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 2024-25 season with a reading by award-winning poet, essayist, and 2021 MacArthur Fellow Hanif Abdurraqib, author of the bestseller There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, and Douglas Stuart, a Booker Prize-winning and bestselling novelist and author of Young Mungo and Shuggie Bain. The reading begins at 6:00 p.m. on February 18 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.
Hanif Abdurraqib. Photo credit: Kate Sweeney
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN America, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The Fader, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Abdurraqib’s newest release, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, is a New York Times bestseller and a personal reflection on basketball, life, and home. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released in June 2016 and was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. In 2019, Abdurraqib released Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest. The book became a New York Times bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune for Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His book A Little Devil in America won both the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize, and it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pen/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award. In addition to his MacArthur Fellowship, Abdurraqib is the recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize.
Douglas Stuart. Photo credit: Martyn Pickersgill
Douglas Stuart is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into over forty languages. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was named both the British Book of the Year and Debut of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards, as well as being a finalist for over 20 other literary awards. Stuart’s latest novel, Young Mungo, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller and a finalist for the Carnegie Medal. LitHub has featured his essays on gender, class and conformity, and his short stories are published in The New Yorker. Stuart is currently working on adapting both of his novels for A24 pictures. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art and now lives and works in New York City.
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 a reading by Marilyn Hacker and Ayana Mathis on March 18, a reading of new work by students in spring courses on April 15, and on April 21 and 22 seniors in the program will read from their independent work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and literary translation.
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.
