Karen Russell, author of "Swamplandia!" and Jericho Brown, poet and author of "The Tradition," read from their works and interact with the audience at Labyrinth Books.
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 outstanding contemporary writers. The opening writers for this academic year are Karen Russell and Jericho Brown.
Jericho Brown is the author of "The Tradition," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown is the author of three books of poetry: "Please," winner of the American Book Award; "The New Testament;" winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; "The Tradition," winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in many publications, including The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
Karen Russell is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers "Swamplandia"! and "Vampires in the Lemon Grove." She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has received two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, and was selected for the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” prize and The New Yorker's “20 under 40” list (She is now decisively over 40). She 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 was the Endowed Chair of Texas State’s MFA program. She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile-library for people living outdoors.
This event is co-sponsored by Princeton Univeristy's Lewis Center for the Arts, Labyrinth Books and the library.
