Poet John Ashbery and screenwriter and director Jim Jarmusch will read from their work on Wednesday, April 19, as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University. The reading will begin at 4:30 p.m. in McCosh Hall, Room 50, on the Princeton campus, and is free and open to the public. Mr. Ashbery will be appearing via Skype. Both writers will be introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and member of Princeton’s Creative Writing faculty Paul Muldoon.

John Ashbery’s work has been translated into 25 languages. His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and an early book, Some Trees (1956), was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Mr. Ashbery was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1988 to 1999. In addition, the Library of America published the first volume of his collected poems in 2008, and a two-volume set of his collected translations from the French (poetry and prose) was published in 2014. His most recent book of poetry, Commotion of the Birds, was published in November 2016. Other collections include Breezeway(2015); Quick Question (2012); Planisphere (2009); and Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007), which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize. Recently, he received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation (2011) and a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House (2012). He lives in New York and exhibits his collages at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. He holds degrees from Harvard and Columbia.

An American film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, and composer, Jim Jarmusch is the director, most recently, of Paterson (2016). He won the Grand Prix of the 2005 Cannes Festival for Broken Flowers. Other works include Gimme Danger (2016), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), The Limits of Control (2009), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Year of the Horse (1997), Dead Man (1995), Down by Law (1986), Night on Earth (1991), Mystery Train (1989), Stranger than Paradise (1984), and Permanent Vacation (1980). His honors include the Josef von Sternberg Award from the international film festival in Mannheim-Heidelberg and the Filmmaker on the Edge Award from the Provincetown International Film Festival. Born in Akron, Ohio, Mr. Jarmusch lives and works in New York.

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