Ta-Nehisi Coates is an essayist, journalist, and writer who often addresses complex and challenging issues including racial identity, systemic racial bias, and urban policing. Coates began his career writing for various periodicals, including Washington Monthly, Philadelphia Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, O Magazine, and many others. In 2008, his career blossomed when he became a blogger for The Atlantic, quickly growing a following due to his grasp on pop-culture and penetrating insights. Over the course of a decade at The Atlantic, Coates became a national correspondent, writing about social, cultural, and political issues with a particular focus on African Americans and white supremacy. Coates wrote several pieces about Obama and his presidency; his essay “Fear of a Black President” earned him a 2013 National Magazine Award. Coates has written notable non-fiction books including The Beautiful Struggle, Between the World and Me, and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy -- a compilation of new and previously published essays about the Obama Era and its aftermath. Coates wrote his first novel, The Water Dancer, in 2019, and has had a successful run writing Marvel’s comic series The Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021).

“No matter what the professional talkers tell you, I never met a black boy who wanted to fail.” Ta-Nehisi Coates