Virtual Program: “The Power of Story with Colson Whitehead,” September 6

Wednesday, September 6, 7 p.m.

Presented by the Rock Island Public Library

Kicking off the third season of virtual Illinois Libraries Present (ILP) programs boasting fascinating guests of national and international fame, the Rock Island Public Library will host The Power of Story with Colson Whitehead on September 6, the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author's 2023 novel Crook Manifesto lauded by Kirkus Reviews as "not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history."

The number-one New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, Harlem Shuffle, The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, and Apex Hides the Hurt, as well as the non-fiction works The Colossus of New York and The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, Whitehead is only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzer Prizes in the Fiction category (for The Underground Railroad in 2017 and The Nickel Boys in 2020). A MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Whitehead's latest novel Crook Manifesto is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege that also serves as a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family, with the New York Times raving that the book "gleefully detonates its satire upon this world while getting to the heart of the place and its people."

Over the decades since his literary debut with 1999's The Intuitionist, Whitehead's reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta. Beyond his MacArthur Fellowship, the author was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and earlier this year, President Joe Biden awarded Whitehead a National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. The New York City-based Whitehead has taught extensively, including at Columbia University, Princeton University, and Brooklyn College, and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and University of Wyoming.

Whitehead's virtual program on September 6 is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

The virtual program The Power of Story with Colson Whitehead will take place on September 6, participation in the 7 p.m. presentation is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org.