Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts presents the next event in the 2024-25 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. On November 12, Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Princeton Atelier Paul Muldoon will be joined by writer Jennifer Finney Boylan; composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer Meredith Monk; and poet Maria Stepanova with translator Sasha Dugdale. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium on Princeton’s campus and is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. Richardson Auditorium is an accessible venue with assistive listening devices available. Guests in need of other 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, celebrating is 30th year this season, 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 Annie Baker, David Bellos, Hernan Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Joy Harjo, Sarah Hart, Jennifer Homans, Bridget Kearney, Andrey Kurkov, Alan Lightman, Michael J. Love, Jonathan Majors, Kyle Marshall, Dinaw Mengestu, Lorrie Moore, Darryl (Run DMC) McDaniels, Anais Mitchell, Suzanne Nossel, Lynn Nottage, Claudia Rankine, Cara Reichel, Kamala Sankaram, 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. With Jodi Picoult, she recently coauthored The New York Times bestseller Mad Honey (2022). Boylan is currently working on Falcon Quinn and the Bullies of Greenblud, an anti-bullying young adult project, and an anthology of women writing about home entitled, This is the Place. Known as a novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also an advocate for civil rights. From 2013 to 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.
Meredith Monk. Photo credit: F Scott Schafer
Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director, choreographer, filmmaker, and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations. Recognized as a unique and influential artist, she is a pioneer in what is now called extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance. Her work has been presented at major venues around the world. Over the last six decades, Monk has been hailed as one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices and “one of America’s coolest composers.” Her numerous awards and honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Republic of France, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and a National Medal of Arts. In 2022 she was celebrated with a 13-disc box set issued by ECM Records, Meredith Monk: The Recordings, which includes the 2008 Grammy-nominated “impermanence.” Her music has also been featured in films by Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne, and the Coen Brothers. In addition to numerous vocal pieces, music-theater works and operas, Monk has created new repertoire for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments. Currently Monk is celebrating her 60th season of creating and performing with a series of concerts, residencies and special events centered in New York City, including the North American premiere of Indra’s Net, her third work in a trilogy exploring our interdependent relationship with nature.
Maria Stepanova. Photo credit: Andrei Natotsinky
Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of 14 poetry collections and three books of essays and a recipient of several Russian and international literary awards. Her poems have been translated into several languages, including English, German, French, Italian, and Swedish. Stepanova’s opinion pieces on the current political and media landscape in Russia have been published in major European outlets. Her documentary novel, Pamiati pamiati (In Memory of Memory), received the Russian Big Book Prize in December 2018 and NOS prize in February 2019. The book was translated into 27 languages, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and Prix Médicis, and awarded with the French Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger. In 2023, Stepanova received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for her poetry book Mädchen ohne Kleider. From 2007 through 2012, Stepanova was the founder and editor-in-chief of OpenSpace.ru, an independent online daily devoted to contemporary culture and society. Along with the former OpenSpace team in 2012, she launched a new online resource, COLTA.RU, the Russian daily publication covering cultural issues and their political implications. The website was blocked by the Russian state in early March 2022, together with the other Russian independent publications. She will be joined for the talk by translator Sasha Dugdale.
Sasha Dugdale is a poet, playwright, and translator. Her sixth book of poetry, The Strongbox, was published by Carcanet Press in 2024. Deformations (Carcanet Press, 2020) was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize. Her long poem “Joy” won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of 2016. Dugdale’s translation of Maria Stepanova’s novel, In Memory of Memory (New Directions, 2021), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and won the Modern Language Association-Roth Translation Award. Dugdale has translated two of Stepanova’s poetry collections, including Holy Winter 20/21 (New Directions, 2024), and work by several Russian-language women poets, such as Elena Shvarts and Marina Tsvetaeva. For many years, Dugdale specialized in translating new Russian-language writing for theaters in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the Public Theater in New York City and the U.K.’s Royal Court Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. Dugdale is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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 15th volume of poems, Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, was published earlier this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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.
