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Colson Whitehead is a novelist and recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” grant. His novels, The Intuitionist (1998), John Henry Days (2001), and Apex Hides the Hurt (2006), present an uncanny vision of the role of race in American life, past and present, showing how history and legend join in a strange and witty amalgamation. His first novel, The Intuitionist, won the QPB New Voices Award for its depiction of intrigue in the Department of Elevator Inspectors in a major metropolis. It also earned Whitehead a 2000 Whiting Writers’ Award. John Henry Days, an investigation of the legendary folk hero, won the Young Lions Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Whitehead’s most recent novel, Apex Hides the Hurt, is a “shrewd and playful inquiry into the American soul,” telling the story of a consultant who generates memorable product names yet himself remains nameless. Whitehead has also written a collection of essays called The Colossus of New York (2003) offering thirteen meditative, kaleidoscopic views of his home city.
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Admission: Free and open to the Rutgers community and the general public
