ST. LOUIS - “Read, read, read to find out what kind of writer you want to be. Write, write, write to find out what kind of a writer you are.” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead told audiences that to be an artist is a combination of voracious consumption of art and an attitude of “stick-to-itiveness.”

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

Perseverance was a theme of Whitehead’s conversations. He told an audience of high school students at Cardinal Ritter College Prep that his first attempt at writing a novel was rejected 25 times and his literary agent at the time dropped him. 

“My parents wanted me to get a real job,” he told the students, “but I am an artist. I had no choice but to start again. No other job or vocation could make me feel like a whole person. If you have to write, there is nothing else that will fulfill you.” 

Whitehead spoke of researching and plotting his books, saying he likes to know where the characters are going to go, before getting into the writing process. 

In a conversation with Katrina Thompson Moore, Ph.D., associate dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at SLU, Whitehead told the crowd while his work is varied, he thinks that in the end there are only two genres of novels - things you like and things you don’t. 

“The great thing about my job I really love is that if I keep going, and I can salute these different genres and kinds of storytelling that I like, for me that is really neat.”

In a craft talk on Thursday, April 10, Whitehead told Ron Austin, associate professor of English at SLU, that he didn't believe he needs to write every day, but he does set a goal of pages per week when he is writing. That goal helps keep his work from imposing on his life.

“Juggling time is a problem that confronts all artists,” he said. “You have to figure out how to make it work for you.”

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.”

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.

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.