estselling author Elizabeth McCracken (The Hero of this Book, The Souvenir Museum) and award-winning poet Brenda Shaughnessy (Tanya, Our Andromeda) read from their recent work to kick off the 2024-25 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, hosted by the Program in Creative Writing.

This event is cosponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and Labyrinth Books.

About the Poets:

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of seven books, including The Souvenir Museum (long-listed for the National Book Award) and The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist). Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, won three Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award, and an O. Henry Prize. McCracken has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Brenda Shaughnessy is the Okinawan-Irish American author of five previous books of poetry, including The Octopus Museum and Our Andromeda. Shaughnessy is the recipient of a 2018 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark.