Meet Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead, 2026 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award recipient, will speak about his life and works, and answer questions from the audience. Books will be available for purchasing.

Colson Whitehead, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, is the recipient of the 2026 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. Whitehead is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the fiction category. His latest bestselling novels are Harlem Shuffle, Crook Manifesto and the final book in his Harlem Trilogy, Cool Machine, which was released in July 2026.

Other titles by Whitehead include his memoir The Noble Hustle and novels Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days and Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. Whitehead’s reviews, essays and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, 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.

Whitehead has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University and has been a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond and the University of Wyoming.

He lives in New York City.

The Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award is given by the Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Library Trust.