Anthony Doerr was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. His novels include About Grace, All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and Cloud Cuckoo Land, which was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award and Novel of the Year in the British Book Awards.
Doerr’s short stories and essays have won five O. Henry Prizes and been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, New American Stories, The Best American Essays, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction and many other places. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, an Alex Award from the American Library Association, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, four Pushcart Prizes, three Pacific Northwest Book Awards, five Ohioana Book Awards, the 2010 Story Prize, which is considered the most prestigious prize in the U.S. for a collection of short stories, and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award.
All the Light We Cannot See was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for more than 200 weeks and is being adapted as a limited series by Netflix.
Each year, The University of Tulsa’s Presidential Lecture Series hosts enlightening and captivating speakers who discuss a wide range of topics. TU’s Presidential Lecture Series is sponsored by the Darcy O’Brien Endowed Chair, McFarlin Fellows and is supported by the Office of the Provost.