The Truman Capote Award Ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. Oct. 2 in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. 

Gene Andrew Jarrett, dean of the faculty, and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University, has been selected as the 2024 recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.

This event will feature remarks by Jarrett and a reception in the Old Capitol Rotunda. The ceremony and reception are open to the public.

Jarrett will be honored for his third book, a comprehensive biography, titled Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, published by Princeton University Press and selected as one of The New Yorker’s best books of 2022. In the book, Jarrett tells the story of Dunbar, known to many as the “poet laureate of his race,” narrating both his successes and his struggles as he negotiated a profoundly complex era in American history.

^{Photo credits:  Portrait photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications, Princeton University | Book Cover photo courtesy of Princeton University Press}

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