Ta-Nehisi Coates Biography

Ta-Nehisi Coates was born on September 30, 1975, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother was a teacher, and his father was a librarian at Howard University in Washington, D.C., a historically Black institution of higher learning. Such a background ensured that young Ta-Nehisi was exposed to books in his youth, and he aspired early to a literary career. William Paul, Coates’ father, was a Black activist as a member of the Black Panthers. He was also a publisher whose Black Classic Press republished works by African American authors.

In 1993, Coates enrolled to study journalism at Howard. Although he did not graduate, Coates came to view his time at Howard as the core of his intellectual training. In his early 20s, he wrote for a number of periodicals, including The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and O, The Oprah Magazine. He also became a blogger for The Atlantic, which later published some of his most important essays. These articles reflected Coates’ ever-deepening involvement in issues of contemporary race relations. When Coates was 24, he and his partner, Kenyatta Matthews, had a son and named him after Samori Touré (c. 1830–1900), a Mandé war chief who fought against French colonialism in West Africa. The couple married in 2011.

In 2008, Coates published his first book, a memoir entitled The Beautiful Struggle. The next several years brought teaching appointments and distinguished awards. He taught at MIT and the City University of New York (CUNY). He received the National Magazine Award in 2013 and won a MacArthur Fellowship; he also won a fellowship for writing in Paris. Coates’ 2015 book Between the World and Me, addressed as a letter to his teenage son, won wide acclaim. In 2019, Coates published his first novel, The Water Dancer, featuring an enslaved young man whose supernatural abilities help power the Underground Railroad. Coates has also authored several comic books featuring Marvel’s Black Panther superhero.