Colson Whitehead’s novels and essays tackle the questions of race, class, and commercial culture with candor and wit. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of several awards including the Whiting Writers’ Award and the MacArthur “Genius” Award. He is the author of six books. His first novel, The Intuitionist, was published in 1998 and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemmingway Award. According to Time it’s the “freshest racial allegory since Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man" and GQ named it one of the “novels of the millennium.” John Henry Days, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was published in 2001 and his non-fiction homage to New York, The Colossus of New York, was published in 2003. His most recent novel Zone One was published in October 2011. The Washington Post described this latest bestseller as “a zombie story with brains” and the New York Times selected it as an Editor’s Pick calling it “cool” and “thoughtful.”

Colson’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a great many publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, and Granta. He has spoken across the country and has taught courses at several universities including Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Houston. Esquire magazine has called him “the coolest writer in America” and more than 116,000 people follow him on Twitter.

The author will be available to sign books after the lecture. As always, books will be available for purchase on site.

UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Department of English Program in Creative Writing Zell Visiting Writers Series, which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from UM alumna Helen Zell (’64). For more information, please see http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/mfa/mfaeve.asp