Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist and one of the most acclaimed literary writers of his generation, the only author to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice in consecutive eligible years. Born in New York City in 1969, he was raised in Manhattan, attended Trinity School, and studied at Harvard University, where he began writing for the Village Voice. Whitehead's novels span genres and styles with extraordinary ambition. His early works include The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, and Apex Hides the Hurt, each blending literary fiction with elements of allegory, satire, and genre. The Underground Railroad, which reimagines the escape network as a literal railway beneath the soil of the American South, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2017. The Nickel Boys, based on the true story of a brutal Florida reform school, won his second Pulitzer in 2020. His other works include Zone One, a literary zombie novel, and Harlem Shuffle, a heist novel set in 1960s New York. Whitehead is a MacArthur Fellow and has received numerous other honours. His audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers fiction of remarkable range and power, exploring race, history, and the American experience with imagination, moral clarity, and formal daring.