Thank you!

We had a wonderful time celebrating our libraries with Colson Whitehead at our 2024 Love Our Libraries author luncheon!

Thanks to the generosity of our many community partners and donors, our event raised a record-setting $413,794 to support Sarasota’s public libraries. We are incredibly grateful for our sponsors, donors, and library staff who made Love Our Libraries a tremendous success.

About Colson Whitehead

Award-winning Author

Colson Whitehead is a #1 New York Times bestselling author whose most recent novels include Crook Manifesto (2023) and Harlem Shuffle (2021). His book The Underground Railroad, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, was awarded the 2016 National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the Fiction category. It also won the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Learn More About Colson Whitehead

Harlem Shuffle

Harlem Shuffle is a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

Crook Manifesto

The sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Crook Manifesto is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.