SLU Community Invited to Participate in St. Louis Literary Award Events
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead will receive the 2025 St. Louis Literary Award on Wednesday, April 9.
Whitehead 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.”
Colson Whitehead. Photo by Chris Close.
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.
Literary Award Week Events
Monday, April 7
Saint Louis University’s Visual and Performing Arts Department, Art History program, St. Louis Literary Award Programs, and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation will host a public panel discussion on the intersection of art, history, and literature.
Acclaimed muralist Dominic Chambers will discuss his Underground Railroad-themed mural on SLU's Searls Hall, inspired by Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,
The Underground Railroad. Joining him is historian Dorris Keeven-Franke, an expert
on Missouri’s Underground Railroad history and Executive Director of the Missouri
Germans Consortium. Her work preserves the stories of enslaved people seeking freedom
and the abolitionists who aided them.
The panel will be held at 12 p.m. Monday, April 7, in SLU's Pius XII Memorial Library,
in the 2nd-floor gallery. A reception will follow.
Wednesday, April 9
Saint Louis University will honor Colson Whitehead at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9, at Sheldon Concert Hall. Tickets for the 2025 St. Louis Literary Award presentation are still available for purchase. Tickets are $15.
Thursday, April 10
Colson Whitehead will participate in an Author Craft Talk moderated by Ron Austin, assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University. Whitehead, the 58th recipient of the St. Louis Literary Award, will participate in a discussion about the craft of writing and his long and distinguished career.
A craft talk will be held at 12 p.m. on Friday, April 10, in the Wool Ballroom of the Busch Student Center. The craft talk is free, but registration is required.
The St. Louis Literary Award department in SLU Libraries also includes a Campus Read series, which is open to the public; the Undergraduate Writing Award; Literature & Medicine; Inspired By Arts Showcase for High School and College Students; and the Walter J. Ong S.J. Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research.
St. Louis Literary Award
The St. Louis Literary Award is presented annually by the Saint Louis University and has become one of the top literary prizes in the country. The award honors a writer who deepens our insight into the human condition and expands the scope of our compassion. Some of the most important writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have come to Saint Louis University to accept the honor, including Margaret Atwood, Salmon Rushdie, Eudora Welty, John Updike, Saul Bellow, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, Zadie Smith and Tom Wolfe.
Latest Newslink
- New Mural by Acclaimed Artist Dominic Chambers Graces Searls HallThe Kranzberg Arts Foundation (KAF), in collaboration with Saint Louis University and the St. Louis Literary Award program, is proud to announce a new mural by acclaimed artist Dominic Chambers. Set to be completed in early April 2025 on the Walls Off Washington at Saint Louis University’s Searls Hall, this mural explores the legacy of the Underground Railroad and highlights its significance in Missouri and the St. Louis region.
- A New Location, A Renovation: SLU Community Joins CPHSJ to Cheer a Move That Was Years in the MakingAt the start of the spring 2025 semester, Saint Louis University's College for Public Health and Social Justice made a big move. Faculty, staff, and students left their homes in Salus Center, packed up, and headed north. The College now calls the second floor of the Marvin and Harlene Wool Center home. Members of the SLU community gathered in the space Monday afternoon to officially celebrate the move with an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony.
- Saint Louis University Receives Grant to Improve Maternal, Infant Health in Missouri Through Diaper AccessSaint Louis University has been awarded a $538,431 grant from Missouri Foundation for Health to research ways to improve maternal and infant health in the state of Missouri with improved access to clean diapers. The three-year grant will study ways to improve access to diaper supplies for families in need across the state.
- Journal Issue Edited by SLU Professor Named Best Special Issue of the YearThe Council of Editors of Learned Journals awarded Leviathan Volume 25, Number 3, “Melville in Public” as the best special issue at the 2025 Modern Language Association (MLA) convention earlier this year. The issue was edited by Brian Yothers, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of English at Saint Louis University.
- Religious Communication Association Names SLU Professor’s Book of the Year for 2024Persuasions of God: Inventing the Rhetoric of René Girard by Saint Louis University’s Paul Lynch, Ph.D. has been named the 2024 Book of the Year by the Religious Communication Association (RCA). Lynch, an associate professor of English at SLU, received the award at the RCA’s annual conference. The book was published in February 2024 by Penn State University Press.
- Women in Medicine: SLU Medical Students Share Match Day ReflectionsMarch is Women’s History Month, and for many women who received their residency match this month, it’s a moment to reflect on the future they want to help create for their patients.
