THE HARRY & JEANETTE WEINBERG MEMORIAL LIBRARY
update
SPRING 2012 • Vol.1 Issue 1
A Newsletter from The Weinberg Memorial Library SPRING 2023
Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award Presented to Ayad Akhtar
The Friends of the Weinberg Memorial addresses difficult topics with intelligence, Library hosted the Royden B. Davis, S.J., wit, and insight. Distinguished Author Award celebration Akhtar’s most recent novel, Homeland on November 18, 2022. The DistinElegies, has been widely praised for its guished Author Award recognizes sweeping narrative, its explorawriters who have contributed tion of the American Dream, significantly to the literary and its reflections on the world and reflects The Unicomplexities of identity and versity of Scranton’s combelonging. The work of mitment to recognizing auto-fiction also focuses and promoting excellence. on the city of Scranton The celebration was and neighboring localiheld in honor of author ties. Scranton plays a Ayad Akhtar. Mr. Akhtar central role in the novel is a highly acclaimed author and informed Akhtar’s disand playwright, known for cussion of what he sees as a his insightful works that explore changing American landscape. Ayad Akhtar the intersection of culture, idenThe award ceremony was pretity, and politics. He has won numerceded by a toast from Marwan Wafa, ous awards for his writing, including the Ph.D., Chancellor of Penn State Scranton, 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play a welcome from The University of Scranton Disgraced. Akhtar is an intrepid writer who (continued on page 2)