Colson Whitehead

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of ten novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad, for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. 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.

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. 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.

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". 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. 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 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

Literary awards

Works

Fiction

The Harlem Trilogy

Non-fiction

Essays

Short stories