Paul Beatty | |
|---|---|
 Beatty in 2016 | |
| Born | June 9, 1962 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Education | Brooklyn College (MFA) Boston University (MA) |
| Genre | Fiction, poetry |
| Years active | 1990s–present |
| Notable works | The White Boy Shuffle (1996) The Sellout (2015) |
| Notable awards | 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award; 2016 Man Booker Prize |
Paul Beatty (born June 9, 1962) is an American author and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University.[1] In 2016, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. It was the first time a writer from the United States was honored with the Man Booker.
He was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1962. He is a 1980 graduate of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California. Beatty received an MFA degree in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA degree in psychology from Boston University. Beatty is married to filmmaker Althea Wasow,[2] sister of BlackPlanet co-founder Omar Wasow.[3]
In 1990, Beatty was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.[4] One of the prizes for winning the championship title was the book deal that resulted in his first volume of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank (1991).[5] This was followed by another book of poetry, Joker, Joker, Deuce (1994), and appearances performing his poetry on MTV and PBS (in the series The United States of Poetry).[6] In 1993, he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.[7]
His first novel, The White Boy Shuffle (1996), received a positive review in The New York Times from reviewer Richard Bernstein, who called the book "a blast of satirical heat from the talented heart of Black American life."[8] His second novel, Tuff (2000), received a positive notice in Time magazine, where it was described as being "like an extended rap song, its characters recounting struggle and survival with the bravado of hip-hoppers."[9] In 2006, Beatty edited an anthology of African-American humor called Hokum and wrote an article in The New York Times on the same subject.[10] His 2008 novel Slumberland was about an American DJ in Berlin, and reviewer Patrick Neate said: "At its best, Beatty's writing is shockingly original, scabrous and very funny."[11]
In his 2015 novel The Sellout, Beatty chronicles an urban farmer who tries to spearhead a revitalization of slavery and segregation in a fictional Los Angeles neighborhood. In The Guardian, Elisabeth Donnelly described it as "a masterful work that establishes Beatty as the funniest writer in America",[12] while reviewer Reni Eddo-Lodge called it a "whirlwind of a satire", going on to say: "Everything about The Sellout's plot is contradictory. The devices are real enough to be believable, yet surreal enough to raise your eyebrows."[13] The book took more than five years to complete.[14]
The Sellout was awarded the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction,[15][16] and the 2016 Man Booker Prize.[17][18] Beatty is the first American to have won the Man Booker Prize, for which all English-language novels became eligible in 2014.[19][20]
