Ta-Nehisi Coates profile picture

Profile: Ta-Nehisi Coates

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I had a busy week last week, but I’m back at it with a profile of one of our great modern writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates! If you haven’t read his work in The Atlantic, or The Washington Post, you should check it out. He’s also written some great comics! As always, there are links at the bottom of organizations that could use your help.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Writer

Baltimore native Coates started his journalism career in 200, after leaving Howard University sans degree. He wrote for a few publications in the Del-Mar-Va area, until his article How We Lost To The White Man was published in The Atlantic. This led to a regular column for him in that publication. He also saw the publication of his first book in 2008, The Beautiful Struggle. He continued to write a series of insightful and topical articles for The Atlantic, while working on his second book, Between The World And Me.

It was at this point that he struck a deal with Marvel to do the Black Panther regular that started in April of 2016. If you haven’t read his run, I strongly recommend it. It’s dense, political, really smart, and deals with a lot of contentious societal issues around race and culture. Try to pick it up as a trade if you can, reading it straight through in that format works best.

He was a multiple award winner at this point, winning both the National Book Award for nonfiction, and the Kirkus prize for nonfiction, both for Between The World And Me. He would also go on to win an Eisner for a spinoff of Black Panther called World Of Wakanda. In my opinion, this was an example of the committee awarding him the award because they realized they goofed by not giving it to him for Black Panther, but World Of Wakanda is really strong in its own right.

He currently writes the Captain America ongoing, continuing the tradition of using Cap as an analogy for America itself. It’s a great series, that I’ve reviewed many issues of in this blog. He’s also released We Were Eight Years In Power, that got the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and his first fiction work, The Water Dancer. You can find information about engaging him for speaking events, as well as all of his work, at his website: https://ta-nehisicoates.com/.

Organizations

Here are some places that can use your support!