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 poet, translator, and recent MacArthur Fellow Khaled Mattawa and award-winning novelist Hiroko Oyamada, along with translator David Boyd. The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. on March 26 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.
Poet and translator Khaled Mattawa. Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Khaled Mattawa’s most recent collection of poetry is Fugitive Atlas. He is the author of four other collections of poetry; translator of nine books of contemporary Arabic poetry, including Saadi Youssef’s Without an Alphabet, Without a Face; and co-editor of two anthologies of Arab American literature. Mattawa has also published a critical study of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. His awards include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship prize, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship. He currently teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan.
Novelist Hiroko Oyamada. Photo credit: Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd.
Born in Hiroshima in 1983, Hiroko Oyamada won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Factory, which was drawn from her experiences working as a temp for an automaker’s subsidiary. Her following novel, The Hole, won the Akutagawa Prize. In 2022 Oyamada published her third novel, Weasels in the Attic.
Translator David Boyd. Photo courtesy David Boyd
David Boyd is assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has translated fiction by Izumi Suzuki, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, and Kanoko Okamoto, among others. His translations of novellas by Hideo Furukawa (Slow Boat; Pushkin Press, 2017) and Hiroko Oyamada (The Hole; New Directions, 2020) have won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Boyd also translated Oyamada’s Weasels in the Attic.
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:
- Students in the creative writing program will read from their recent work on April 16 at 5 p.m. in Chancellor Green Rotunda
- Seniors in the program will read from their thesis work in poetry, screenwriting, and literary translation on April 30 and in fiction on May 1, both at 4:30 p.m. in Chancellor Green
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Creative Writing, 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.
