Esther Freier Lecture

We look forward to seeing you at our next free event at the University of Minnesota campus, as the author series that began in 2001 continues to explore literature and the humanities. In 2026, the Freier Lectures series celebrates its 25th anniversary!

Spring 2026 Freier Lecture

Attica Locke and Celeste Ng in Conversation

April 14, Northrop Carlson Family Stage

The Esther Freier Lectures in Literature Series presents bestselling authors Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, and Attica Locke, author of the Highway 59 trilogy and a screenwriter who adapted Little Fires Everywhere for Hulu. Professor V. V. Ganeshananthan will moderate this conversation, a special event celebrating 25 years of the Freier series.

This in-person event is free and open to the public with registration, which will open up in February. Live captioning and ASL provided. For further questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email [email protected] or call 612-626-1528. Presented by the Department of English.

Attica Locke is a New York Times bestselling author whose sixth novel Guide Me Home, the finale of her Edgar-Award winning Highway 59 trilogy, joins Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven, My Home. She is also the author of Pleasantville, winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction; The Cutting Season, winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence; and her debut Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker’s Lab, Locke is also a screenwriter and TV producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us, and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image award for television writing. She co-created and executive produced an adaptation of her sister Tembi Locke’s memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home for Netflix. She is currently in a multi-year development deal with Universal Television, working on the adaptation of her Highway 59 series, among other shows. A native of Houston, Texas, Locke lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

Celeste Ng is the author of three novels: Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award. It has been translated into over 30 languages and is being adapted for the screen. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, and Amazon's Best Fiction Book of 2017. It was named a best book of the year by over 25 publications and the winner of the Ohioana Award and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction, and spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Little Fires Everywhere has been published abroad in more than 30 languages and has been adapted as a limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts (2022) was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and many other publications, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More author readings are offered through our creative writing program's Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series.

About Esther Freier

The Esther Freier literature series hosts two free lectures each year featuring various prize-winning authors. The literary legacy that Esther Freier envisioned began in 2001, when celebrated novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid inaugurated the Esther Freier Endowed Lecture in Literature series. A clinical laboratory chemist and professor, Freier had a deep and profound love for literature and the humanities. She wanted to leave a legacy that would benefit the public and inspire emerging authors. In her will, Freier created an endowment that would bring prize-winning national and international authors to campus for free, public lectures and informal visits with students.

Esther Freier was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1925. She moved to Minneapolis while still a child and spent her entire academic (BS ‘46, MS ‘56) and professional career of 45 years at the University of Minnesota. She co-authored the first paper dealing with quality control in clinical chemistry, winning several awards. When she retired in 1991, she held the only endowed professorship in medical technology in the nation. That year, Freier served as the first woman president of the Academy of Clinical and Laboratory Physicians and Scientists and was re-elected the following year. Esther Freier was a teacher, friend, and mentor to many. The Department of English is deeply grateful for her generosity to us, the University, and the community.

Previous Freier Lecturers

October 23, 2025: Ocean Vuong
April 10, 2025: R. F. Kuang
October 9, 2024: Hernan Diaz
April 24, 2024: Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil
October 26, 2023: Jesmyn Ward
April 18, 2023: N. K. Jemisin
October 19, 2022: Joy Harjo & Layli Long Soldier
April 13, 2022: Jennifer Egan
March 24, 2021: Helen Oyeyemi
October 7, 2020: Alison Bechdel
October 23, 2019: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
October 4, 2018: Frank Bidart & Maggie Nelson
April 4, 2018: Young People's Lit Panel with M. T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, David Barclay Moore, and Nicola Yoon
October 25, 2017: Edwidge Danticat
April 13, 2017: Andrew Solomon
October, 2016: Claudia Rankine & Marilynne Robinson
April, 2016: Abraham Verghese
October, 2015: Jeanette Winterson
February, 2015: Lynn Nottage
October, 2014: James McBride
April, 2014: David Mitchell
October, 2013: Katherine Boo
April, 2013: Colum McCann
October, 2012: Zadie Smith
April, 2012: Denis Johnson
October, 2011: Philip Gourevitch
April, 2011: Natasha Trethewey
October, 2010: James Salter
April, 2010: Richard Powers
September, 2009: Maxine Hong Kingston
March, 2009: Louise Glück
October, 2008: Junot Díaz
March, 2006: Suzan-Lori Parks
November, 2007: Paul Muldoon
April, 2007: E. L. Doctorow
November, 2006: Bharati Mukherjee
April, 2006: T. C. Boyle
October, 2005: Philip Levine
April, 2005: Anna Deavere Smith
November, 2004: Rita Dove
April, 2004: A. S. Byatt
October, 2003: Arnold Rampersad
February, 2003: Michael Chabon
November, 2002: Edmund White
March, 2002: Barry Lopez
March, 2001: W. S. Merwin
February, 2001: Jamaica Kincaid