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Paul Beatty (born June 9, 1962) is an American author and professor of writing at Columbia University. Paul Beatty. Professor, Writing. Teaching Spring 2025. Columbia University. Retrieved April 23, 2025. 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.
/a> He was raised by a single mother and did not have a relationship with his father. When he was younger, he was influenced by comedian Richard Pryor, and writers Joseph HellerJackson, Chris (May 7, 2015). Our Thing: An Interview with Paul Beatty. The Paris Review. Retrieved April 23, 2025. and Kurt Vonnegut. In 1980, he graduated from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California. He went to Boston University for undergraduate and graduate schools, and received an MA degree in psychology in 1987. PBS Alum Paul Beatty Wins Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Boston University Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. Retrieved April 23, 2025. He later received an MFA degree in creative writing from Brooklyn College.
In 1996, he lived in Berlin, Germany,Shavers, Rone (Summer 2000). Interview: Paul Beatty. BOMB Magazine. Retrieved April 23, 2025. the same year that his first novel, The White Boy Shuffle, was published. White Boy Shuffle received a positive review from Richard Bernstein in The New York Times who called the book "a blast of satirical heat from the talented heart of Black American life." 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."Philadelphia, Desa, "Books: Tuff By Paul Beatty", Time Magazine, May 1, 2000. 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. 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."
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", while reviewer Reni Eddo-Lodge called it a "whirlwind of a satire", going on to say: "Everything about The Sellouts plot is contradictory. The devices are real enough to be believable, yet surreal enough to raise your eyebrows." The book took more than five years to complete. "A Swiftian hero", The Economist, October 29, 2016. Article withdrawn for similarities with other articles, with apology.
The Sellout was awarded the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, "National Book Critics Circle Announces Award Winners for Publishing Year 2015" , March 17, 2016. Retrieved November 4, 2016. and the 2016 Man Booker Prize. "Sellout Wins 2016 Man Booker Prize" . The Man Booker Prize. Beatty is the first American to have won the Man Booker Prize, for which all English-language novels became eligible in 2014.
Beatty is a professor at Columbia University and has taught "Literature from Los Angeles" as part of the MFA writing program. Villalon, Oscar and Paul Beatty (June 4, 2018). Paul Beatty on Los Angeles Lit, The Sellout, and Life After the Man Booker: In Conversation with Oscar Villalon. Lit Hub. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
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