Join Zone 3 Press and the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts in hosting Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18, in the Mabry Concert Hall at Austin Peay State University. This event is free and open to the public, featuring a live reading of Makkai’s creative work with a Q&A and book signing to follow. Light refreshments will be served.
Rebecca Makkai is a Chicago-based author holding the 2025-26 Acuff Chair of Excellence and will also read at this spring’s Zone 3 Writers’ Festival (April 16-18, 2026). Makkai honors country music legend Roy Acuff as a distinguished author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You, as well as four other works of fiction. Makkai was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and the 2018 National Book Award and she is the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize XLI in 2017 among many others. Makkai continues her work as a graduate fiction teacher at Middlebury College, Northwestern University, and the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Read the full press release here.
