Marcus Guest Writer: Kiese Laymon, reading and in conversation

Acclaimed author Kiese Laymon joins the Creative Writing Department as the Marcus Guest Writer. In conversation with Lillian Giles, Master of Fine Arts candidate. Free.

Kiese Laymon

Kiese Laymon’s “Heavy: An American Memoir” was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The best-selling memoir won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose and Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. The audiobook won the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. “Heavy” was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction and the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction.

Laymon is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Oxford American. He has written for The New York Times, Esquire, VSB, ESPN The Magazine, Paris Review, National Public Radio, Colorlines, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Ebony, Guernica, Fader, Travel and Leisure, Lit Hub and many others. He is the Hubert H. McAlexander Chair of English at the University of Mississippi and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.