Born in Baltimore, MD, in 1975, Coates started his career writing for several local papers and magazines before opening his personal blog, through which he found a larger audience. Son of an independent publisher and a former member of the Black Panther, after some relatively economically tough years, he is today one of the most acclaimed columnist at The Atlantic. As a freelancer he also writes for Time magazine, The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post. In 2008 he published the national best-seller The Beautiful Struggle, about his childhood in Baltimore, Between the World and Me (2015), in which he explains to his son what it means to be black in nowadays America, winner of the National Book Award, and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017), a collection of essays published on The Atlantic during the eight years of Obama's presidency. Regarded as one of the most eminent voices on the complex matter of race in present America, Coates is one of the very few authors that were honored with the McArthur Foundation Genius Grant. He also created the Marvel comic series The Black Panther, and works as a writer for Captain America. His new book, The Water Dancer, will come out in September 2019.