Magic City Books is very proud to welcome two time Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Colson Whitehead for a virtual event on Monday July 6 in celebration of the paperback release of The Nickel Boys, the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction. 

This is a ticketed event, the proceeds from the ticket will be divided between the Tulsa Literary Coalition and the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation. Tickets are $10 and no book is included in the ticket price. Copies of Mr. Whitehead’s books, including The Nickel Boys are available at Magic City Books.

The event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and registration information will be sent to registered ticket holders only. The email used to purchase the ticket must be the same email used to register for the Zoom event.

Colson Whitehead will be joined in conversation by Tulsa native, Ben Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and it was his investigative journalism that sparked the idea for Mr. Whitehead’s novel, The Nickel Boys.

About The Nickel Boys

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.