Pulitzer Prize-winning author to appear at Purdue Literary Awards, give public reading

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead will visit Purdue on Thursday (April 11) to participate in the annual Literary Awards celebration.

Whitehead will give a reading and book signing that will be free and open to the public at 8 p.m. in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. He also is slated to appear at a private reception and will deliver remarks about the creative process at the ticketed Literary Awards Banquet at Purdue Memorial Union.

Each year, the Literary Awards Banquet honors Indiana high school students and Purdue graduate and undergraduate students with more than 60 awards and $9,000 in prize money. For a list of the 2019 Literary Award winners, please click here.

Whitehead is author of “The Underground Railroad,” which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, among many other awards. The book was the subject of this year’s “Big Read” community reading project at Purdue and in the surrounding area. Doubleday will publish his ninth book, “The Nickel Boys,” in July.

The Literary Awards events are sponsored by the Department of English, Purdue University Libraries, the College of Liberal Arts, and the department’s journal Modern Fiction Studies. 

Media contact: Joseph Paul, 765-494-9541, paul102@purdue.edu

Source: David Ching, dching@purdue.edu