Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is the author of many novels including The Nickel Boys, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the National Book Award. His previous book, The Underground Railroad, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Carnegie Medal for Fiction. His other novels include The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; John Henry Days; Apex Hides the Hurt; Zone One, and Sag Harbor.

Whitehead has also written a book of essays about his hometown, The Colossus of New York. His book The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, is a nonfiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. In 2018, New York State named him their New York State Author, and in 2020 the Library of Congress awarded him their Prize for American Fiction.