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This year’s Tolles lecture began with a song, as award-winning cartoonist, professor, and writer Lynda Barry serenaded those gathered with a musical form of her bio. She explained that public speaking can be nerve-racking, and since singing is the scariest thing she could do in front of a crowd, it would only be uphill from there.

This year’s Tolles Lecture featured a fusion of hip hop, power, protest, and humanity thanks to award-winning Indigenous DJ and producer Dan “DJ Shub” General.

Novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki presented the Tolles Lecture on Oct. 6. Evan Robinson '23 discusses the talk, during which he says the audience "was treated to rich and engaging comments from a remarkably impressive speaker."

Pieces of advice zoomed by the audience at the speed of sound during Pulitzer Prize-winning author Suzan-Lori Parks' Tolle lecture at Hamilton on Saturday, March 5.

From discussing what it means to become a well-known Black author to the nuances of writing during a pandemic, Roxane Gay and Kiese Laymon offered a conversation brimming with honesty and camaraderie for an otherwise isolated, at-home audience.

The Hamilton community warmly welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen on April 9 as part of the Winton Tolles Lecture Series. A group of students and faculty members joined Nguyen for dinner in the Philip Spencer House to talk before convening in the Chapel for his presentation titled “Refugee Stories and American Greatness.”

After pondering different job opportunities for which his long, skinny fingers would be useful – pianist? No, how could he sit in a chair with no lumbar support, no hand rests? Hand model? Free washes, free hand cream, but how could he indulge in the model lifestyle? Finally, he considered becoming a surgeon... but then he heard how long operations were, so that was out – Colson Whitehead realized he had no choice but to become a writer.

Novelist Zadie Smith held the Chapel audience captivated throughout the 2015 Tolles Lecture. Attendees hung onto her every word as she read what she called “Two Essays About Being A Person.”

Hamilton welcomed Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, for the Winton Tolles lecture. In addition to Kavalier and Clay, Chabon is also the author of numerous novels, as well as two collections of short stories, A Model World and Other Stories and Werewolves In Their Youth. Chabon’s presentation at Hamilton was a reading with commentary, touching on a number of his works, as well as the broader topics of the creative process and the importance of a writer’s beginnings.

“This room holds many ghosts,” Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Nelson ’72 said as he began his talk in the Chapel on Tuesday, March 11. “Ghosts in every corner.” Nelson delivered the Tolles lecture titled “The Peculiarity of Theater.”