National Book Award finalist Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the novel All This Could Be Different, will read from her work at 6:00 p.m. on February 11 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton. Cole Lindemann, Amalia Lopkin, Isabel Max, Charles Nuermberger, and Cassadie Royalty, 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.
Sarah Thankam Mathews. Photo credit: Dondre Stuetly
Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of the novel All This Could Be Different, which Vogue praised as “one of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” All This Could Be Different was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2022 National Book Award in Fiction. Mathews’ debut novel was also a New York Times Editor’s Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Slate, and Buzzfeed. Her work has been published in Best American Short Stories 2020 and elsewhere. Previously, Mathews was a Rona Jaffe Fellow in fiction at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Margins Fellow at The Asian American Writers Workshop. She grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. Mathews currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and several distinguished lecturers and visiting professors.
A reading with fiction writer Sidik Fofana on March 25 will conclude the 2024-25 event series.
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.
