Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar writes at the fault lines of identity, belief, money, power, and modern American life. His work has been published and performed in more than two dozen languages and includes the novels The Radiance, Homeland Elegies, and American Dervish, as well as the plays Disgraced, Junk, The Who & The What, The Invisible Hand, and McNeal. Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Homeland Elegies was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2020. His newest novel, The Radiance, explores memory, faith, cultural fracture, and the unstable boundary between revelation and reality—questions that resonate deeply with this year’s theme. Akhtar was named New York State Author in 2021.

Photo credit: Vincent Tullo