Notable Authors in Conversation
Justin Torres, winner of the National Book Award, presented a conversation with National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy. The Durst Lecture Series brings powerful names in literature to campus every year.
On March 3, 2025, our 2024-2025 Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature Justin Torres took part in a Conversation with Angela Flournoy.
It’s rare to have access to such notable authors at a small public liberal arts college. The Durst Distinguished Lecture Series and Chair in Literature make studying at Purchase something special.
Flournoy is the author of The Wilderness, which is forthcoming from Mariner Books in September 2025. Her debut novel, The Turner House, was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA.
Torres is the author of Blackouts, which won the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and 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, Torres also has 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.
Upcoming Durst Distinguished Lecture Events
Monday, March 17
Poet Catherine Barnett in Conversation with Professor of Creative Writing Monica Ferrell / March 17 Event Details
Thursday, April 10
A Reading and Conversation with Novelist Beth Nguyen / April 10 Event Details