Fiction writer Sidik Fofana, author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, will read from his work at 6:00 p.m. on March 25 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton. Thia Bian, John Venegas Juarez, Daniel Viorica, Bracklinn Williams, Layla Williams, Andrew Zacks and Audrey Zhang, seniors in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing, will also read from their recent work. This event concludes 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.
Sidik Fofana. Photo credit: Roque Nonini
A graduate of New York University’s M.F.A. program, Sidik Fofana is a public school teacher in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in the Sewanee Review and Granta. Fofana was named a fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018. Stories from the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner, 2022) is his debut short story collection, recognized as a Notable Book by the American Library Association and given a Literary Award Honor from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
Composed of eight interconnected narratives about residents of a fictional high-rise apartment building in Harlem, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs “brilliantly captures the joy and pain of the human experience,” according to the Library Journal. “These engrossing and gritty stories of tenuous living in a gentrifying America enchant,” notes Publishers Weekly in a starred review of the collection. Stories from the Tenants Downstairs was named among the best books of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Chicago Review of Books, LitHub, and Electric Lit.
The seven seniors who will read from their work are among 25 Princeton students pursuing a minor 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.
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.
