Award-winning novelist Torrey Peters, author of the national bestseller Detransition, Baby, will read from her work at 6:00 p.m. on November 12 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton. Soncera Ball, Noelle Carpenter, Brenden Garza, Will Hartman, and Youngseo Lee, seniors in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing, will also read from their recent work. This event continues the 2024-2025 C.K. Williams Reading Series, named after the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C.K. Williams, who served on Princeton’s faculty for 20 years. The series showcases seniors in the Program in Creative Writing alongside established writers as special guests. Cosponsored by Labyrinth Books, the event is free and open to the public with the author’s 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.
Torrey Peters. Photo credit: Natasha Gornik
Torrey Peters won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel for Detransition, Baby (Random House, 2021). The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Brooklyn Public Library Award, and it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Recognized as one of the Best Books of 2021 by more than twenty publications including Entertainment Weekly, NPR, TIME magazine, Vogue, Esquire, and Vulture, Peters’ novel was also listed among the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times. Her other works of fiction include the novellas Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. Peters’ second book, Stag Dance, will be published in March. Holding an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth, she splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont.
At Labyrinth Books, Peters will read from Detransition, Baby, which follows three women — transgender and cisgender — whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex. The New York Times Book Review calls Peters’ novel, “a poignant and gratifyingly cleareyed portrait of found family,” while TIME notes it as “a tender and bold exploration of gender, parenthood and love.”
The five seniors who will read from their work are among 25 Princeton students pursuing minors in creative writing in addition to their major areas of study. Each is currently working on a novel, a screenplay, translations, or a collection of poems or short stories as part of their creative independent work for the minor. Students in the Program in Creative Writing work closely with a member of the faculty, which includes award-winning writers Michael Dickman, Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, Patricia Smith, and several distinguished lecturers and visiting professors.
Additional readings in the 2024-25 series include novelist Sarah Thankam Mathews on February 11 and fiction writer Sidik Fofana on March 25.
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.
