Meredith Monk
(Photo by F. Scott Schafer)

On November 12 at 4:30 p.m., Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts presents the next event in the 2024-25 Atelier@Large conversation series at Richardson Auditorium. Admission is free.

The series brings guest artists and intellectuals to campus for public discussions on the challenges they face in making art in the modern world. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor Paul Muldoon will be joined at the event by writer Jennifer Finney Boylan; composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer Meredith Monk; and poet Maria Stepanova with translator Sasha Dugdale.

The Princeton Atelier, currently directed by Muldoon, was founded in 1994 by emeritus professor Toni Morrison. The Atelier brings together professional artists from different disciplines and Princeton students to create new work in the context of a semester-long course that culminates in the public presentation of that new work. Recent artists have included Stew, Laurie Anderson, the improv group Baby Wants Candy, and the Wakka Wakka Puppet Theatre.

“Being an artist is tough enough at the best of times,” says Muldoon, “but it’s particularly difficult just now. Artists are coming under pressure from numerous orthodoxies to both left and right, as to what they must or must not do. Most insidious, perhaps, is the form of self-censorship that has artists second guessing themselves. In addition to honoring some of our finest minds, The Atelier@Large series provides a rare enough forum in which some of these ideas may be aired.”

Boylan is the author of 18 books including the memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003), one of the first bestselling works by a transgender American. With Jodi Picoult, she recently coauthored the New York Times bestseller Mad Honey (2022). Monk is a pioneer in what is now called extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance. Her work has been presented at major venues around the world. Over the last six decades, Monk has been hailed as one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices and “one of America’s coolest composers.”

Stepanova is the author of 14 poetry collections and three books of essays and a recipient of several Russian and international literary awards. Her poems have been translated into several languages, including English, German, French, Italian, and Swedish. Dugdale’s sixth book of poetry, The Strongbox, was published by Carcanet Press in 2024. Deformations (Carcanet Press, 2020) was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize.

For more information, visit arts.princeton.edu.