Colson Whitehead Biography
Colson Whitehead (Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead) is an American novelist. He is renown as the author of seven novels, including his 1999 debut work, The Intuitionist, and The Underground Railroad in 2016, for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; he also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020 for The Nickel Boys.
Colson Whitehead Age
Whitehead was born on November 6, 1969, in New York City, New York, United States.
Colson Whitehead Height and weight
Whitehead stands at a height of 6 feet 1 inch tall and has a weight of 88 kgs.
Colson Whitehead Education
Whitehead enrolled at the elite prep Trinity School in Manhattan and then proceeded to Harvard University where he graduated in 1991. While he was in college he was friends with poet Kevin Young.
Colson Whitehead Family
Details about Whitehead’s parents identity are not known to the public and it is also not known if he has any siblings. However, this sectioin will be updated as soon as the information is available.
Colson Whitehead Wife
Whitehead is a married and they have two children. He likes to keep his personal life private hence much information has not yey been disclosed. However, this information will be updated as soon as it is available.
Colson Whitehead Author
Whitehead started his career as an author with the book titled The Village Voice. While working at the Voice, he grafted his first novels. He has penned nine book-length works—seven novels and two non-fiction works, including a meditation on life in Manhattan in the style of E.B. White’s famous essay Here Is New York.
The books 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; 2016’s The Underground Railroad, that earned him earned a National Book Award for Fiction, and 2019’s The Nickel Boys.
Esquire magazine named his novel as The Intuitionist the best first novel of the year, and GQ called it one of the “novels of the millennium.” 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.
His non-fiction, essays, and reviews have featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, and Harper’s. As well 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 an author -in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.
He later joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language in 2015. In 2016 his novel, The Underground Railroad, picked 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. He earned as awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, GA. Colson was also honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.
With his book, The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel. His seventh novel, The Nickel Boys, was published in July 2019. The novel was later inspired by the real-life story of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where children convicted of minor offenses suffered violent abuse.
In conjunction with the publication of The Nickel Boys, Whitehead was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine for the July 8, 2019 edition, alongside the strap-line “America’s Storyteller”.
His book titled The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 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 is Whitehead’s second win, making him the fourth writer in history to have won the prize twice. Currently, Whitehead is working on an eighth novel (originally conceived and begun before he wrote The Nickel Boys). The work-in-progress is an untitled crime novel set in Harlem during the 1960s.
Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
Published in 2016, The Underground Railroad, is the sixth novel by American author Colson Whitehead. The alternate history novel elaborates the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves in the southeastern United States during the 19th century, who make a bid for freedom from their Georgia plantations by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as primarily a rail transport system in addition to a series of safe houses and secret routes.
Colson Whitehead Books
Fiction;
- The Intuitionist (1999)
- John Henry Days (2001)
- Apex Hides the Hurt (2006)
- Sag Harbor (2009)
- Zone One (2011)
- The Underground Railroad (2016)
- The Nickel Boys (2019)
Non-fiction;
- The Colossus of New York (2003)
- The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death (2014)
Essays;
- “Lost and Found”. The New York Times Magazine. November 11, 2001.
- “A Psychotronic Childhood”. The New Yorker. June 4, 2012.
- “Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley”. Grantland. ESPN. August 24, 2012.
- “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia”. Grantland. ESPN. May 19, 2013.
Short stories
- “Down in Front”. Granta (86: Film). Summer 2004. (Subscription Required)
- “The Match”, The New Yorker, March 26, 2019.
Colson Whitehead Salary
At the moment, we do not have the exact salary of Whitehead but we’ll keep tabs and update once it is available.
Colson Whitehead Net Worth
Colson estimated to have a net worth of $3 million.