2026 Conarroe Lecture

The 2026 Conarroe Lecture will feature author Charles Yu. Yu is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Interior Chinatown, a National Book Award winner and genre-bending masterpiece that explores the confining stereotypes of Asian Americans in Hollywood and in American culture more broadly. Yu is also a television screenwriter and the author of three other books, including How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which was a New York Times Notable Book and named one of the best books of the year by Time magazine. Charles Yu is a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, and he was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards for his screenwriting work on the HBO series, Westworld. In addition to writing for Westworld, Yu has been on writing staffs for shows on FX and AMC. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications.