Inprint Colson Whitehead Reading

About this event

General admission tickets for $30 will include a copy of Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine . Season tickets are on sale here .

Colson Whitehead will read from his new novel Cool Machine , followed by an on-stage conversation with Houston Chronicle news columnist Joy Sewing. The event is presented as part of the 2026/2027 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series . Please note that this event will not include a book signing.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author Colson Whitehead comes to Houston with his new novel Cool Machine , the magnificent and highly anticipated final volume of his Harlem Trilogy that brings to life 1980s New York. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes, “Whitehead concludes his Harlem Trilogy with a transcendent and wildly entertaining novel in which his recurring characters grapple with the ways their lives are defined by crime and the city they call home. . . . The heists, stakeouts, and showdowns are rendered with grit and precision, but the real wallops come in breathtaking riffs on the city’s magnetic force. . . . It’s the greatest New York novel in years.”

Whitehead is the first writer to win the Pulitzer for consecutive books: the historical novels The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The Underground Railroad also won the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review . Known for innovative novels that explore social themes, while often incorporating fantastical elements, he is also the author of The Intuitionist , John Henry Days , and Sag Harbor , as well as The Colossus of New York , a book of essays about the city, and The Noble Hustle , a nonfiction account about the 2011 World Series of Poker. Among his honors, Whitehead has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, a Whiting Writers Award, the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal. From 2018-2020, he served as the New York State Author.

For more than 25 years, Joy Sewing has been a formidable force in journalism, shaping Houston’s storytelling landscape with a distinctive voice, a sharp perspective, and an unwavering commitment to the stories that matter. In 2023, she made history as the Houston Chronicle ’s first Black news columnist in the paper’s 122-year history — an appointment that followed years of acclaimed cultural commentary, including her 2022 Pulitzer Prize nomination in commentary.

From Inprint Houston