The 2026 Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will host two acclaimed fiction writers who will speak at separate events this fall.
Novelist Brandon Taylor will kick off this year’s lecture series at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 23, in the Fletcher Hall lecture hall on campus. A catered reception at 5 p.m. will precede the Levy Lecture, which is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow. Alexander’s talk will be held on Monday, Oct. 19, with a time and location to be announced.
Taylor is the author of “Minor Black Figures,” “The Late Americans” and “Real Life,” the book published in 2020 that launched his career.
“Real Life” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and made many Best Book of the Year lists, including for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, National Public Radio and The Paris Review.
Taylor, who is from Alabama and lives in New York City, has been called “one of the most accomplished, important novelists of his generation,” by The Guardian and a writer who, according to the Associated Press, is “almost incapable of bad writing.”
“We really focus on bringing in recognizable names, some of the biggest figures in contemporary American fiction,” Dr. David Squires, an associate professor of English and director of Graduate Studies for Continuing Students who coordinates the Levy Lecture series.
“Brandon Taylor’s fiction has really struck a chord, and his latest novel is an account of NYC shortly after the pandemic, so it provides a fictional look at that recent history and all of the complexities and traumas that ensued during that time,” he added.
The annual Flora Levy Lecture Series is hosted by UL Lafayette’s Department of English through a UL Lafayette Foundation endowment.
Photo caption: Brandon Taylor, author of the novels “Minor Black Figures,” “The Late Americans” and “Real Life,” will open the 2026 Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture at UL Lafayette. Submitted photo