Occupation Writer Education Harvard University Role Novelist | Name Colson Whitehead Nationality American Ex-spouse Natasha Stovall | |
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Genre Fiction and Non-fiction Notable works The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Zone One Awards MacArthur Fellowship, Whiting Awards Nominations PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Books Zone One, The Intuitionist, Sag Harbor, The Noble Hustle: Poker - Be, John Henry Days Similar James McBride (writer), Spike Lee, Barbara Kingsolver Profiles | ||
Colson whitehead 2009 national book festival
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 the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant").
Contents
- Colson whitehead 2009 national book festival
- Colson whitehead presents his novel zone one 29 04 2014 1
- Early life
- Career
- Honors
- Fiction
- Non fiction
- Essays
- Short stories
- References
Colson whitehead presents his novel zone one 29 04 2014 1
Early life
Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan. He attended Trinity in Manhattan. Whitehead graduated from Harvard University in 1991; in college he became friends with poet Kevin Young.
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.
Honors
For The Intuitionist
For John Henry Days
For Apex Hides the Hurt
For Sag Harbor
For Zone One
For The Underground Railroad