Department of English Presents 2023 Troy Lecture with Pulitzer Prize-winning Author, Colson Whitehead

UMass Amherst’s Department of English announces the 2023 Troy Lecture with Pulitzer Prize-winning author, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, Colson Whitehead. For this year’s event, Colson Whitehead will be in conversation with fiction writer and UMass English professor, Sabina Murray.

The event will take place on April 13, 5:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Auditorium. Doors open at 5 p.m. The event is free and seats are available on a first-come first served basis. The public can register using this link: https://tinyurl.com/2023-Troy-Registration

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “The Underground Railroad,” an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), “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.”

He was named New York’s 11th State Author in 2018. His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the Fiction category), the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. His latest bestselling novel, Harlem Shuffle, was published in the fall of 2021.

Colson 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 received a MacArthur Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond and the University of Wyoming.

For more information on the speaker, please visit www.prhspeakers.com.

Sabina Murray is the author of eight books of fiction including the novel Valiant Gentlemen, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, the “The Caprices,” which won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and “The Human Zoo,” published in 2021. “Muckross Abbey,” a story collection, has just been released. She is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches in the MFA program.

The Troy Lectures on the Humanities and Public Life are presented in honor of the late Frederick S. Troy, Emeritus Professor of English, honorary professor of the University and former trustee. They were established in 1983.

The list of past speakers includes Nadine Gordimer, Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, Judith Butler, J.M. Coetzee, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka and Zadie Smith.

Contact: Loni Edwards, loni@english.umass.edu assistant to the shair, Department of English University of Massachusetts Amherst , 413-545-6568