When acclaimed journalist/writer Ta-Nehisi Coates decided to leave his position as the national correspondent at The Atlantic many wondered why. The reason has finally been revealed. Coates was working on his debut novel. And recently the New York Times revealed the cover and title for the much-anticipated novel.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 45: Ryan Wilson
Jamarlin talks to Ryan Wilson, founder of Atlanta’s Gathering Spot. They discuss Wilson’s plans to scale his profitable subscription and events business, and whether Kamala Harris’ candidacy will result in a civil war in Black America. They also discuss the term “people of color” and why Atlanta is one of the hottest cities for tech.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel is coming this year.
“The Water Dancer” is due to be published in September by One World, which is an imprint of Random House. According to the NY Times, the book will be set in Virginia during the 1800s. The story will be centered around a slave who nearly drowns,” Okay Player reported.
According to the website of the novel’s publisher, Penguin Random House, here’s the story synopsis: “Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage–and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child–but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn’t understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away…So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North.”
The media is also buzzing about the cover, which was painted by artist Calida Garcia Rawles. The cover features a man with his face down in water.
“In the NYTimes article, Coates details that he went to Rawles’ studio and saw her pieces of work. He asked her if she would read the novel and then come up with a cover. She agreed. (Coates said when he saw the image he “wanted to cry.”),” Okay Player reported.
Coates gained acclaimed as the national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social and political issues, especially African Americans and racism. Coates also wrote regularly for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. His byline also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, among other publications.
In 2008 he published the extremely well-received memoir, “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.” But it was his second book, “Between the World and Me,” that soared. Released in July 2015, it won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a nominee for the Phi Beta Kappa 2016 Book Awards.
According to his website, Coates is a distinguished writer in residence at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He also wrote about the Obama era in his book “We Were Eight Years in Power.” He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He is also the current author of the Marvel comics “The Black Panther” and “Captain America.”
