Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty (born in Los Angeles, 1962) is an American writer whose poetry and fiction use sharp humor to examine race, inequality and identity in the United States. His novel The Sellout won the Man Booker Prize in 2016, making him the first American author to receive it.

He grew up in West Los Angeles, raised by a single mother, and later studied in Boston and at Brooklyn College. His writing career began with poetry. In 1990 he won the first Grand Poetry Slam Championship at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York, and the prize included a book deal that produced Big Bank Take Little Bank (1991), followed by Joker, Joker, Deuce (1994). Public readings and appearances on television brought him early attention.

His first novel, The White Boy Shuffle (1996), was written partly while he lived in Berlin. It was followed by Tuff (2000), which critics likened to an extended rap song, and Slumberland (2008), about an American DJ in Berlin. His style mixes social satire, dark comedy and a blend of popular and learned registers. In 2006 he edited Hokum, an anthology of African-American humor, and the same interest in racial irony runs through his fiction.

The Sellout (2015) follows an urban farmer who tries to revive segregation and slavery in a fictional Los Angeles neighborhood. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015 and the Booker in 2016. Beatty is now a recognized figure in English-language fiction, and his work is often read as satire that unsettles readers through both its humor and its questions about everyday racism. He teaches writing at Columbia University in its MFA program.