2016 National Book Critics Award Winner Paul Beatty Speaks at UC April 11

Darkly hilarious and deeply serious. Important and difficult. Dichotomies fill descriptions of the work of Paul Beatty, who visits the University of Cincinnati Monday as part of the Department of English’s Visiting Writers Series.

Beatty’s most recent novel The Sellout won the 2016 National Book Critics Award for fiction. The book combines poignant observation and serrated wit to tell a story that explores the complexities of race in America. The Los Angeles Times called it “among the most important and difficult American novels written in the 21st century,” and it was named one of the best books of 2015 by The New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal.

“Paul Beatty provides the best proof I know that not only are comedy and deep seriousness not incompatible, as conventional (lack of) wisdom sometimes suggests, but the one is very nearly the precondition of the other,” said Michael Griffith, director of graduate studies and professor of creative writing in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences Department of English.

“It’s the antic, playful, riffy, darkly hilarious energy of Paul Beatty’s fiction that makes his wide-ranging and profound exploration of race in America possible,” Griffith said. “I know of no smarter, and of nomore discomfitingly funny, American writer.” Beatty earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an M.A. in psychology from Boston University. In addition to his fiction and poetry, he is also the editor behind “Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor,” a self-described “mixtape” of black humor that was published in 2006.

Watch Beatty discuss why he wrote The Sellout with PBS.

Catch Beatty’s reading on Monday, April11 at 7 p.m. in TUC 400A.