NASHVILLE, TN — The great author Colson Whitehead is coming to Nashville in a joint presentation of Parnassus Books and Fisk University. Whitehead will be celebrating his new novel “Cool Machine.” This event will be held in the Appleton Room at Fisk’s Jubilee Hall July 28 at 6:30 p.m. and is a ticketed event.
“Cool Machine” is the highly anticipated conclusion to Whitehead’s acclaimed Harlem Trilogy. The series began with “Harlem Shuffle” in the ‘60s and continued with “Crook Manifesto” in the ‘70s. “Cool Machine” takes the story into the ‘80s and examines a robust but troubled New York City where real estate development is going full tilt. There’s also a healthy art and club scene, but the usual problems of inequality and crime that affect urban centers remain. It also takes a look at the impact of Reaganomics on the city. The book covers the years 1981, 1983, and 1986.
Colson Whitehead has received almost every conceivable award available to an author or journalist. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice. The first came for his 2016 novel, “The Underground Railroad,” which follows a slave named Cora as she escapes a Georgia plantation via the railroad of the title (which Whitehead imagines as an actual railway). The novel also received the National Book Award in Fiction, and Whitehead won another Pulitzer for 2019’s “The Nickel Boys,” drawn from a true story about a Jim Crow-era Florida reformatory that subjected young Black men to violent abuse.
He was born in 1969 and grew up in New York City. Following his graduation from Harvard, he returned there. His 2003 nonfiction volume, “The Colossus of New York,” is a tribute to the city. Whitehead also was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2021 and is a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships. Since his 1999 debut novel, “The Intuitionist,” Whitehead’s work continues to examine the realities of race and class in America.
Tickets to this event are $33 and include both a general admission seat and one signed copy of “Cool Machine.” All books will be pre-signed. There will NOT be a signing or photo line following the event.
Parking is accessible in a lot directly behind Jubilee Hall off Jefferson Street (close to the corner of Jefferson and D. B. Todd Blvd.). Fisk is located at 1000 17th Ave N, Nashville, TN 37208.
Free street parking is also available along Meharry Blvd. (1720 Meharry Blvd., Nashville, TN 37208).
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