Colson Whitehead

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Colson Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of six novels, including his debut work, the 1999 novel The Intuitionist, and The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and was longlisted for 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant").

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Early life

Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan. He attended Trinity School in Manhattan. Whitehead graduated from Harvard University in 1991; in college he became friends with poet Kevin Young.

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Career

After leaving college, Whitehead wrote for The Village Voice. While working at the Voice, he began drafting his first novels.

Whitehead has since produced seven book-length works--six novels and a meditation on life in Manhattan in the style of E.B. White's famous essay Here Is New York. The novels are 1999's The Intuitionist, 2001's John Henry Days, 2003's The Colossus of New York, 2006's Apex Hides the Hurt, 2009's Sag Harbor, 2011's Zone One, a New York Times Bestseller; and 2016's The Underground Railroad, which earned a National Book Award for Fiction.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."

Whitehead's The Intuitionist was nominated as the Common Novel at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Common Novel nomination was part of a long-time tradition at the Institute that included authors like Maya Angelou, Andre Dubus III, William Joseph Kennedy, and Anthony Swofford.

Whitehead's non-fiction, 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.

He has taught at Princeton University, New York University, the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.

In the spring of 2015, he joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language.

His 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, was a selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and was also chosen by President Barack Obama as one of five books on his summer vacation reading list. In January 2017 it was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter conference in Atlanta, GA. Colson was also honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

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Honors

2000 Whiting Award
2002 MacArthur Fellowship
2007 Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars Fellowship
2012 Dos Passos Prize
2013 Guggenheim Fellowship

For The Intuitionist

Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award
Finalist, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award

For John Henry Days

Young Lions Fiction Award
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Finalist, Pulitzer Prize
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle
Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize

For Apex Hides the Hurt

PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award

For Sag Harbor

Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Finalist, Hurston-Wright Legacy Award

For Zone One

Finalist, Hurston-Wright Legacy Award

For The Underground Railroad

National Book Award for Fiction, 2016
Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2017
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
Booker Prize, 2017 - Longlist
Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2017
IMPAC Award, 2018 - Longlist

2016 National Book Awards - Colson Whitehead (Full) - YouTube

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Works

Fiction

The Intuitionist (1999)
John Henry Days (2001)
Apex Hides the Hurt (2006)
Sag Harbor (2009)
Zone One (2011)
The Underground Railroad (2016)

Non-fiction

The Colossus of New York (2003)
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death (2014)

Essays

"Lost and Found". The New York Times Magazine. November 11, 2001.
"A Psychotronic Childhood". The New Yorker. June 4, 2012.
"Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley". Grantland. ESPN. August 24, 2012.
"Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia". Grantland. ESPN. May 19, 2013.