The Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, continues the 2023-24 season with a reading by Tony Award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Henry Hwang and acclaimed poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa, and professor of creative writing at Princeton. The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. on February 20 in the Drapkin Studio at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton University campus. The event is free and open to the public; advance tickets are required through University Ticketing. The Drapkin Studio is an accessible venue. 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.
David Henry Hwang. Photo credit: Lia Chang
David Henry Hwang is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. He is also a three-time OBIE Award winner, a Grammy Award winner, who has been twice nominated, and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In addition to M. Butterfly, Hwang’s stage work includes the plays Kung Fu, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, Family Devotions, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song (2002 revision of Rodgers & Hammerstein) and Disney’s Tarzan. Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist, he has written 13 libretti, including five with composer Philip Glass. Hwang also co-wrote the Gold Record Solo with the late pop music icon Prince. For television, Hwang was a writer/consulting producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair and is now creating two television series, Billion Dollar Whale for Westward/SKG and another for Netflix. He is currently penning the live-action feature musical remake of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as well as an Anna May Wong biopic to star actress Gemma Chan. In 2021, Hwang was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2022 his name was added onto the Lucille Lortel Playwrights’ Sidewalk. Soft Power, his newest musical created in collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori, opened in 2020 at New York’s Public Theatre, received a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album, and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. A professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, Hwang is a Trustee of the American Theatre Wing and sits on the Council of the Dramatist Guild.
Ilya Kaminsky. Photo courtesy Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky was selected by the BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.” He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Published in 2019, Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for that year and was also named Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications. Kaminsky’s work has won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, a Lannan Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Poetry Magazine’s Levinson Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Kaminsky’s poems have been translated into over 20 languages, and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, and China. His poetry has earned several international awards including the Prix Alain Bosquet in France, the Premio Laudomia Bonanni in Italy, and China’s Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. In Ukraine, Kaminsky earned the Boris Dereviyanko “Ludi Dela” Civic Service award for his work in support of humanities during the war in the city of Odesa. In 2023, BBC aired To Odesa, his series of essays about returning to Ukraine during the war. Currently serving as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Kaminsky is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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. The series is organized by Lecturer in Creative Writing and award-winning poet Michael Dickman. All readings are at 7:30 p.m. in the Drapkin Studio and are free and open to the public.
Additional readings in the 2023-24 series include:
- Khaled Mattawa and Hiroko Oyamada, with translator David Boyd, on March 26
- Students in the creative writing program will read from their recent work in April
- Seniors in the program will read from their thesis work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and literary translation in May
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.
