Manhattan University Welcomes National Book Award Winner Justin Torres to its Major Author Reading Series

Manhattan University proudly welcomes the well-known author, Justin Torres, to its Riverdale campus as part of the University’s Major Author Reading Series (MARS). The lecture and book signing event will take place on Monday, March 10 at 6:00 p.m. in Hayden 100; the public is invited free-of-charge.

Begun as an informal gathering in 2010 and formalized in 2012, MARS seeks to bring well-established authors to share their insights to all Manhattan students. According to Adam Koehler, Ph.D., Chair of the University’s English, World Languages, and Literatures Department, “This is an opportunity for our students to hear from an established author whose works they have read in the classroom, learn about his unique writing style, and hear of his life experiences. It also is an invitation to our neighbors in Riverdale and the surrounding communities in the Bronx and Manhattan to join us for a deeply interesting learning experience.”

Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, which won the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lambda Literary award, and the Southern California Book Award. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, he also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. His first novel, We the Animals was a national bestseller and adapted into a feature film. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA.