The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead is the author of nine novels and two non-fiction books. Born and raised in New York, he is widely regarded as one of America’s finest contemporary writers. He has won many awards, including two Pulitzers (for The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys) and the National Humanities Medal. His first novel, The Intuitionist, was called the ‘novel of the millennium’ by GQ magazine and was praised in a review by John Updike. Alongside book-length work Whitehead has continued to publish essays and reviews in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. He has been a teacher and writer-in-residence at universities across the United States, from Princeton to Wyoming, and still lives in Manhattan. His latest novel, Crook Manifesto, was published in April 2023.
Emma Dabiri is an Irish Nigerian writer, academic and broadcaster. She teaches at SOAS University of London and is researching for a PhD in visual sociology at Goldsmiths. She is a regular column contributor for the Guardian and her journalism has appeared in Vice, the Irish Times and elsewhere. She is the author of two ground-breaking books: Don’t Touch My Hair, a study of African hair that fuses memoir and cultural critique; and What White People Can Do Next, a manifesto for radical change and a Sunday Times Bestseller. In 2023 Dabiri was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.