Marilynne Robinson, a prolific novelist and essayist, is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a National Humanities Medal. President Barack Obama applauded “her grace and intelligence in writing.” Her most recent book, Reading Genesis, is a meditation on the origins of humankind and the meaning of God’s enduring faith in humanity.

This year, Marilynne Robinson will deliver the Noel Q. King Memorial Lecture to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Humanities Institute and explore the Institute’s annual theme: Humanity. The Noel Q. King Memorial Lecture honors the life and work of Noel King, a founding faculty member of Merrill College and advocate for the comparative study of world religions.

Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. In 2021, all four Gilead novels were selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Robinson’s nonfiction books include Reading Genesis, What Are We Doing Here?;The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country.

This event is presented by The Humanities Institute and Porter College and co-sponsored by Merrill College, Bookshop Santa Cruz, and Shakespeare Workshop.

Noel Q. King came to UCSC in the late Sixties as a “founding father” of Merrill College. Born in India and educated in England, he spent 14 years in Africa heading departments of religious studies before being hired to do the same at Santa Cruz. Professor King was a prominent and beloved figure here on the hill. After he died in 2009, the Noel Q. King Memorial Lecture Series was started as a way to keep religious studies, and Noel King’s idiosyncratic spirit, alive at UCSC. This year, Marilynne Robinson will deliver the Noel Q. King Memorial Lecture.