September 9, 2014
Two Rising Writers Open Lewis Center for the Arts’
2014-15 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series
Poet Roger Reeves and fiction writer Hanna Pylväinen are Fellows at Princeton
Photo caption: Lewis Center for the Arts’ 2014-15 Hodder Fellow and poet Roger Reeves and
2014-16 Princeton Arts Fellow and fiction writer Hanna Pylväinen open this year’s Althea Ward
Clark W’21 Reading Series on September 24
Photo credits: Photo of Hanna Pylvainen courtesy of the writer; photo of Roger Reeves by Julio
Jimenez
(Princeton, NJ) Two writers selected as Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts’ Fellows
will read on Wednesday, September 24 at 4:30 p.m. in the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre
Center. Hodder Fellow and poet Roger Reeves and Princeton Arts Fellow and fiction writer
Hanna Pylväinen will begin their residencies at the Lewis Center by opening the Program in
Creative Writing’s 2014-2015 Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, which is free and open
to the public.
Hanna Pylväinen’s debut novel, We Sinners, was published by Henry Holt in 2012, which The
Los Angeles Times called, “Remarkably funny for a book about a deeply religious family
grappling with loss of faith. Pylväinen tells the story — in alternating chapters from the point of
view of the parents and several of the nine children — of the Midwestern Rovaniemi family,
members of a Finnish sect of Lutheranism called Laestadianism.” Pylväinen is the recipient of
residencies at Djerassi, The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and a fellowship at the Fine Arts
Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2012 she received the Whiting Writers' Award
and in 2013 the Balcones Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New
York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune.
Originally from suburban Detroit, Pylväinen graduated from Mount Holyoke College and
received her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, where she was also a postgraduate Zell
Fellow. She currently lives in Brooklyn where she is completing her second novel, The End of
Drum Time.
As a Princeton Arts Fellow, Pylväinen will teach fiction writing workshops over the next two
years and potentially take on other creative projects while in residence at the University, in
addition to pursuing her own work.
Roger Reeves' first book, King Me, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press, which The
Los Angeles Review of Books describes as, “A book of varied tongues and urgencies. Van Gogh
is here, Mike Tyson, Ernest ‘Tiny’ Davis, and in the first and last poems, someone named Roger
Reeves appears. It's a book of inhabitations and transformations; the disembodied multitudes that
constitute a single body.” Reeves’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as
Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House. Kim Addonizio
selected his poem, "Kletic of Walt Whitman," for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was
awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, a 2013 Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry
Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the
Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. He earned his Ph.D.
from the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of
Illinois, Chicago.
As a Hodder Fellow, Reeves will continue work on The Last American Minstrel, a collection of
poems that appropriate minstrel songs and iconography, vernacular and folk traditions, and
African-American hand jive, known as juba patting or hambone, as a means of querying and
exploring American notions of pleasure and spectacle. His book will revisit both slavery and
these nineteenth century forms of entertainment as a means of writing a labor history of the era
via sound and lyric.
In addition to Reeves, Hodder Fellows for 2014-15 include choreographer Nora Chipaumire,
visual artist Miko Veldkamp, and playwright/screenwriter Gabriel Jason Dean. Each will be
featured in the Lewis Center’s 2014-15 season. Hodder Fellowships are awarded through a
highly competitive process to artists who have begun to build a respected body of work, but have
not yet received widespread recognition. The funding is intended to provide an opportunity for a
year of “studious leisure” during which the fellows would have the time to move their work to
the next level.
Pylväinen begins her two-year appointment as an Arts Fellow along with theater/performance
artist Aaron Landsman. They join graphic design artist Danielle Aubert and musician/composer
Jason Treuting who are beginning their second year as Arts Fellows. This fellowship program
provides support for early-career artists who have demonstrated both extraordinary promise and
a record of achievement in their fields with the opportunity to further their work while teaching
within a liberal arts context. The Mellon Foundation awarded Princeton a $3.3 million challenge
grant in September 2012 to endow and launch the program, which was matched by an
anonymous alumnus. The program is also supported through the $101 million gift from the late
Peter B. Lewis, a 1955 alumnus, which established the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Together, this community of eight artists engage in meaningful ways with University students
and the wider regional community, fulfilling a founding goal of the Lewis Center to create a
society of fellows in the arts to contribute to the cultural life of the campus.
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 writers of contemporary poetry and fiction. All readings are
free and open to the public and take place on select Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. at the Berlind
Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center. Other readings scheduled in the 2014-2015 series include:

Ben Lerner & Steven Millhauser on October 15

Dean Young & Aleksandar Hemon on November 19

Evie Shockley & Meg Wolitzer on February 11

A.E. Stallings & Akhil Sharma on March 11

Rachel Kushner & John Yau on April 15
Readings of student work will also be scheduled as part of the series.
For more information on the Program in Creative Writing and the many other events offered by
the Lewis Center for the Arts visit arts.princeton.edu.
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The Lewis Center for the Arts encompasses Princeton University’s academic programs in creative writing, dance,
theater, and visual arts, as well as the interdisciplinary Princeton Atelier. The Center represents a major initiative
of the University to fully embrace the arts as an essential part of the educational experience for all who study and
teach at Princeton. Over 100 diverse public performances, exhibitions, readings, and lectures are offered each
year, most of them free or at a nominal admission fee. For more information about the Lewis Center for the Arts
visit arts.princeton.edu.