Colson Whitehead
American novelist (born 1969)
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Early life and education
Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan, New York. He is one of four children of successful entrepreneur parents, Arch and Mary Anne Whitehead, who owned an executive recruiting firm. As a child, Whitehead went by his first name, Arch. He later switched to Chipp, before switching to Colson. He attended Trinity School in New York City, New York. He graduated from Harvard University in 1991, where he studied English and Comparative Literature. In college, he became friends with poet Kevin Young.
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Career
After graduating from college, Whitehead wrote for The Village Voice. While working at the Voice, he began drafting his first novels.
Early in his career, Whitehead lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Whitehead has since produced 12 book-length works—ten 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); 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". 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."
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.
His non-fiction 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. In 2017, the novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Colson was honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. 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".
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. 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". The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 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". It was Whitehead's second win, making him the fourth writer to win the prize twice. In 2022, it was announced that Whitehead would executive produce the 2024 film adaptation of the same name.
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. 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. Harlem Shuffle was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021. Crook Manifesto, Whitehead's ninth novel and a follow-up to Harlem Shuffle, was published on July 18, 2023. Cool Machine, Whitehead's tenth novel and the conclusion to his "Harlem Trilogy," was published on July 21, 2026.
On July 31, 2026, Variety reported that Whitehead's "Harlem Trilogy" was in development at Apple TV, with Graham Yost and Aric Avelino adapting the books.
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.
Honors
- 2000: Whiting Award
- 2001: Awarded Residency at Ucross Foundation
- 2002: MacArthur Fellowship
- 2007: Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars Fellowship
- 2012: Dos Passos Prize
- 2013: Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2018: Harvard Arts Medal
- 2020: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
- 2023: National Humanities Medal
- 2024: Langston Hughes Medal