Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading by Karen Russell and Jericho Brown

Bestselling author and MacArthur Fellow Karen Russell (Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove) and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown (The Tradition, The New Testament) read from their work to kick off the 2025-26 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series.

This event is cosponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and Labyrinth Books. At the event, authors’ books will be available to purchase and have signed.

About the Authors

Fiction writer Karen Russell. Photo credit: Dan Hawk

Karen Russell is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, she also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was 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). 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 MFA program. She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile-library for people living outdoors. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter.

Poet Jericho Brown. Photo credit: Brian Cornelius

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and 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. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also author of the collection The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies.

Admission & Details

The reading is free and open to the public; no tickets required.

Directions

Get directions to Labyrinth Bookstore, located at 122 Nassau Street in Princeton.

Accessibility

Labyrinth Books is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.