(PRINCETON, NJ) -- On Wednesday, November 15, award-winning writer and theater critic Hilton Als and acclaimed poet Hoa Nguyen will read from their work as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series of the Program in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts. The reading, beginning at 7:30pm in the Hearst Dance Theater at the Lewis Arts Complex, is free and open to the public.
Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989 and has been the lead theater critic for the magazine since 2012. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism earlier this year, and his most recent book, White Girls, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Non-fiction. Als has also written for Village Voice and Vibe. He edited the catalogue for the 1994-95 Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art.” His other awards include a Guggenheim, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, a Lambda Literary Trustee Award, and awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists. Als is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan, and Smith College.
Als will be introduced by Tracy K. Smith, the U.S. Poet Laureate and the director and a member of the faculty in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing.
Hoa Nguyen currently lives in Toronto and was born in the Mekong Delta but raised in the Washington, D.C. area. From Wave Books, her poetry collections include As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008, and Violet Energy Ingots, nominated for a 2017 Griffin Prize for poetry. She teaches poetics at Ryerson University, for Miami University’s low residency M.F.A. program, for the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College, and in a long-running, private workshop.
Nguyen will be introduced by Michael Dickman, writer, poet and member of the Program in Creative Writing faculty.
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The reading series, usually held in the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center at 4:30pm, will hold some readings this year in the new Lewis Arts complex with an evening start time of 7:30pm.
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 are free and open to the public. Other readings scheduled in the 2017-2018 series include:
- Alaa Al Aswany and Linda Gregerson on Wednesday, February 7 at 7:30pm, at the Lewis Arts complex
- Osama Alomar and Luc Sante on Wednesday, March 7 at 7:30pm, at the Lewis Arts complex
- Jane Hirshfield, Princeton Class of 1973, and Walter Mosley, on Wednesday, April 18 at 4:30pm, at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center
To learn more about this reading series, the Program in Creative Writing, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free, visit arts.princeton.edu.PHOTOS: (TOP) Pulitzer Prize-winning theater critic Hilton Als. Photo by Brigitte Lacombe
(BOTTOM) Acclaimed poet Hoa Nguyen. Photo by Julie Thi Underhill.
