American · b. 1962
Paul Beatty won the Booker Prize in 2016 for "The Sellout"—the first American winner. The novel is a satire about a Black man who reinstates slavery and segregation in his Los Angeles neighborhood; it is very funny and deeply angry. Beatty began as a slam poet; his fiction carries poetry's compression and performance. "The White Boy Shuffle" and "Slumberland" preceded his prize-winning breakout.