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The Center for Literary Arts is pleased to present acclaimed author Tommy Orange, in a reading from his new, bestselling novel Wandering Stars. This event takes place on Thursday, December 5, 2024 at Hammer Theatre at 6:30 PM.

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In Wandering Stars, a masterful follow-up to his already classic novel There There, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. Conjuring the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—Orange asks what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of the author's monumental gifts.

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Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.

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This event is made possible thanks to the support of the Martha Heasley Cox Lecture and the College of Humanities and the Arts Artistic Excellence Programming Grants.