The Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, opens the 2024-25 season with a reading by bestselling writer Elizabeth McCracken, author of the recent novel The Hero of this Book and the story collection The Souvenir Museum, and acclaimed poet Brenda Shaughnessy, author of the recent collection Tanya and award-winning collection Human Dark with Sugar. The reading begins at 6:00 p.m. on October 1 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton. The event is free and open to the public, with the authors’ books available to purchase and have signed. The bookstore 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.
Elizabeth McCracken. Photo credit: Edward Carey
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, Bowlaway, The Souvenir Museum, and most recently, The Hero of This Book, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and others. She has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the 2015 Story Prize, and she is a three-time Pushcart Prize winner. Her work has been published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The O. Henry Prize, Zoetrope: All-Story, three editions of the Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. McCracken teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
Brenda Shaughnessy. Photo credit: Janea Wiedmann
Brenda Shaughnessy is the Okinawan-Irish American author of seven poetry collections, including Tanya; Liquid Flesh: New and Selected Poems; The Octopus Museum, chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and Best Book of 2019 by Publishers Weekly; and Our Andromeda, finalist for the Griffin International Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Prize. Her second collection, Human Dark with Sugar, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Shaughnessy has received the Howard Foundation Fellowship of Brown University, the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. Currently, Shaughnessy is co-creating the production of Sensorium Ex, an opera for which she wrote the libretto, which will premiere in 2025. A professor of English and creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark, she lives in West Orange, New Jersey.
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, unless otherwise noted, take place at 6:00 p.m. at Labyrinth Books and are free and open to the public.
Additional readings in the 2024-25 series include:
- October 29 — Reading by Don Mee Choi and Samanta Schweblin
- November 19 — Fall student reading featuring new work by creative writing students (5 p.m. at Chancellor Green)
- February 18 — Reading by Douglas Stuart and Hanif Abdurraqib
- March 18 — Reading by Marilyn Hacker and Ayana Mathis
- April 15 — Spring student reading featuring new work by creative writing students (5 p.m. at Chancellor Green)
- April 21 & 22 — Creative writing seniors read from their independent work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and literary translation (4:30 p.m. at Prospect House)
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Creative Writing, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 120 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
