Colson Whitehead
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Early life
Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is one of four children of successful entrepreneur parents, his father Arch and mother, Mary Anne Whitehead who owned an executive recruiting firm.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Time interview">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As a child in Manhattan, Whitehead went by his first name Arch. He later switched to Chipp, before switching to Colson.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He attended Trinity School in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. In college, he became friends with poet Kevin Young.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Career
After graduating from college, Whitehead wrote for The Village Voice.<ref name="Biography">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=rumpus>Template:Cite web</ref> While working at the Voice, he began drafting his first novels.
Early in his career, Whitehead lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Whitehead has since produced 11 book-length works—nine novels and two nonfiction works, including a meditation on life in Manhattan in the style of E. B. White's famous 1949 essay Here Is New York. Whitehead's books are The Intuitionist (1999); John Henry Days (2001); The Colossus of New York (2003); Apex Hides the Hurt (2006); Sag Harbor (2009); 2011's Zone One, a New York Times bestseller; 2016's The Underground Railroad, which earned a National Book Award for Fiction; The Nickel Boys (2019);<ref name="nationalbook.org">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Bibliography">Template:Cite web</ref> Harlem Shuffle (2021); and Crook Manifesto (2023). Esquire magazine named The Intuitionist the best first novel of the year, and GQ called it one of the "novels of the millennium".<ref name="John Updike 2001">Updike, John (May 7, 2001), "Tote That Ephemera", The New Yorker.</ref> Novelist John Updike, reviewing The Intuitionist in The New Yorker, called Whitehead "ambitious", "scintillating", and "strikingly original", adding: "The young African-American writer to watch may well be a thirty-one-year-old Harvard graduate with the vivid name of Colson Whitehead."<ref name="John Updike 2001"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Intuitionist was nominated as the Common Novel at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Common Novel nomination was part of a longtime tradition at the Institute that included such authors as Maya Angelou, Andre Dubus III, William Joseph Kennedy, and Anthony Swofford.
Whitehead's nonfiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, and Harper's.<ref name=dospassos />
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His nonfiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, was published by Doubleday in 2014.
Whitehead has taught at Princeton University, New York University, the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Wesleyan University. He has been a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.
In 2015, he joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language.
The Underground Railroad was a selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and was chosen by President Barack Obama as one of five books on his summer vacation reading list.<ref>Malloy, Allie, "Obama summer reading list: 'The Girl on the Train'", CNN, August 12, 2016.</ref><ref>Begley, Sarah, "Here’s What President Obama Is Reading This Summer", Time, August 12, 2016.</ref> In 2017, the novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Colson was honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.<ref>"Colson Whitehead Honored Once Again for His Novel The Underground Railroad" Template:Webarchive, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, October 25, 2017.</ref> The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Whitehead's seventh novel, The Nickel Boys, was published in 2019. It was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where children convicted of minor offenses suffered violent abuse.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In conjunction with its publication, Whitehead was featured on the cover Time magazine's July 8, 2019, edition, alongside the strap-line "America's Storyteller".<ref name="Time interview" /> The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Judges of the prize called the novel "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was Whitehead's second win, making him the fourth writer to win the prize twice.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2022, it was announced that Whitehead will executive produce the upcoming film adaptation of the same name.<ref name="Cast">Template:Cite web</ref>
Whitehead's eighth novel, Harlem Shuffle, was conceived and begun before he wrote The Nickel Boys. It is a work of crime fiction set in Harlem during the 1960s.<ref name="Time interview" /> Whitehead spent years writing it, and finished it in "bite-sized chunks" during the months he spent in quarantine in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Harlem Shuffle was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Crook Manifesto, Whitehead's ninth novel and a follow-up to Harlem Shuffle, was published on July 18, 2023.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Personal life
Whitehead lives in Manhattan and also owns a home in Sag Harbor on Long Island. His wife, Julie Barer, is a literary agent. They have two children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Honors
- 2000: Whiting Award
- 2002: MacArthur Fellowship
- 2007: Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars Fellowship
- 2012: Dos Passos Prize<ref name=dospassos>Template:Cite web</ref>
- 2013: Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2018: Harvard Arts Medal<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- 2020: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- 2023: National Humanities Medal
- 2024: Langston Hughes Medal
Literary awards
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Works
Fiction
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Non-fiction
Essays
Short stories
References
Further reading
- Elam, Michele. "Passing in the Post-Race Era: Danzy Senna, Philip Roth, and Colson Whitehead". African American Review, vol. 41, no. 4, 2007, pp. 749–68. Template:JSTOR.
- Fain, Kimberly (2015). Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Kelly, Adam (October 2018). "Freedom to Struggle: The Ironies of Colson Whitehead". Open Library of the Humanities.
- Maus, Derek C. (2021). Understanding Colson Whitehead, revised and expanded edition. University of South Carolina Press.
External links
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- Profile at The Whiting Foundation
- "What's in a Name?" On Point (interview, 2006-09-04)
- "The books of my life | Colson Whitehead: 'When I read Invisible Man I thought maybe there's room for a Black weirdo like meTemplate:'", The Guardian, April 14, 2023.
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