The New York State Writers Institute announced this week that Ayad Akhtar '02 has been named the State Author.
Ayad Akhtar will be honored alongside Willie Perdomo, who was named State Poet. Established by Governor Mario Cuomo in 1985 to promote literary fiction within the state of New York, the award comes with an honorarium of $10,000. Each artist will hold their title for two years.
Writer’s Institute Director Paul Grondahl offered his congratulations to Akhtar and Perdomo, stating, “These two outstanding writers with New York roots are worthy recipients of these prestigious honors. We celebrate their singular literary excellence and how each embodies the vitality of literary art in New York State.”
A ceremony will be held in their honor at the University at Albany’s Campus Center West Auditorium. Akhtar will receive the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction and Perdomo will receive the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry.
Ayad Akhtar is an acclaimed novelist and playwright whose work explores the immigrant experience, Muslim American identity, and the world of high finance. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Akhtar has written plays such as Disgraced, Junk, and The Invisible Hand. He is the author of Homeland Elegies, which Dwight Garner of The New York Times called “A beautiful novel about an American son and his immigrant father that has echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.”
Ayad Akhtar currently serves as president of PEN America, one of the leading defenders of free speech both here and abroad.
