On Wednesday, February 13, 2013 poet Alicia Ostriker and fiction writer A. S. Byatt will read from their works 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 4:30 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, is free and open to the public.

Twice a finalist for the National Book Award, Alicia Ostriker has published numerous volumes of poetry, including The Book of Seventy (2009), which received the Jewish National Book Award. Other books of poetry include No Heaven (2005); The Volcano Sequence (2002); Little Space (1998), a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Crack in Everything (1996), which won the Paterson Award and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award; The Imaginary Lover (1986), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; A Woman Under the Surface (1983), Once More Out of Darkness (1974), and Songs (1969). Known for her intelligence and passionate appraisal of women’s place in literature, Ostriker’s poetry and criticism investigates themes of family, social justice, Jewish identity, and personal growth.

A. S. Byatt is renowned internationally for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize-winning Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman.  Her most recent novel, The Children’s Book was published in 2009.  Her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and Little Black Book of Stories. She is also a distinguished critic in addition to her work fiction.