Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), 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, his father Arch and mother, Mary Anne Whitehead who owned an executive recruiting firm. As a child in Manhattan, Whitehead went by his first name Arch. He later switched to Chipp, before switching to Colson. He attended Trinity School in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. 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 11 book-length works—nine 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 will executive produce the upcoming 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," will be published on July 21, 2026.
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
- 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
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Year
! Work
! Award
! Category
! Result
! Ref
|-
! rowspan="2" | 2000
| rowspan="2" | The Intuitionist
| PEN/Hemingway Award || — || ||
|-
| Whiting Awards || Fiction || ||
|-
! rowspan="3" | 2001
| rowspan="6" | John Henry Days
| Los Angeles Times Book Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| National Book Critics Circle Award || Fiction || ||
|-
| Salon Book Award || Fiction || ||
|-
! rowspan="3" | 2002
| Anisfield-Wolf Book Award || Fiction || ||
|-
| Pulitzer Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Young Lions Fiction Award || Fiction || ||
|-
!2008
|Apex Hides the Hurt
|PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
|—
|
|
|-
! rowspan="2" | 2010
| rowspan="4" | Sag Harbor
| Hurston/Wright Legacy Award || Fiction || ||
|-
| PEN/Faulkner Award || — || ||
|-
! rowspan="2" | 2011
| International Dublin Literary Award || — || ||
|-
| Long Island Reads || — || ||
|-
!2012
|Zone One
|Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
|—
|
|
|-
| Goodreads Choice Awards || Historical Fiction || 1st||
|-
| Kirkus Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| National Book Award || Fiction || ||
|-
! rowspan="20" |2017
|Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence
|Fiction||
|
|-
| Arthur C. Clarke Award || — || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" |Audie Award|| Audiobook of the Year || ||
|-
| Literary Fiction & Classics || ||
|-
| Booker Prize || — || ||
|-
| Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards || Novel || ||
|-
| Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Clark Fiction Prize || — || ||
|-
| Dayton Literary Peace Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award || — || ||
|-
| Hurston/Wright Legacy Award || Fiction || ||
|-
| Indies Choice Book Awards || Adult Fiction || ||
|-
| John W. Campbell Memorial Award || — || ||
|-
| Locus Award || Science Fiction Novel || ||
|-
| NAACP Image Awards || Fiction || ||
|-
| PEN/Jean Stein Book Award || — || ||
|-
| Pulitzer Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| TCK Publishing Reader's Choice Award || Novel || ||
|-
!2018
| International Dublin Literary Award || — || ||
|-
! rowspan="5" | 2019
| rowspan="16" | The Nickel Boys
| Foyles Books of the Year || Fiction || ||
|-
| Goodreads Choice Awards || Historical Fiction || 2nd||
|-
| Kirkus Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| National Book Award || Fiction|| ||
|-
| National Book Critics Circle Award || Fiction || ||
|-
! rowspan="10" | 2020
| Alex Award || — || ||
|-
| Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence || Fiction || ||
|-
| Aspen Words Literary Prize || — || ||
|-
| Audie Award || Male Narrator || ||
|-
| BCALA Literary Awards || Fiction || ||
|-
| BookTube Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Dayton Literary Peace Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Orwell Prize || Political Fiction || ||
|-
| Pulitzer Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| The Writers' Prize || — || ||
|-
! rowspan="6" | 2021
| Lincoln Award || — || ||
|-
| rowspan="10" | Harlem Shuffle
| Booklist Editors' Choice || Adult Audio || ||
|-
| Goodreads Choice Awards || Mystery & Thriller || 6th||
|-
| Hammett Prize || — || ||
|-
| Kirkus Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| National Book Critics Circle Award || Fiction|| ||
|-
! rowspan="5" |2022
| BookTube Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Gotham Book Prize || Fiction || ||
|-
| Macavity Award || Mystery Novel || ||
|-
| NAACP Image Award || Fiction|| ||
|-
| New York City Book Award || — || ||
|-
! rowspan="2" |2024
| rowspan="2" | Crook Manifesto
| Edgar Award || Best Novel || ||
|-
| Gotham Book Prize || Fiction || ||
|}
Works
Fiction
- The Harlem Trilogy
Non-fiction
Essays
Short stories
References
Further reading
- Elam, Michele. "Passing in the Post-Race Era: Danzy Senna, Philip Roth, and Colson Whitehead". African American Review, vol. 41, no. 4, 2007, pp. 749–68. .
- Fain, Kimberly (2015). Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Kelly, Adam (October 2018). "Freedom to Struggle: The Ironies of Colson Whitehead". Open Library of the Humanities.
- Maus, Derek C. (2021). Understanding Colson Whitehead, revised and expanded edition. University of South Carolina Press.
External links
- Profile at The Whiting Foundation
- "What's in a Name?" On Point (interview, 2006-09-04)
- "The books of my life | Colson Whitehead: 'When I read Invisible Man I thought maybe there's room for a Black weirdo like me, The Guardian, April 14, 2023.