![]() He might write a zombie story set in a fictionalized metropolis resembling New York City ( Zone One), and he might publish a coming-of-age story about Suffolk County youth loosely based on his own time there ( Sag Harbor), and he might track abuse of Black teens in a Florida reform school ( The Nickel Boys). His wide-ranging interests have manifested in his novels, which shift wildly in tone and subject matter from one to the next without abandoning the hallmarks of the author’s storytelling: the intricate narratives, the colorful ensemble casts, the historical accuracy, and the grappling with social-justice and racial-power dynamics. ![]() ![]() The New York native and two-time Pulitzer winner is a history buff and pop-culture obsessive. The magnitude of this reversal of fate is not lost on Whitehead. (“To alter a little Ralph Ellison,” Whitehead’s 1993 review of rap group Digable Planets’ debut album Reachin’ begins, “jazz will make you, and jazz will unmake you.”) A little over two decades later, he’s preparing to attend the prime-time Emmy broadcast he used to write about for work, where the director Barry Jenkins and his beautiful, harrowing adaptation of Whitehead’s 2016 opus, The Underground Railroad - which follows a Georgia slave through a long, arduous trek toward freedom across a string of grisly scenes - are up for awards. ![]() Before Colson Whitehead wrote his first novel - 1999’s The Intuitionist, a mystery following a Black elevator inspector - he was a music and television critic at The Village Voice. ![]()
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