Colson Whitehead

Harvard Book Store is excited to welcome former MacArthur Fellowship recipient and award-winning author COLSON WHITEHEAD for a reading from Sag Harbor, which is newly released in paperback.

Benji Cooper is one of the few black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own.
 
The summer of ’85 won’t be without its usual trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through and state-of-the-art profanity to master. Benji will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, just maybe, this summer might be one for the ages.

"[Sag Harbor] is Whitehead′s most enjoyable book—warm and funny, carefully observed, and beautifully written, studded with small moments of pain and epiphany. It is sometimes possible to tell that a writer is enjoying himself, or that he isn′t. Here, finally, Whitehead seems to be having the time of his life; one can almost feel him relaxing into this book as if it actually were the summer home of his youth: pulling into the driveway after a grueling drive from the city, breathing the sea air deep into his lungs, pouring himself a cocktail." —The Boston Globe

Note: This event was originally scheduled for July 22, but had to be rescheduled due to illness.