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People & Stories / Gente y Cuentos is set to host a benefit literary event featuring award-winning novelist Susan Choi on Saturday, March 7, at 2 p.m. in the Mackay Lounge at Princeton Theological Seminary.
The program, “Notable Words: In the Afternoon Light with Susan Choi,” is designed as an intimate author event and will include a reading, discussion, book signing, and light refreshments. Choi will discuss her work, including her most recent novel, Flashlight, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.
Choi, formerly a creative writing instructor at Princeton University, currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University. Flashlight is her sixth novel. Her 2003 debut novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction.
Choi was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award in 2010 for her novel American Woman. Her fourth novel, My Education, received the 2014 Lambda Literary Award, and her fifth novel, Trust Exercise, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction and was a U.S. bestseller.
Copies of Flashlight and other books will be available for purchase and signing through independent Princeton bookseller Labyrinth Books.
“Susan Choi’s work invites readers to look closely at relationships, power, and how people come to understand one another,” said Debra Lampert-Rudman, executive director of People & Stories. “This event reflects our mission of creating space for people to gather, listen, and engage through literature.”
Tickets begin at $125, with additional options available for pairs and small groups, as well as packages that include an autographed copy of Flashlight. Sponsorship opportunities are also available.
People & Stories says that proceeds from the event will support People & Stories’ year-round bilingual programs, which bring facilitated literary readings and discussions to community settings including social service agencies, prisons, libraries, senior centers and other venues with limited access to cultural programming.
More information and tickets are available at peopleandstories.org/susanchoi or by emailing info@peopleandstories.org.
Susan Choi, author, in Bogliasco Italy, 2024. (Photo by Paul Myers Pictures.),
