The Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, opens the 2025-26 season with a reading by bestselling author and MacArthur Fellow Karen Russell and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. The reading begins at 6:00 p.m. on September 30 at Labyrinth Books, located at 122 Nassau Street 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.
Karen Russell. Photo credit: Dan Hawk
Karen Russell is the author of six works of fiction, including her most recent novel, The Antidote, recently longlisted for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A Class of 2013 MacArthur Fellow, she is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Russell has received two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane Prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award. She was also selected for the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” prize and The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list. Russell has taught literature and creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of California-Irvine, Williams College, Columbia University, and Bryn Mawr College, and she was the endowed chair of Texas State’s M.F.A. program. She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile library for people living outdoors. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Russell now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter.
Jericho Brown. Photo credit: Brian Cornelius
Jericho Brown is author of the poetry collection The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and the Academy of American Poets. The winner of a Paterson Poetry Prize and a Whiting Award, Brown has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and in several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. Brown is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
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 2025-26 series include:
- November 11 — Reading by Aracelis Girmay and Kaveh Akbar
- November — Fall student reading featuring new work by creative writing students (5 p.m. at Chancellor Green)
- February 17 — Reading by Didi Jackson and Major Jackson
- March 24 — Reading by Kaitlyn Greenidge and Hisham Matar
- April — Spring student reading featuring new work by creative writing students (5 p.m. at Chancellor Green)
- April — Creative writing seniors read from their independent work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and literary translation (4:30 p.m. at Chancellor Green)
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.
