Join the College of Letters & Science as Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar returns to the Milwaukee area to deliver the 2024 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities at UWM on Nov. 11. His talk is titled, “Literature in the Age of Automated Cognition.” Akhtar grew up in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Ayad Akhtar’s work has received international acclaim and has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and also holds an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
His novel Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which was called “a masterpiece” by Publisher’s Weekly and “a tour de force” by the Washington Post, and was elected by The New York Times as one of its ten best books of the year. His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages.
As a playwright, Akhtar has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). His play McNeal premiered at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater in September 2024. The main character, played by Robert Downey, Jr., is an acclaimed writer dealing with the impact of artificial intelligence on his work and in his life.
Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN America, where he served as President from 2020 – 2023. In 2021, Akhtar was named the New York State Author, succeeding Colson Whitehead, by the New York State Writers Institute.
The Dean’s Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities is free and open to the UWM and Milwaukee communities. Tickets are available, and an RSVP is appreciated. The Vilas Trust is appreciated for their support and underwriting for this event.
What: Dean’s Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities
Who: Playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar
When: Monday, Nov. 11, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Where: UWM Union, Wisconsin Room
More Information: Visit our website.