Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty (born 1962) is an American poet, novelist and essaysist who has written in a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. He is best known for his works The White Boy Shuffle (1996), Slumberland (2008), The Sellout (2015), and The Minstrel Show (2020). He also wrote three short collections of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank (1991), Joker, Joker, Deuce (1995), and The Blowing Down (2002).

Born in Los Angeles, California, Paul Beatty grew up surrounded by a predominantly African American community, which informed much of his writing. At UCLA he studied psychology and eventually graduated with a degree in creative writing. Beatty initially began writing poems and went on to publish them in various anthologies. His first collection Big Bank Take Little Bank was released to critical acclaim, describing urban life in the African American community from which he emerged.

Beatty has since become a noted author of both fiction and non-fiction. His breakthrough novel The White Boy Shuffle (1996), which he wrote while living in Japan, is widely considered to be his best work. The novel follows a teenage protagonist named Gunnar Kaufman and his struggles with being both white and black in modern society. Beatty’s next novel Slumberland (2008) was a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for the National Book Award.

Beatty’s most recent novel and fourth overall, The Sellout (2015) won the Man Booker Prize and is a modern classic. In it, Beatty takes a satire of a 21st century America in which race, class and economics converge. The protagonist, a LA local named Bonbon, is a young black man who attempts to lift his Oakland neighborhood from the brink of destruction. Beatty’s non-fiction work The Minstrel Show (2020) examines the way in which race is presented in popular culture.

Outside of writing, Paul Beatty is a professor at Columbia University, where he teaches writing and literature, and was an editor-in-chief of Funnybunny Magazine. He has lectured, taught and read his work at numerous universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, giving him a global platform to discuss matters of race and identity.

Widely celebrated for his work, Beatty has received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008 and the PEN America Literary Works Award in 2015. He was also selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.

Beatty’s influence have extended beyond literature to film, music and popular culture at large. He has been listed as an influence on the likes of hip-hop artist Pharrell Williams and actor and rapper, Donald Glover. In addition, he has been cited as an influence on the work of filmmakers such as Spike Lee and Barry Jenkins.

Paul Beatty is one of the preeminent African American writers of our time. He is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards and has had a profound influence on literature, film and music. His early body of work focused primarily on satirically examining the African American experience in the United States. His more recent works however, have moved beyond the simply historical, drawing attention to the complexities of racial and economic divisions and the ways in which they contour the lives of America’s minorities. He is highly acclaimed for his work and continues to expand the boundaries of literature.