Colson Whitehead, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad, will speak about his book in the Winton Tolles lecture on Thursday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m., in the Chapel. A book signing will follow the lecture at 8:30 p.m. in Dwight Lounge, Bristol Center. Both events are free and open to the public.
The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016, was a New York Times bestseller, and an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Whitehead also authored The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. John Henry Days was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta. He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and W+riters, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for John Henry Days.
Whitehead has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.
The Tolles Lecture was established in 1991 by members of the class of 1951 in memory of Winton Tolles, class of 1928 and dean of the college from 1947 to 1972. It brings to the Hamilton campus distinguished writers in the field of literature, journalism, and theater to lecture and meet with students.
