Delbrook Visiting Writers Series

Rebecca Makkai
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Finalist
Event Date: Wednesday, January 29 at 7:30 PM
Location: Schrott Center for the Arts

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, and the short story collection Music for Wartime.  The Great Believers, a novel set in Chicago at the height of the American AIDS epidemic, as well as in 2015 Paris, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and the 2018 National Book Award. One of the New York Times‘ Top Ten Books of 2018, it also won the ALA Carnegie Medal, the LA Times Book Prize, the Stonewall Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Midwest Independent Booksellers Award, the Clark Fiction Prize, and the Chicago Review of Books Award. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Cunningham called the novel a “page turner… An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.”

A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca teaches graduate fiction writing at Northwestern University, UNR Tahoe, and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English; and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. Before her career in writing, she was an elementary Montessori teacher for twelve years before the publication of her first book. Rebecca holds an MA in Literature from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She lives in Chicago and Vermont.

T Kira Madden
Lambda Literary Award Winner
Event Date: Thursday, February 13 at 7:30 PM
Location: Shelton Auditorium

T Kira Mahealani Madden is a lesbian APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician living in Hudson Valley, New York. She holds an MFA in Writing with a focus on creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in design and literature from Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College. She is the founding editor-in-chief of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and is a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA artist fellow in nonfiction literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, Summer Literary Seminars, and Yaddo, where she was selected for the 2017 Linda Collins Endowed Residency Award. She facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals and currently teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. Her debut memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian memoir. There is no period in her name.

Rasheed Newson
Acclaimed Television Writer and Producer and Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Event Date: Tuesday, March 4 at 7:30 PM
Location: Schrott Center for the Arts

Rasheed grew up in Indianapolis where he attended Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory High School. He went on to attend Georgetown University, where he wrote movie reviews for the school newspaper, The Hoya. In 2002, Rasheed moved to Los Angeles and joined the entertainment industry. He worked as a production assistant; an executive assistant; an assistant to a showrunner; and the second assistant to a network president. He has an ID badge from every studio lot.

Rasheed’s writing career began when he was hired as a staff writer on the Fox drama Lie to Me. As a writing partner with a colleague, Rasheed and T.J. Brady have worked on Narcos, The Chi, and Shooter, among other drama series. They are currently executive producers on Bel-Air.

In 2023, Rasheed published his debut novel My Government Means to Kill Me. The novel tells a fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young, gay, black man in 1980s New York City. It went on to become a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize for Gay Fiction.

Rasheed lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena, California.

Ed Park
Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Fiction
Event Date: Tuesday, March 18 at 7:30 PM
Location: Schrott Center for the Arts

Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams (2023), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days (2008), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and many other publications. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice, and has worked in newspapers and book publishing.

Born in Buffalo, Ed lives in Manhattan with his family. He currently teaches writing at Princeton University. His debut story collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, is forthcoming in 2025.

*Pádraig Ó Tuama
Celebrated Poet, Theologian, Mediator, and Podcaster
Event Date: Monday, April 7 at 7:30 PM
Location: Shelton Auditorium

Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict, and religion. He is the author of several books of poetry and prose: Kitchen Hymns, Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love, Feed the Beast, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, In the Shelter, Sorry for your Troubles, and Readings from the Books of Exile. Ó Tuama is also the host of the popular podcast Poetry Unbound, which immerses the listener into one poem every week, and the author of the collection, Poetry Unbound, an expansion on the podcast that offers reflections on fifty powerful poems.

Working fluently on the page and in public, he is a compelling poet and skilled speaker, teacher, and group worker. He presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. With undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in theology, multiple professional qualifications in conflict mediation (specializing in groups), he also holds a PhD (Poetry & Theology) from the University of Glasgow.

He splits his time between Ireland and NYC.

*Pádraig Ó Tuama’s visit to Butler University is possible by the generous support of the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series, The NEH/Frederic M. Ayres Fund, The Compass Center, The Desmond Tutu Peace Lab, Trinity Church, and the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis.