SJC Welcomes Colson Whitehead

October 31, 2011

BROOKLYN, NY November 1, 2011 - St. Josephs College, in partnership with the Greenlight Bookstore and the Brooklyn Rail, are pleased to announce that author and Fort Greene resident Colson Whitehead will present the inaugural lecture in the Brooklyn Voices series of events at the Brooklyn Campus. This lecture, entitled "How to Write and the Art of Writing, will take place on Wednesday, November 30 in the Tuohy Hall Auditorium at 6 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

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 Whiting Writers Award, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. After graduating from Harvard College, Whitehead started working at the Village Voice, where he wrote reviews of television shows, books and music.

His first novel, The Intuitionist, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and a winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. John Henry Days followed in 2001 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. The Colossus of New York, published in 2003, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Apex Hides the Hurt (2006), was a recipient of the PEN/Oakland Award. Sag Harbor, published in 2009, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His most recent novel, Zone One, was published in October, and was described by Publishers Weekly as "a fresh take on survival, grief, 9/11, AIDS, global warming, nuclear holocaust, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Pol Pots Year Zero, Missouri tornadoes, and the many other disasters both natural and not that keep a stranglehold on our fears.

Created in collaboration with the Greenlight Bookstore,  the Brooklyn Rail and Tillie's, the aim of the Brooklyn Voices series is to promote and enhance the creative vitality of our home neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill by providing local writers, artists and intellectuals with a forum in which to discuss and present their works to our neighbors, patrons and students. Through lectures, forums, performances, and public discussion, Brooklyn Voices seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the thriving intellectual culture of the neighborhood and ensure that our community remains a stimulating place in which to live, learn, and do business.