The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is proud to welcome author Clare Beams as its 2023-24 Walton Visiting Writer in Fiction.

Beams will read from her work at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21, in the Home Economics Auditorium (HOEC 0102) on campus. The event is free and open to the public, and a book signing with Beams will follow the reading. Masks are encouraged.

Beams' novel The Illness Lesson was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice, a best book of 2020 by Esquire and Bustle, and a best book of February by Time, O Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Her story collection We Show What We Have Learned won the Bard Fiction Prize, was longlisted for the Story Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. A new novel, The Garden, will be published in April of 2024. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters and teaches in the Randolph College M.F.A. program.

Each year, the Walton Visiting Writers series in the Program in Creative Writing and Translation brings esteemed authors in poetry, fiction and literary translation to the U of A to give free public readings and to work with graduate students in the creative writing M.F.A. program.

Past Walton Visiting Writers include Robin Becker, Idra Novey, Kate Briggs, Brandon Hobson, Rachel Mennies, Patrick Cottrell and Sarah Gerard.

This event is made possible by the Program in Creative Writing and Translation, the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Walton Family Foundation and the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professorship in Creative Writing.