Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for A Brief History of Seven Killings, making him the first Jamaican author to take home the U.K.’s most prestigious literary award. In addition to the Man Booker Prize, A Brief History of Seven Killings won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Minnesota Book Award, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 2024 was one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. His new novel is The Disappearers (Riverhead Books, September 1, 2026), about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.

Sponsored by the English Department and the William Gifford Fund for Writers-in-Residence.

This event is free and open to the public.