ASU to Host New York Times Best Selling Author

SAN ANGELO, TX— Angelo State University will host No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Colson Whitehad as the featured speaker for the 29th ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton March 26-27 on the ASU campus.

Whitehead will give two free public presentations on Thursday, March 26, in the C.J. Davidson Conference Center inside the Houston Harte University Center at 1910 Rosemont Drive:

• 9:30 a.m. - "A Conversation with Colson Whitehead"

• 5 p.m. - "Reading and Presentation by Colson Whitehead"

The two-day conference will also include nine free public sessions featuring readings by more than 25 additional guest authors. All of these sessions will be in the Eldon Black Recital Hall inside ASU's Carr Education-Fine Arts Building at 2602 Dena Drive. Profiles of the guest authors and the complete conference schedule are available at angelo.edu/writers-conference.

A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Whitehead is the author of multiple best-selling novels, including:

• "The Underground Railroad"

• "Sag Harbor"

• "The Nickel Boys"

• "Harlem Shuffle"

• "Crook Manifesto"

In addition to his Pulitzer Prizes, Whitehead was awarded the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and a 2021 National Humanities Medal. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Writers Award and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Also a respected educator, Whitehead has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University and Wesleyan University. He has also been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond and the University of Wyoming.

The ASU Writers Conference is dedicated to San Angelo's own best-selling author of Western literature, Elmer Kelton, who passed away in 2009. The author of more than 40 books, Kelton was a seven-time winner of the Western Writers of America's Spur Award and was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor at ASU. The conference is hosted by the Natalie Zan Ryan Department of English and Modern Languages and sponsored by the university with support from the ASU Alumni Association, College of Arts and Humanities, and Guy and Eva Choate.