Colson Whitehead
American novelist · United States · On the map · Writers · Born 1969 · age 57
Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead 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...
Colson Whitehead is read about 805 times a day, in 31 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 10 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 113 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
People around Colson
Close ties
Media & music
In their own words 3
, I ask myself: Is the outlook of this book comic? Is it tragic? Is the story best served by a first person narrator who's telling his or her story?
My compulsion to write the story was from seeing so many people go unpunished, and so many innocents' stories being untold…
I never know when I start out. You know, I sort of know what the ending is. I know where the characters always end up, and I usually have an image of the last page before I start.
Awards
About this person
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.
