MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2026 | 7:30–9 PM: Inprint, Houston’s premier literary arts nonprofit organization, presents Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar as part of the 2026/2027 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. Akhtar will read from his new novel The Radiance, followed by an on-stage conversation with a local journalist/writer. The event will conclude with a book signing in the lobby. General admission tickets are $5 and are on sale starting September 15, and season tickets are on sale now. Free tickets for students and senior citizens are available by request. Books will be on sale at a discount at the event through Brazos Bookstore.

Named one of the New York Time’s “Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026,” Akhtar’s new novel The Radiance is “simply put, a work of genius. Through unforgettable characters Akhtar explores the nature of memory and of the soul, while the unfolding tale builds tension and anticipation like a whodunit” (Abraham Verghese). A mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and an investigation in Akhtar’s most daring work yet—a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture. Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond it—asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains. Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, describes the novel as “profound” and “radiating with intelligence and sensuality.”