Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty was born on June 9, 1962, in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in West Los Angeles. He earned an MA in psychology from Boston University and an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College. In 1990 he won the first Grand Poetry Slam Championship at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, leading to debut poetry collections, before transitioning to fiction. He is a professor of writing at Columbia University. Beatty transitioned to fiction with his debut novel The White Boy Shuffle (1996), a satirical take on Black American life. Subsequent works include Tuff (2000), Slumberland (2008), and The Sellout (2015), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize—the first American writer to win the Booker after the prize opened to US authors in 2014. The Sellout is a satirical novel about a Black man in a post-racial California who attempts to re-establish slavery and bring back segregation in his hometown.