Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize Winning Authors Heading to Adelaide

The authors in question are Colson Whitehead, Hisham Matar and Anne Enright. Whitehead won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Underground Railroad, which tells the story of Cora, a slave who escapes from a cotton plantation on the eve of the Civil War. The acclaimed novel was a New York Times bestseller while Moonlight director Barry Jenkins will direct a series adaptation for Amazon. Previous Whitehead novels include The Noble Hustle, Zone One and The Intuitionist.

Colson Whitehead (photo: Madeleine Whitehead)

Libyan author Matar, on the other hand, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between; about the author’s return to his homeland to search for his father two decades after he was kidnapped.

The third visiting writer in question is Irish author Anne Enright who won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering. She will be in Adelaide to discuss her new novel The Green Road on Monday, May 22, while Whitehead’s discussion takes place on Sunday, May 28 while Matar will be in town on Monday, May 29.

Anne Enright

“It is such a coup to have two Pulitzer Prize winners on the program for our first series of special events for 2017,” Writers’ Week Director Laura Kroetsch said in a press release. “This series takes up the themes of family, love, loss and the quest for freedom, and brings together three writers from around the world to discuss their award-winning books that will take readers from a small town in Ireland, to Qaddafi’s Libya to the American Civil War.”

Each hour-long session will be followed by a book signing.

Writers’ Week May program

Anne Enright – Elder Hall, Monday, May 22, 6.30pm

Colson Whitehead –Scott Theatre, Sunday, May 28, 5pm

Hisham Matar – Elder Hall, Monday,  May 29, 6.30pm

Tickets on sale from Thursday, April 13 via adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246

Header image: Hisham Matar