Award-winning Irish novelist Colm Toibin will deliver the annual Frances Steloff lecture and fiction reading at Gannett Auditorium (Palamountain Hall) at 8 PM on Tuesday, October 20th, when he will receive an honorary doctoral degree from Skidmore President Phillip Glotzbach.

Toibin is widely regarded as the leading Irish novelist of his generation, and came to fame with The Master, his 2004 novel based on the life of Henry James. John Updike wrote of that novel in the pages of The New Yorker “simply a marvel.” Toibin has written many other works of fiction, including such acclaimed novels as Brooklyn and The Story of the Night. He is also an influential critic, memoirist and man of letters.