Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead received the 2025 St. Louis Literary Award from Saint Louis University on Wednesday, April 9.

Whitehead received the award in an event at the Sheldon Concert Hall, followed by an author craft talk on the SLU campus.  View the complete event recordings below.

He is the author of the novels “The Intuitionist,” “John Henry Days,” “Apex Hides the Hurt,” “Sag Harbor,” “The Underground Railroad,” “The Nickel Boys,” and “Harlem Shuffle,” among others. He also penned a book of essays about New York City, “The Colossus of New York.”

Whitehead graduated from Harvard College and worked as a reviewer of television, books and music at the Village Voice. In addition to the Pulitzer, “The Underground Railroad,” won the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Fiction. “The Nickel Boys” won the Pulitzer Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Whitehead has been a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway, PEN/Faulkner, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award and has received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Whitehead was named the New York State Author in 2018 and awarded the Prize for American Fiction from the Library of Congress in 2020. Whitehead has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He has also served as a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming. 

Award Ceremony

Author Craft Talk