Award-winning author Sergio Troncoso returned to the Society of Skeptics for his second appearance on February 25. Mr. Troncoso’s presentation centered around his linked short-story collection, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, and the concept of the immigrant outsider. His presentation was held in the Chiang-Elghanayan Center for Innovation and Collaboration.

Mr. Troncoso is also the author of The Last Tortilla and Other Stories and Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, as well as the novels The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Patch of Dust. His stories have been featured in many anthologies, including We Wear the Mask: Fifteen True Stories of Passing in America (Beacon Press) and Thoughtful Writing (Cengage Learning), among others. His work has also appeared in New Letters, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas and Newsday.

A Fulbright scholar, Mr. Troncoso has won numerous awards, including the International Latino Book Award, the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize and the Southwest Book Award. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and attended Harvard College as an undergraduate and Yale University, where he earned graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy.

For many years, Mr. Troncoso has taught fiction and nonfiction workshops at the Yale Writers' Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Hudson Valley Writers' Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. He is vice president of the Texas Institute of Letters and a member of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Alumni Hall of Fame.

In his previous Skeptics engagement in 2013, Mr. Troncoso addressed Blair about the US-Mexico border and read from his essay, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life, which was written amidst the narco-violence in Mexico.

To watch his full presentation, please click below:

The History of Skeptics

The Society of Skeptics was established as a forum for students and faculty to discuss and debate important global issues; it has grown to become one of the premier high school lecture series in the United States. Each week, speakers from the political, social, scientific, economic and literary arenas share their unique perspectives with students, who are encouraged to engage with presenters, asking questions and debating points of view.

The program was an outgrowth of the Blair International Society, begun in 1937. Forty years later, former history department chair Elliott Trommald, PhD, Hon.’65, established the modern Skeptics program as a regular forum for student discussion and debate; history teacher Martin Miller, PhD, took over in the mid-1980s and molded the program into a weekly lecture series, one that has since continued without interruption. Under the tutelage of Dr. Miller, Skeptics has featured a wide variety of speakers who are engaging, accomplished in their respective fields and often controversial. For a listing of upcoming Skeptics programs, please click here.