Four-time New York Times bestselling author Amor Towles will write the latest chapter in Southwestern’s coveted Shilling Lecture Series. Tickets for the free event are available now.
The latest iteration of Southwestern University’s Shilling Lecture Series is set to feature award-winning and bestselling novelist Amor Towles on Wednesday, April 15 at 7:00 p.m. The moderated discussion with Towles will be hosted at the Alma Thomas Theater on Southwestern’s campus in Georgetown. A book signing will follow.
The Shilling Lecture Series is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Tickets are required and available now via southwestern.edu.
A time-honored tradition at Southwestern, the Shilling Lecture was originally established in 1999 by The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, to honor Southwestern’s 13th president, Roy B. Shilling, Jr. and his wife, Margaret. The biennial event provides an important forum for the community to engage with ideas from multiple perspectives, hear insightful discussions, and interact with experts and influential figures.
Previous speakers in the Shilling Lecture Series have included 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter, The Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, conservationist Jane Goodall, and activist Sister Helen Prejean, among others.
Towles will write the next chapter of the Shilling Lecture Series in 2026. Born and raised in the Boston area, Towles graduated from Yale before receiving his M.A. in English from Stanford. Following over 20 years as an investment professional, he is now fully devoted to writing. His novels have collectively sold more than eight million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Towles’ newest book, published in 2024, is a collection of short stories titled Table for Two. It was acclaimed as an immediate bestseller and heralded by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as “his best yet.”
Published in 2011, Towles’ first novel, Rules of Civility, was named a New York Times bestseller and listed as one of the best books of 2011 by The Wall Street Journal. His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, released in 2016, was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 52 weeks and was named one of the best books of 2016 by several outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR.
Towles’ third novel, The Lincoln Highway, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was a Today Show Read. It was selected as one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2021, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021, and was #1 on Amazon’s list of Best Books of the Year. The Lincoln Highway will be made into a movie adapted and directed by Christopher Storer for Warner Brothers.
Towles is also the author of the ebook You Have Arrived at Your Destination, part of Amazon’s Forward Collection. He received the 2023 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award as well as the 2025 Nashville Public Library Literary Award.
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