Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. He was named New York’s 11th State Author in 2018.

His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the Fiction category), the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

His latest bestselling novels are Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto. The third volume in the series, Cool Machine, was published in July 2026.

Colson Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s, and Granta.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal in 2021.

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

He lives in New York City.