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Caltech

James Michelin Distinguished Visitors Program

Tuesday, December 3, 2019
7:00pm to 8:00pm
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Dabney Hall, Lounge
Heads of the Colored People
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, American Author and Associate Professor of English at Cornell University,
  • Public Event

Thompson-Spires is an associate professor of creative writing at Cornell University. She earned several honors for her first book, Heads of the Colored People, including a 2019 PEN America Literary Award, the Whiting Award, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was included in "Best Books of 2018" lists from National Public Radio, Vanity Fair, and Chicago Tribune, among others, and it was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize. Other work by Thompson-Spires has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Dissent, and The White Review. She holds a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For more information, please contact Cecilia Lu by phone at 626-395-1724 or by email at [email protected].