Paul Beatty is a contemporary African American author, who was born in Los Angeles in 1962. He is known for his sharp wit and satirical observations of race relations in America. Beatty received his MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA in psychology from Boston University. He is a graduate of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California.
In 1990, Beatty was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which resulted in his first volume of poetry, Big Bank Takes Little Bank. This was followed by another book of poetry, Joker, Joker, Deuce, as well as appearances performing his poetry on MTV and PBS. In 1993, he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Beatty's first novel, The White Boy Shuffle, received a positive review in The New York Times, with the reviewer, Richard Bernstein, calling the book "a blast of satirical heat from the talented heart of black American life." His second book, Tuff, also received positive notices. Most recently, Beatty edited an anthology of African-American humor called Hokum and wrote an article in The New York Times on the same subject. In 2015, his novel, The Sellout, was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal. In 2016, The Sellout won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. Beatty currently resides in New York City.