Writer Colson Whitehead, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, will visit the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith next month for a public lecture and a craft talk with students.
Whitehead, the first Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecturer at UA-Fort Smith, will deliver a presentation focused on his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Nickel Boys" at 6 p.m. Feb. 7 at the UA-Fort Smith Stubblefield Center.
Admission is free and open to the public, although tickets are required, according to the university. Tickets are available online at https://bit.ly/3ZmxGLe.
Whitehead "was at the top of our list" for the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series, said Ann-Gee Lee, professor of English, rhetoric and writing, and chair of the UA-Fort Smith Read This Committee.
He "was an obvious, albeit ambitious, choice for [the university] in our inaugural [Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished] lecture, for Whitehead is as celebrated as any living American author," Cammie Sublette, professor of English, said in a news release from the university.
Whitehead will also join UA-Fort Smith students "for an intimate craft talk, addressing complex topics in writing and providing students the rare opportunity to connect with such a distinguished writer and ask questions about all aspects of his professional experience," according to the university. His visit is in conjunction with the university's Read This public literacy program. Composition II classes will read "The Nickel Boys" throughout the spring semester.
Whitehead "doesn't usually do a craft talk, so it's going to be a huge deal, [as] a craft talk is a way to show the writing process in action," Lee said. It can be difficult for composition students to truly feel like writers, Lee said, but "meeting real authors gives them a chance to ask questions and hopefully feel like they, too, could be writers. With the vital reading, writing and research skills they utilize in comp classes, they could go out into the community and tackle issues they care about," just as writers like Whitehead have done.
The university will also supply 500 copies of the novel to school partners and reading groups across the River Valley thanks to an Arkansas Humanities Council grant authored by Lee, according to the university. "The Nickel Boys," which also captured the Kirkus Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, is based on real atrocities committed at the Dozier School, a Florida detention center for boys that operated for more than a century.
The university has had a big-read program since 2009, when Keith Fudge and the English department started the Read This program. Lee said it's "a great way for everyone to have a shared experience in storytelling, history, research and discussion of important social issues. We've since expanded to other departments and offices on campus to create a more vibrant and well-rounded program, which consists of a book launch, [virtual] read-aloud, faculty and guest lectures/panels, student showcase, and ultimately, a guest speaker, who has usually been the author of the book."
Other books the university has previously selected for its "big-read" include "True Grit," by Arkansan Charles Portis, Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon," which Time Magazine listed as one of the top 10 nonfiction works of 2017. Guest speakers have included Temple Grandin, the animal behaviorist and proponent for rights for people with autism, and the aforementioned Grann and Tan, among others.
Whitehead's first Pulitzer Prize was awarded for his 2016 book, "The Underground Railroad," which also received the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
The Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series, established in 1972 by friends of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, assists the faculty at six University of Arkansas System schools in obtaining outstanding visiting lecturers to share ideas and drive public debate and cultural advancement, and UA-Fort Smith is the most recent university to join the group.