Photo of Susan Choi

Ten Evenings

Susan Choi

“Thoughts are often false. A feeling’s always real. Not true, just real.”

SUSAN CHOI, TRUST EXERCISE

The author of five novels, Susan Choi won the 2019 National Book Award for Trust Exercise, an ingenious meditation on fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, the capacities of adolescents, and the powers of adults.

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls — until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down.

Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film. A Person of Interest was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010, Choi was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award.

More about Susan Choi

The New York Times, November 2019

Susan Choi Wins National Book Award for ‘Trust Exercise’

Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast from LitHub, January 2020

All the President’s Henchmen: Susan Choi and Garrett Graff on the Citizens of the Swamp

Harper’s Magazine, January 2020

The Whale Mother, by Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s Website

“Book groups, meet your next selection… . Trust Exercise is fiction that contains multiple truths and lies. Working with such common material, Choi has produced something uncommonly thought-provoking.”

NPR

Trust Exercise book cover

WHEN

Monday, September 14, 2020
Virtual Event, watch anytime online for one week
BUY VIRTUAL PASS
Video links will be emailed to all ticket holders on the day of the scheduled lecture. Closed captioning will be available.

ASK A QUESTION

Please submit your question for the author two weeks in advance.

SUBMIT A QUESTION
READ THE PROGRAM BOOK

WHERE

Online

SHARE THIS EVENT

Upcoming Lectures

Hernan Diaz

APR 8

Ed Yong

APR 29

Jesmyn Ward

MAY 13

Anna Monardo

MAY 23