what they must or must not do. Most insidious, perhaps, is the form of self-censorship that has artists second guessing themselves. In addition to honoring some of our finest minds, The Atelier@Large series provides a rare enough forum in which some of these ideas may be aired.”
Jennifer Finney Boylan. Photo Credit: Dan Haar
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of 18 books, including the critically acclaimed memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003), one of the first bestselling works by a transgender American; the memoir Good Boy (2020); and the novel Long Black Veil (2017). With Jodi Picoult, Princeton Class of 1987, she recently coauthored the bestselling novel Mad Honey (2022). Boylan is currently working on Falcon Quinn and the Bullies of Greenblud, an anti-bullying young adult project, and the anthology of women writing about home entitled, This is the Place. Known as a novelist, memoirist, and opinion writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, she is also an advocate for civil rights. From 2013-2017 Boylan served as co-chair of the board of directors of GLAAD, the media advocacy group for LGBT people worldwide. After serving as vice president of the PEN America board of trustees, she was elected as president of PEN America in late 2023. Boylan has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Live with Larry King, The Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR’s Marketplace, and Talk of the Nation. She has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News’ 48 Hours and The History Channel, and she served as an advisor to the television series Transparent. Currently the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University, Boylan is also a member of the faculty of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers’ Conference in Positano, Italy.
Bridget Kearney. Photo credit: Rodneri
Bridget Kearney is an Iowa-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. With Lake Street Dive, she has performed at venues including Radio City Music Hall, The Hollywood Bowl, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and The White House South Lawn, and has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, and Conan. Her third solo album, Comeback Kid, will come out later this year on Keeled Scales. In 2020 Kearney released the album Still Flying on Verve Forecast, written and recorded in Accra, Ghana, as a collaboration with Ghanaian artists Aaron Bebe Sukura and Stevo Atambire, as well as Los Angeles-based producer Benjamin Lazar Davis. She also performs as a side person with various artists, having recently played bass with pop singer Ed Sheeran and folk singer Aoife O’Donovan. Kearney holds a B.M. from the New England Conservatory in jazz studies (bass) and a B.A from Tufts University in English.
Paul Muldoon is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, as well as the founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. As an internationally renowned Irish poet, Muldoon has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” Muldoon won the Pulitzer Prize for his ninth collection of poems, Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). His 14th volume of poems, Howdie-Skelp, was released in 2021 by Farrar Straus & Giroux. His 15th, Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, will appear in April 2024.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Princeton Atelier, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
