Join us in welcoming National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead to the podium!
MON, MAY 18, 2026
7:00 p.m.
Center for the Arts
Free tickets will be available Monday, April 13>
About Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. He was named New York’s 11th State Author in 2018. His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pultizer Prize for Fiction (making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the Fiction category), the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. His latest bestselling novels are Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto.
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 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal in 2021.
He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming. He lives in New York City.
About Page to the Podium
Page to the Podium brings nationally recognized and award-winning writers to our community--special events of literary entertainment that we can experience together. The series features poets, novelists, memoirists, and other great writers who contribute to the community’s cultural exchange by illuminating literature and ideas.
The series kicked off in November 2006, with Frank McCourt, and has gone on to present renowned authors, who are pillars in their field. In recent years, Page to the Podium has also presented authors who’ve catapulted to the national stage through outstanding bestsellers and/or the most prestigious national prizes. Here's the list of our P2P guests:
- Frank McCourt, 2006
- Billy Collins, 2007
- Michael Chabon, 2007
- Mary Oliver, 2008
- Amy Tan, 2008
- Alexander McCall Smith, 2009
- Barry Lopez, 2009
- Azar Nafisi, 2010
- Wendell Berry, 2010
- Michael Cunningham, 2011
- Robert Pinsky, 2011
- Gary Snyder, 2012
- Jennifer Egan, 2012
- Cheryl Strayed, 2013
- Jess Walter, 2015
- David McCullough, 2015
- Sherman Alexie, 2017
- Susan Orlean, 2019
- Temple Grandin, 2020
- Roxane Gay, 2021
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2022
- Ada Limon, 2023
- Jason Reynolds, 2024 (Our first Teen Page to Podium program)