Hisham Matar, Libyan-American and British author, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, The Return, about his search for his missing father, a political dissident in Libya. His new novel is My Friends (paperback, 2025), a National Book Award finalist.

A young man growing up in Benghazi, Libya, embarks on a journey far from home to pursue the life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He makes new friends and experiences profound changes in his sense of self, as he watches the world rapidly transform, politically and culturally, around him.

The Washington Post reviewer called it, “A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”

Sponsored by Rensselaer’s Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading in partnership with the NYS Writers Institute.

For more information, contact McKinney@rpi.edu

Hisham Matar
7 p.m. Thursday, April 9, 2026
Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Awards
The Heffner Alumni House, Rensselaer (RPI)
110 8th St, Troy NY 12180
(518) 276-6205

Free and open to the public

https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/hishammatar