African American literature of the early 21st century
Nonfiction and journalism
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
In the 21st century a new generation of Black writers emerged who explored many of the
same themes as their predecessors but used new mediums and formats made possible through the
Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates began writing for print and online publications, but his career took off
when he began blogging for The Atlantic’s website in 2008. Coates combined fresh insights on
pop culture with piercing analysis on American race relations. In particular, his 2014 Atlantic
article “The Case for Reparations” rekindled a national debate on reparations for slavery. With
his nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), which was written in the form of a letter
to his teenage son and argued compellingly that the United States is structured on white
supremacy, Coates earned himself comparisons to James Baldwin.
Like Coates, Roxane Gay adeptly used new media formats to reach a wider audience. She
shared personal insights on a Tumblr blog and built up a large following on social media as she
began publishing short stories and essays and serving as an editor for print and digital literary
journals. Gay’s breakthrough was Bad Feminist (2014), a best-selling collection of essays on the
often-problematic clashes between feminism and pop culture. After the runaway success of Bad
Feminist, Gay published more fiction, edited anthologies, wrote an opinion column for The New
York Times, and cohosted a podcast. In 2016 Gay and writer Yona Harvey became the first Black
women to write for Marvel Comics, when they began collaborating with Coates and artists Afua
Richardson and Alitha E. Martinez on Black Panther: World of Wakanda.
Championing overlooked or underreported stories of African American history was the
basis of the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose best-selling book
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) used interviews
and oral histories to shed light on the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th
century from the South to cities in the North and the West. In 2020 Wilkerson published another
groundbreaking work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which draws connections between
systemic racism and injustice in the United States, the genocidal ideology of Nazi Germany, and
the caste system that persists in India.
Fiction
In fiction, novelist Colson Whitehead was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
consecutive books: The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). The first of
the two novels was a neo-slave narrative that reimagined a form that had already been well
deconstructed in the late 20th century by Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. Blending elements of
fantasy with the real-life histories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, The Underground
Railroad tells the story of an enslaved girl who has escaped along the tracks of a secret railroad
situated underground—a literal rendering of the Underground Railroad—and is pursued by a
slave catcher. Other novelists who contributed masterful, award-winning works of historical
fiction in the 21st century include James McBride, Percival Everett, Edwidge Danticat, and
Marlon James. In 2022 Jesmyn Ward, a memoirist and novelist who won two National Book
Awards (in 2011 and 2017) for works of fiction centering on young African Americans living in
the Mississippi Gulf Coast, turned to historical fiction in her novel Let Us Descend. In Ward’s
characteristically lyrical prose, she gives voice to a young girl before the American Civil War
who has been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her and sent to live on a sugar plantation
in Louisiana.
The popularity of Black writers of contemporary fiction was aided in part by Oprah
Winfrey, whose enormously popular book club continued to guarantee the success of the books
and authors she highlighted, such as Tayari Jones, an Atlanta-based writer whose fourth novel,
An American Marriage (2018)—an intimate portrait of a successful young couple whose
relationship is tested when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit—was featured
by Winfrey and included in a year-end list of favorite reads by former U.S. president Barack
Obama. In science fiction, N.K. Jemisin, whose work explores issues such as racism and the
climate crisis, became the first Black writer to win a Hugo Award for a novel, for The Fifth
Season (2015). In young adult literature, Angie Thomas rocketed to the top of bestseller lists
with her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), a powerful story about a teenage girl who must
navigate between the different social codes of her poor Black neighborhood and her wealthy,
mostly white private school. The novel confronted timely issues such as privilege and police
brutality.
Drama and poetry
A number of Black dramatists picked up the mantle that had been carved out by August
Wilson. James Ijames, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan-Lori Parks, and
Michael R. Jackson all won Pulitzer Prizes for drama in the 21st century, offering plays that
address themes such as Black identity and kinship, masculinity, sexuality, prejudice, war, and the
illusion of the American Dream. In poetry, numerous Black poets emerged whose work garnered
popular fame as well as critical acclaim. Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Young, Clint
Smith, Ross Gay, Patricia Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib were among those who produced
stunning collections that explore universal themes such as grief, family, and love, along with
searingly intimate meditations on topics including racial microaggressions, gender identity, and
police violence.
The Pulitzer committee awarded several Black poets the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the
early 21st century, including Natasha Trethewey (U.S. poet laureate 2012–14), Tracy K. Smith
(U.S. poet laureate 2017–19), Gregory Pardlo, Tyehimba Jess, and Jericho Brown. In addition,
Elizabeth Alexander and Amanda Gorman joined the small number of poets, which have
included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, who were invited to read at a U.S. presidential
inauguration, in 2009 and 2021, respectively.
