Today@Sam Article
Acclaimed Authors To Visit For Literary Event
March 15, 2022
SHSU Media Contact: Emily Binetti
The National Book Awards Festival at Sam Houston State University brings recent National Book Award finalists and winners to Huntsville for a free event that is open to the public. This year’s visiting authors to be featured include Christopher Paul Curtis, Diana Khoi Nguyen and Kimberly King Parsons. The event will be moderated by University of North Texas faculty member and Pushcart-winning writer Daniel Pena.
Taking place March 29 from 6-7:30 p.m. in the Orange Ballroom of the Lowman Student Center, the evening will include a reading and discussion with the authors. After the presentation, the authors will sign copies of their books, which can be purchased on site.
Considered in some scholarly circles as the “Academy Awards of Books,” the National Book Award is one of the highest and most respected honors given to an American writer. As a joint endeavor of SHSU and the National Book Foundation, this unique community event gives students and the public access to literary superstars.
Christopher Paul Curtis is the author of nine books for young people including “Bud, Not Buddy,” “The Mighty Miss Malone,” “The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963,” and most recently, “The Journey of Little Charlie,” a 2018 National Book Awards Finalist. In addition to being translated into 12 languages and selling over seven million copies, his work has been performed as an off-Broadway musical, adapted into a motion picture, and more. In 2000, Curtis became the first African-American male to be awarded the prestigious Newbery medal.
A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen's debut collection, “Ghost Of” was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Omnidawn Open Contest. In addition to winning the 92Y "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize.
Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the short story collection “Black Light,” longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award, and the novel “The Boiling River,” forthcoming from Knopf. A recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review and elsewhere.
The National Book Awards Festival at SHSU is sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the MFA Program in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing.
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