M. Smith Griffith Auditorium Friday, September 12 2014, 4pm Institute for African American Studies Lecture Hilton Als, drama critic for The New Yorker magazine will read from his book White Girls. Als began work as staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994 and became its theatre critic in 2002. His writing has appeared in the Village Voice and The Nation. He served as an editor-at-large at Vibe and collaborated on film scripts for Swoon and Looking for Langston. "By its title, White Girls, Als' s new book both does and doesn't refer to actual girls, or women, who are white," said Ed Pavlić, professor of English and creative writing at UGA. "In essays that touch on the worlds of literature, film, fashion and popular culture, Als creates a daring pastiche, a portrait where all the supposed-to-be sacrosanct, would-be-airtight containers (racial, sexual, psychological, formal) in the American Tupperware Party of Apartheid lose themselves in each other in order to find themselves in themselves." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MacArthur Fellow Junot Díaz, "I read Als not only because he is utterly extraordinary, which he is, but for the reason one is often drawn to the best writers-because one has a sense that one's life might depend on them. White Girls is a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend and, yes, the read of the year."
